I'm Michael Che. And I'm Colin Jose, and we've
got a little secret. Actually, it's a pretty big
secret. Well, now you got to give the
people something. I'm not saying a word.
Oh, then people will know to tune in.
Come on, tell them a little. Black Hour hosting of comedy
events streaming only on Peacock.
Exactly how it's called New York After Dark, and it's a comedy
show that only features drop in comics.
Boom, you nail. Into Michael Che's phone.
Nervous. Whoa, whoa, whoa, hey, hey, hey.
New York After Dark. It's some kind of comedy thing,
and it's streaming now only on Peacock.
You love it. Zippers, welcome to the Tea With
Me podcast with me, your little friend.
She and Todd. It's a guest episode this week.
My guest is none other than Gordon Smart.
Gordon was the showbiz editor of The Sun.
For many, many. Years, despite just being like a
young guy, he's also been the deputy editor of the actual Sun,
the editor of the Scottish Sun, and more recently he's been
doing a show on Radio X. We talked about a load of
different things about when he was showbiz editor, the people
he met, the interactions he had, Amy Winehouse, Noel Gallagher.
He rubbed shoulders with them all.
And more importantly, I got to ask him about my friend Harry
Styles, who I would like to be a lot more than my friend.
And Gordon proceeds to tell me a story about Harry Styles that,
by the way, I didn't ask anything about Harry Styles
penis, but he told me a story about it nonetheless.
And it's the best and only Harry Styles penis story I've ever.
Heard. And if anything it's made me
like Harry Styles a lot more. So.
Tune in for that. Before we get into it, let me
plug two things. Number one is patreonpatreon.com
slash Tea with Me podcast where you can get the bonus episode of
the podcast every Monday, merch giveaways, the live episode, all
that kind of thing. And also manscapedmanscaped.com.
Our promo code is Tea with Me and if you use that you get 20%
off and free shipping. Manscaped is essentially.
A tool that allows you to make your tool look better.
You know, we surveyed 100 guys and we got 100 guys in Northern
Ireland to pull down their trousers and pants and then we
conducted a survey and we said let me see your pubic hair and
we looked and we were horrified. We were absolutely horrified.
Apart from one guy who uses the Manscape Lawnmower 3.0.
So that's what we need to do. We need to go to Manscape, check
out what they do. Producer Dan and I have got the
travel kit, so we've got the Manscape Lawnmower 3.0, we've
got the ball cleanser, the toner, the moisturiser, all of
it. Big Mike back in the studio
today, not yet a Manscape user, and he is excited about how his
life is going to change and his friends and family's life are
going to change when he starts. Trimming it up.
So check out manscape.com. The promo code is Tea With Me.
You get 20% off and free shipping.
On with the Tea With Me episode with the lovely Gordon Smart.
Gordon, I asked the hard hitting questions.
I asked the big questions. Let me ask you this.
Do you drink tea? If so, what is the level of your
tea drinking? When did you get into the game?
Etcetera, etcetera. This is going to be such a sad
story to start with. Shame.
But I think this will be the first story you've heard about
injuries stopping a man drinking tea.
Yeah. I've had a terrible dear
cruciate drinking tea. Do you know anybody who's ever
played sport? Romeo think forsake.
Once again he's injured. It's ridiculous.
I, I've been, I've had six months this year shame without
being able to speak. I got a haemorrhaged polypom of
vocal chords, which was a horrible thing.
And the worst things for are alcohol, coffee and tea.
So I've I've been through lockdown without the support
network of tea. I mean.
That's. What everybody needs, that's the
one thing everybody needs. I mean, even more so than your
voice. You need you need to be able to
drink a cup of tea. Alcohol, tea.
Oh man, it's been there's been a rough ride this year.
Were you just not able to speak for six months?
Pretty much. I mean, I had a bit of a voice,
but I just sounded like I was on about 40 regal king size a day,
you know, I was and it would just disappear after half an
hour and I just did not make a noise like that.
But sometimes I think that's sexy, like sometimes the first
couple of days of a throat infection, I mean, what you had
was way more severe and it shouldn't underplay it.
But the first couple of days of a throat infection, like you, it
sounds good. Thanks for that.
Well, it's totally redundant though.
Having been married for 17 years, there's no point in
having a sexy anything when you have.
And listen, you are steaming into this world now, right as a
man with a child. And you're recently married as
well, aren't you? You were.
Gordon, good question. How long ago would it have been?
I mean, listen, if off the top of my head, yeah, somewhere
between one and four years ago I got married.
I can't remember the exact time, but I'm.
Listen to me, I turned. Like 2 1/2 years ago.
Good man, I turned 40 in lockdown right?
Been married for 17 years, two children.
There's no point in me having a lovely voice.
There's no point in me giving a shit about my body.
It's just it's all over me. Don Well, I'm 32.
Are you saying like it's 40, the age?
You said I've got eight years left, the kind of sculpt.
And then after that, it's just, it's just done.
Well, I got the snap about 18 months ago.
That was kind of a a sign that things were heading in the wrong
direction. And then it's just got worse
from there, really. So I see you've got 7 or 8 years
before it's just just retiring. Just give up.
Leave. I'm going to make the most of
that then, but I want to chat. There's loads of things I want
to chat to you about, one of which is this.
I know from your social media you're a big football fan, big
Hibs fan. I've been the one SPL game, one
Scottish Premier League game which was Hearts, whenever I was
doing the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, which I want to chat
to you a bit about as well. I want to see Hearts play part
of Thistle because I just I had a real appetite for some
football and then I went to see Hartsby product Thistle and I
still had an appetite for something.
I don't know how you ended up at Tynecastle because all the great
comedians and I say who visit Edinburgh for the festival come
and visit Hibs. Well, that's why I Sean Hughes,
the late, great Sean Hughes, for instance, massive Hibs fan, used
to see him Easter Road and Andrew Maxwell as well.
Yeah. So I, it was a friend of a
friend, had tickets at Hearts. He's like come down, watch the
game. And the probably the most
uncomfortable I've ever been in my life, the worst moment of my
life was I went up to the, the tea van at Tynecastle and I
asked if they did green tea. And the woman, the, the sort of
55 year old woman that was working there very nearly from
the place, you know, I was very, very nearly arrested for it.
And I'm just very. Poked the head on you.
You know you're lucky that you just looked at unimpressed.
Good work. But but yeah, I mean, it was, it
was very enjoyable and I heard swearing at a Scottish football
match that I've never heard before in in such a creative
way. Yes, I love swearing at one of
my favourite ever was. Hibbs played Rangers in about
19, probably 1993 and Mark Haley played up front with Ali Mccoist
and I remember a Hips fan who's his vocabulary let him down at
the vital moment and he just shouted from from the East
standard Mark Haley, you're just a fucking fuck.
Everyone was like, yeah, good, good.
We know what you mean. He had to start saying not every
week then to make it seem like no, that's that made sense then.
So let's go back to the fact that you lost your voice for six
months. Being a radio broadcaster, I
would say it's not ideal to for half of a year not be able to
speak. Yeah, to have 99.5% of your body
working pretty well, another little bit preventing you from
doing what pays the bills is horrendous.
Look, I'm very careful about complaining too much because
there are people in more circumstances, but it has been a
bag of shite this year, really, really miserable.
And it's been lovely being at home.
I actually realised that I really like my wife and
children, which was one of the great outcomes of lockdown.
But losing my voice, it was horrendous because again, I do
quite a lot of voice over stuff. And that all stopped obviously.
And then I realised actually everything I do realise on me
being able to speak and communicate effectively and I
couldn't do that and I had some pretty dark times.
And also, if you'll notice this yourself, if you're not pushing
yourself and promoting yourself and really forcing yourself on
that industry that you work in, you're just forgotten about.
And I just disappeared into the hills in Scotland, like Luke
Skywalker on that island just disappeared.
Yeah, I mean, there definitely is that thing.
Even if I, if you don't put something out for even a couple
of days, it's, it's the idea of feeling not relevant or you
know, that the people who, who like what you do will just move
on very quickly, which probably if they like you is not the
case, you know, and, and sometimes a break or taking a
bit of time away is a good thing, but you never think that
at the time. And God, I just think, well,
with lockdown, that's the first time I've ever not been able to
do stand up for a load of months.
So a voice injury or damage in my throat is something I've
never really thought about before, but could so easily
happen. I mean, if you're on stage for
an hour night doing a tour and you lose your voice, it's, I
imagine it's, you know, with, with the radio show and, and you
know what you're doing, it's kind of a way to express
yourself. It's a way to just just it, it
is who, who you are, you know, a broadcaster.
So did you when that happened at the time, did you know that it
was like pretty serious or was it just like us?
We find them a week or two. No, I've had a problem with it
for a while, probably about three years.
And the surgeon eventually said to me, he said, is there a
particular incident in your life, Gordon, where you've
probably screamed or sung at the top of your voice or been on a
rather loud night out or do you play sport where it involves you
shouting quite a lot? And I thought, how'd I tell this
guy, right, That I've been swearing and shouting at the top
of my voice for the best part of 20 years, Really.
You know, it's like in a Harbour Bar and Portrush at 4:00 in the
morning and a lock in when you're just screaming Sally
Macmanana, whatever it's called, and shouting at people.
Yeah. I've not looked after myself
properly. And it's a serious one for you,
Shane Wright, because I know a lot of comedians now who have
started to take it quite seriously and, like, warm their
voices up. Like John Robbins used to work
with me on Radio X. He does vocal warm up exercises
because he's got quite a gravelly voice as well.
We I'm telling you, man, look after it because it's, I mean,
it's your, your industry, it's your job, it's your livelihood.
You know, if you were a professional footballer, you
wouldn't just walk on the pitch that maybe you would actually
just walk in the pitch without warming up.
But you smoking a fag, having a bacon roll.
But you need to look after yourself, Shane, I'm telling
you, said the wise old man. Speaking of the Harbour Bar in
Port Rush, have you spent time in Northern Ireland before?
Have you spent much time over here?
Jane, this is This is why I've come on this podcast, just to
get very excited about how much I love Northern ire.
So what's, sorry, let's let's go back a bit to sort of set that
up. So I have known your name for
years and years because of the I've got to admit, you know,
genuine massive fan of the bizarre column in the sun back
in the day. You know, I would have genuinely
not a wind up. I genuinely would always have
was what was the section in that where it was like, I don't think
it was called Wicked Whispers. Or maybe it was where it was
like, who are we talking about here?
I used to. I used to do little things
called Bizbits. It was 3:00 AM.
He used to do Wicked Whispers. Bizbits.
It's so nice to hear somebody being kind about it because
normally this is a conversation that's like the the precursor of
me having a fight in a pub. No, no, no, I'm a, I'm, I'm a,
I'm a gossip guy. Like I'm big time.
I'm the original gossip guy. I love to read about celebrity
gossip. And whenever I used to go to
college, I would buy the, I would buy the sun in the
morning, mainly for the football, the two things I would
read with football and the showbiz section.
So whenever I did the the episode with Jamie Dornan and
and you and I sort of chatted a bit online, I was like, oh,
that's, that's Gordon from the paper.
So were you coming over to Northern Ireland back in the day
through work or was it just like a social thing?
I mean, it goes back beyond that.
I've got a massive connection over there.
Well, my brother went to university in Dundee and it
seemed like everybody in Dundee between 1994 and, well now is
from Northern Ireland. Yeah, yeah.
I don't know why we, I don't know why we go.
I mean nothing against Dundee but it's just it's a strange
place that everyone just seems to go to uni.
Liverpool Liverpool, Dundee and Newcastle seem to be 3 big
places. And I just fell in love with all
these mad characters from Northern Ireland.
It was brilliant. And it just seemed to be that we
all ended up playing football together.
Like I ended up the Snow Patrol boys, for instance, played
football and around the same sort of time.
And it just felt like everything LED back to Belfast.
And I ended up having this weird understanding of Belfast
geography from meeting people and like, so.
So it's like Le Nevada. Oh yeah.
Bangor. Aha.
Port Rush. Yeah.
Port Stewart. Don't Patrick.
Oh yeah. Of course, the Garvahi Rd.
Holy fuck. And then like I just became
really parley with all these boys through my Big Brother.
They were mental. I remember a guy called Brian,
another fella, Henry. They were wild.
And then I went to university at Napier and just once again fell
in company with some of the wildest men from Northern
Ireland and that led to lots of bad behaviour and serious
trouble. But then late and when I moved
to London in about 2003, I became really palli with a guy
called Steve Martin, who I would love you to meet, actually a
great guy for you to know. And Steve Martin's dad was quite
famous in Belfast and quite famous in Northern Ireland.
His name was Tony Martin, but he passed away a couple of years
ago. But he was a legend in Northern
Ireland. He was a broadcaster.
He was kind of like Terry Wogan or, you know, like an evening
entertainment host. On the radio.
He was a drummer, A musician, quite famous and a real
character and I was lucky enough to meet him several times.
Brilliant guy. And through Steve, who went to
school in Belfast but then had a real connection with Port Rush,
I'd end up coming over all the time and became really matey
with Jimmy. Jimmy Nesbitt and Jimmy is but
as you know is the king of Northern Ireland.
So when we came over it just ended up becoming the second
home and I come over at least twice a year, play golf, boat
rush, go to the harbour bar, get leathered and in a world of
trouble. And then we I used to live with
Martin Compston, the actor and Constant Films Line of Duty in
Belle, of course. Yeah, come over and behave in
Belfast and he is. I mean, I'm amazed he's allowed
back in the behaviour over the years.
Yeah, he's he's a fantastic lad. And I've got to know these
characters. You, you might know them.
Actually, Jamie Dornan's got this driver called Dermie.
And Dermie, you are a great man. And there's old Nesbitts me,
he's a guy called Big Mole who just seems to be a mover and
shaker in Northern Ireland. But I love it.
I just love it. I'd quite happily moved to
Portrush. I think I quite fancy one.
So I I know Jimmy Nez, but like a little like like a little bit.
I he was emceeing a charity, a charity do for one of the
Ireland rugby boys. And I was there to perform like
a character, a comedy character piece at it.
And what was supposed to happen is Jimmy was hosting.
I was supposed to come on. And are you familiar with these
like undercover opera singers that are really big at like
this? OK, so they had an undercover
opera singer he was posing as like the chef at the IT was in
Titanic Belfast. So I was supposed to go on
stage, do my bit as this like snobby middle class character.
And then as I walked off the stage, I was supposed to leave
my pint and then demand that the chef who was like just watching
at the side, I suppose the demand, he went and lifted the
pint and took it off stage for me.
Like, I wouldn't do it myself. Now, I presume that the people
running this had told Jimmy Nez with the event host about it.
This is the first time I'd met him, so he brought me on.
Now, I think it's fair to say Jimmy may have had pints.
All right, I'm just going to. I'm just going to put that out
there. He may have had a shandy.
Now, I finished my set, which, by the way, didn't go great
because I thought everyone, everyone knew Jimmy Dornan was
there. I thought everybody knew this
character turns into a room like 400 people.
It was mainly just Jimmy who did.
And so I walked off having offended a load of people and
then I was supposed to do the thing with a pint.
So I walk off, I see the chef. He's like a middle-aged guy that
looks very nice. And I was like on the
microphone. I was like, chef, I was like,
you take my pint there, I'm not taking it.
No. I thought he was just going to
go no, no, no. And then I'd ask him one more
time and he'd go and take it, start saying Messing Dorma.
What happened was I said to him, you take my pint and he's like
no, no, no, we did a 5 minute bit that he never told me we
were going to do where I had to like basically humiliate him and
be like you are going to take it.
Bear in mind nobody knows my character.
So they just think that I am this the most horrible guy and
I'm like, at some point Jimmy that's going to help me out.
Nobody had told Jimmy. So Jimmy ended up going to get
the pint. This is in front of a silence
room of 400 people. He walked on, get the pint and
as he walked past me he said I'll get your fucking pint.
Then the guy walks on and goes folks, sorry about that.
Then he gives a speech. Then he starts singing.
But. So much time had passed that
nobody knew I was in on it. Everyone's like, oh, this chef's
just a great singer. So I made sure that when he
finished and he walked off, he killed it.
Like they loved it. And Jimmy Nest would just give
me dagger. So I made sure that when the guy
finished, I walked on stage and put my arm around them and was
like, yeah, you know, we what about us as a Jew?
But it was a horrendous moment and yeah, one of the worst
moments in my life, thought Jimmy.
That's what was going to empty me on stage.
But I was horrible when that happens, isn't it?
It's a couple of things. Not, not that's painful, but
something like that happened to me, right?
One of my biggest heroes in life is, is Daley Thompson, right?
So when I was a little boy, I just, I was obsessed with him.
That what I couldn't understand why I wasn't growing like Daley
Thompson. Remember saying that to my mum.
I just idolise one day when you get older.
He's amazing and I was obsessed. 1984 Olympics in my back garden.
And anyway, I eventually got to meet him at this dinner.
It was at the Institute of Directors in London.
There's about 2 1/2 thousand people there.
And they sent me next to Daley Thompson.
I am, I am chewing his ear like boring on the tears about
computer games, about Carl Lewis, all that kind of stuff.
And then there were 4 speakers that night, Alex Stewart,
Stewart Pierce, Howard Webb, the referee.
And then Daley Thompson was last two and a half thousand people
in the room. So Daley goes up to speak like
huge round of applause. It's a black tie dinner now.
Daley refuses to wear a black tie, right?
So he turns up in his tracksuit. So he walks up on stage,
everyone's applauding him, cheering him, the greatest
Olympian Britain's ever produced or whatever.
And he gets the microphone. He said, look, before we go any
further and do anything, any questions are asked.
Who arranged the seating plan at this event?
And this guy in a suit puts his hands up in the corner.
He's like, well, I just like to say you're a prick because you
sat me next to the most boring man I have ever met in my life.
Gordon, Smart new son, can you please stand up and see 2 1/2
nights in my house? He's like that guy.
Avoid them. He's so boring.
Honestly, I just I almost went home because he's such a boring
prick. Anyway, let's crack on FQ and it
sits down, grabs me by a cheek and says everyone knows your
name now son. Got it.
Just crushed. Let me ask you what because I
mean. I guess for for working for the
Sun, for working in the showbiz industry for so many years, you
must have gone to thousands of award ceremonies.
What is the most apart from your incident with Billy Thompson,
what is the most awkward incident you've ever seen on
stage at an award ceremony? I could give you a top ten of
these. It was quite a big staple in my
job. The two that spring to mind
right now. Second and 2nd place, I would
say the night Russell Brand hosted the Enemy Awards and Bob
Geldof had a dig atom. And I think he'd been talking to
Matt Morgan beforehand, like about whether or not they should
unleash the big joke. And because Geldof had a dig
atom, he decided to retaliate. And he said there's an ID, you
know, a man who talks about famine, but it's been dining out
on one song for the last 35 years.
I. Mean that it was almost like you
say, like he must have written up beforehand because it was
like it was too perfect to form. Does a joke, but it was a great
reply which are like an awkward tet because Bob Geldof seems
like one of those guys that you can't really slag him off
because of all that he does for charity and he's up on some sort
of pedestal but it. Called the perfect Jim, what
Jimmy Carr calls the perfect response, the huge laugh and
then oh, afterwards. But my favourite one.
Or save my favourite 1, the most awkward one.
It was when James Corden hosted the glamour awards, the glamour
glamour woman of the year awards.
And Patrick Stewart was there, the actor Patrick Stewart, John
Luc Picard. However, he was called the Star
Trek huge ESPY and massive name. And he was there with his new
young girlfriend. And I think he had a bit too
much wine and he went and he just, he tried to get a laugh
and tried to be funny, but just basically said James Corden's
fat and not funny. And it was like, and James like
he'd been doing really well, but it got some, it really bothered
him. And then it just turned into
this sort of 20 minute argument, always brutal and fair play.
James was like, you know, he, he came out with the upper hand.
But it just, it was one of them. I wanted to go home and cry.
How did you become showbiz editor for the song?
Because when I think of like a showbiz editor, I think of, you
know, an older guy with a blazer like Ross King from Good Morning
Britain. Seems like, I imagine how every
showbiz editor looks. But you just seem like a guy I
would play 5A side with or just like a friend you would
socialise with. So was that a natural?
Did you just like fall into that?
Or was that very deliberate that that is what you did?
It's a funny one. I've got this habit of being in
the wrong place at the right time or the right place at the
wrong time. I don't know whichever way you
want to look at it, but I never, ever thought that I would be the
showbiz editor at The Sun, right?
I was a journalist working in the news.
I worked for AI, worked for DC Thompson in Dundee when I was
18. So I worked for the Courier and
even on Telegraph. Went to university, did
journalism, then couldn't get a job in newspapers for loving our
money. I ended up working for a press
agency after being a football coach, A whiskey taster.
I helped Edinburgh University get men to deliver sperm samples
for research. Obviously wasn't involved in
the, I wasn't actually involved in the physical side of that,
but I had all sorts of like weird jobs and eventually I
ended up taking a job as a journalist for this agency in
Edinburgh. So I worked for all the papers,
you know, from the Daily Sunday Herald.
It was math, it worked for everybody.
It was great experience and MTV Europe came to Edinburgh and I
happened to be working there as a reporter.
Now the lucky part for me was there's a guy I worked with in
Dundee who who was a brilliant character called Derek Brown.
He was working on the bizarre column for Dominic Mohan.
So I managed to meet up with Derek and it was mad because I
think everybody was up that day, like Piers Morgan, Rap Singh,
Andy Coulson, Victoria Newton, Ross King, everybody was in
Edinburgh for this big event and I managed to get them all in at
different parties and stuff. And I think the front page story
that came from it was about Justin Timberlake and Kylie
Minogue getting on. So they were like what are you
doing in there? I come down to London, which was
great because my wife was singing and dancing in the West
End. She was in the musical theatre.
So I couldn't wait for my chance to run to London.
That was it. And then I just worked harder
than everybody else tried to do every shift they could.
Did three weeks on on Bizarre working under Victoria Newton.
Then I did three months of the news the world, which people
would probably be sick all over their their earphones when you
hear that. But you know this, what people
forget is the sun and news the world better, better rivals.
So the minute I got offered a job in the bizarre column full
time, I was 23. I mean, I never thought I was
going to be a showbiz journalist.
I loved music and I was really into sort of, you know,
celebrity culture, you know, in terms of film and music and all
that kind of stuff. So grabbed the job and then by
the time I was 26, I was the editor Bizarre.
And it was just the best laugh ever.
I had 10 years travelling the world, meeting my heroes cause a
mischief, interviewing people are idolised, falling out with
people I didn't particularly like.
But I, you know, I just, Noel Gallagher once said to me, ride
it until the wheels come off. And I certainly fucking did
that. Like I had a right good go at
it. I mean, I often felt like I
didn't fit in. I was just waiting for a guy
with a clipboard to come up and say, yeah, Gordon, you've had
your fun, now piss off home. And that's how I, that's how I
treated it, you know? Do you think that's why you you
did it for so long and it worked so well for you was because you
weren't like everyone else that worked in show?
But you know, you're someone I if, if I was being interviewed,
I would be way more inclined to open, open, open up to you than
somebody who you know, is, is more of a like loving, you know,
someone who's like a little bit more showbiz, you know, as
opposed, as opposed to just a just a completely spot on guy.
Definitely. I mean, I think the way I tried
to do it right when I started on bizarre thought there's another
way to do this. You don't have to be, what's the
word I'm looking for adversarial all the time.
You can get on with people and it works for me, right?
Because, you know, obviously at certain times I'd have to
sharpen my my claws and be pretty brutal.
But a lot of the time I had a good relationship with people.
So they would tell you things. Obviously they wouldn't tell you
the horrific stuff that would sometimes land in your lap, but
I think I had a really good relationship with people across
the piece. I mean, obviously there are folk
who disagree with that spectacularly, but yeah, being
Scottish and you think you'll find the same?
I think Northern Irish people, as soon as I hear that accent, I
just think, oh, brilliant fun and game is a mischief.
And yeah, I think being Scottish really, really helped me as
well. Was there ever a time where you
sort of had to do a story you couldn't get out of it on like
someone who had become a friend was that did that ever happened
where like I don't know if you're uncomfortable giving a
specific example, that's totally understandable.
But did you ever have to do a story that absolutely killed
you? Or you're like I?
Really wish all the time. All the time.
I'm actually thinking about or hoping to make a documentary
about that at some point where I can sort of go back and knock on
the door and say, look, I'm now a father of two and a father.
And I'm really, really sorry about that because, you know,
you gotta forget, I was also growing up and maturing while I
was doing that job and culture was very different.
You know, if you still think about the lag lads, mag culture
and the way people behaved, it was so different.
So when you look back on it now, sometimes I just think, oh God,
what a Dick. And I'd love there are people
I'd love to apologise to. But in answer to your question,
it got to the point where on a daily basis I would find things
out about people who had become friendly with that.
I wish I hadn't. I didn't know.
And then it was actually one of the reasons I had to leave in
the end, because I just couldn't.
I couldn't sleep at night with things that were being written
about people I actually really got on with.
And that wasn't just in show business, it was in politics,
business. Every other walk of life I just
couldn't live. With it, I mean that if it feels
like like no one too much might be a bad thing.
Like we talk about award ceremonies.
You're probably in a room with hundreds of celebrities and you
know something terrible about every single one of them.
Like your brain must be, must be working overtime when you're
chatting to someone in the back of your head, you're like, I
know this thing about you and. And were you?
Yeah. It's the way we work.
Sorry, go me.
Yeah, I was just going to say like do being someone who's like
who's a football fan, who's from Scotland, Did you, I imagine
living in London at the time and in that showbiz world, like was
it very important to get a release of like, yeah, I guess
coming over here maybe to the likes of Port ports, your port
rush or like going going back to Scotland, did you feel like, did
you ever get like too into it as a as a as a world?
Oh, massively. And this is, I mean, listen,
it's quite an upsetting thing because when you leave a job
like that, it's a really good barometer who your proper
friends are. And you know, your Fairweather
friends evaporate the minute you're not helpful to write
about a successful TV series or an amazing career move or if you
get them out of trouble. So when you lose that currency,
certain people in your life disappear.
But it's also a wonderful leveller because you realise who
the good guys are, right, And the good girls are.
But I definitely got wrapped up in it too much.
But you'll be the same as me. You know, you still turn up on a
Tuesday night for a game of fives and your friends tell you
you're a Dick and they don't really give a shit about your
job. And I, I was very fortunate and
all my time in London to have a brilliant set of friends like I
played in this football team, you know, Choppers off Match of
the Day. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Yeah, Mark. The Chapters was in Mark
Chapman. So Chapters was in the team and
we had this, there were three teams that played for this team
called Ibis in the Southern Amateur League in London.
And you know, I by that point was probably on borderline
Alcoholics, so I wasn't able to play at the level I was used to.
So playing amateur football was probably the best thing for me
with my other commitments. But I love being on those lads
and the team seemed to be made-up mainly of people from
Hull, which was quite funny. And those boys, just a lot of
them were coppers as well and they just didn't give a shit.
We used to go along to gigs and all the rest of it.
And you know, I loved it because you know, when you, when you're
hanging around with bands like Kasabian who are from Leicester
or you're at events towards the footballers and you're, you're
surrounded by normal lads, it really, really helps because,
you know, hopefully it wasn't starry or too big for my boots.
And whenever I was too big for my boots and it did happen, Mum,
I'd go home and my missus from Dunferman and she'd just say
you're being a total helmet, get a good pay yourself.
And that that I would that would sort you out, you know?
Did who's who's one person you, you met that that like, you
know, totally burst your bubble, someone you're really excited to
meet and then the reality of it wasn't as as good as you thought
it was going to be. It's funny, I get asked, I get
asked that quite a lot, and I always think I need to spend
more time thinking about a good answer for it because I It's
funny how your brain works. You tend to remember people who
have actually exceeded your expectations and really made a
mark in you and left a wonderful first impression.
No worries. No worries.
Thanks. Thanks.
You're one of those fellows. Yes, actually.
Tell you. Tell you who is.
Jamie Dornan is one of the greats.
What a brilliant human being. I just think he's wonderful.
I felt bit embarrassed. I'd never seen The Fall, and
I've only watched it after knowing him.
And now when we have sex next time, it's going to be so weird.
I always wondered why. Yeah, me and me and Jamie
Dornan, you know, the next time we Make Love.
I always wondered why he painted my nails, but no, the people who
have let me down or behaved appallingly towards me tend to
be hip hop artists. Yeah, I really, I mean, I hope I
can use this kind of violent language, but I was quite
tempted. The glass peed the day one day
because he got out of the car to do this interview and I shook
his hand and he just said before we do anything, I want to tell
you I'm not in the fucking mood. I know this hit not accent.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. You've got to remember, like I'm
trying to suppress all my Scottish instincts at this point
to say we'll get back in the fucking car then and don't waste
my time. And it's like the older I got
that, like I did do that on occasion, you know, when you
just tell people, you know, you're actually, you're being a
total prick. And that happened on a number of
occasions. Like Robbie Williams and I have
exchanged quite a few punches, tariffs words over over a time,
but actually quite like Robbie and he won me over in the end.
But I mean, some mad stories like who?
I mean hip hop stars like you say he did, he was bad.
Who else has been really? I mean, there's a lot of sad
stories as well. Like, I interviewed Whitney
Houston and she just, her nose was dripping on my notepad
because she was so banjoed on narcotics, you know?
And I just felt so upset that this idol of music was in such a
bad way. And like, I was quite close to
Amy Winehouse as well. You know, I really, really
liked, respected and loved Amy but had to write all sorts of
dreadful stuff about her, which I hated.
And I remember sitting in we had this thing called morning
conference in newspapers where you explain your stories of the
day to the editor. And I can think of at least ten
occasions where I said, this is hard to tell everybody, but I
think Amy's going to die at some point because the life she's
leading, she doesn't have the frame to cope with it.
And, you know, I still regret not being able to play more of a
meaningful part in her her life because, you know, I can't
imagine what was written about or helped her in any way.
And, you know, the stuff like that, that, you know, I live
with me for a long, long time. But it used to hurt, you know,
when you're asking people who I I remember Amy before she had a
tattoo write and she was, you know, quite a big role.
She was a journalist at the time.
And then to see, you know, what happened to her, I sat once and
tried to interview her in a hotel in London and she couldn't
speak. So that was quite upsetting in a
different way. But like to try and keep us more
upbeat and happy and fun. She generally speaking hip hop
stars were bell ends. The one of the only bad
experiences I've ever had meeting a celebrity was I was
doing warm up for ABBC show and Spandau Ballet.
We're on as guests and Tony Hadley met Tony Hadley Baxter.
I'm not someone who like if there's like celebrity guests
about the set, I'm not going to go up and bother them.
I'm not going to, you know, even really introduce myself unless
there is a natural time to do that.
But good chatting to Tony Hadley in the makeup room, the nicest
guy of all time. Like, he is good friends with
Tim Vines. So he's chatting to me about
stand up and was like, seemed relatively interested in what I
was doing. And then I walked past Martin
Kemp in the corridor. And when I said that guy gave me
the cold shoulder, not all I did was like a very probably
Northern Irish thing, probably very Scottish thing.
If we pass each other in the corridor, there's no one around.
I'm just going to say hello as we go past.
I didn't want to shake his hand. I didn't want a conversation.
I just was like, how are you? And he, like, gave me like a bit
of a like, why are you talking to me?
Look, and just continue to walk. And since then, I've been
obsessed with bringing down Martin Kemp.
So if you know anything about Martin Kemp, let's get it out
there and let's cancel Martin Kemp.
He's always been lovely to me. I see.
But yeah, it's just maybe it's because it sounded like
sometimes the Belfast accent, it falls in one of two ways.
It's either like, really terrifying or wonderfully
friendly. And I think if you just walk
past the moment about, Gee, who's that guy?
But you know, it's a great thing.
I'm really interested in it. Like, you know, I've had a
couple of horrible first encounters.
Like I met for the first time, I met Liam Gallagher.
It was a John Squire from a Stone Roses exhibition.
He had this art exhibition in London and he, Liam, sort of, he
doesn't walk. Like, I wouldn't even call it a
swagger. It's like a kind of a Weeble.
Yeah, Yeah. Yeah.
Actually the wad that was over and he's like all right.
And I was like hello? And he said you're mates with
Aki and I was like aye, aye. And he went as far as I'm
concerned, you're a cunt in an ice cult.
And I was like, I'm I'm all right with that.
I. Mean that would be my Twitter
bio. If I read I might change it.
You're right. But a nice coat, I mean, yeah.
Nice coat it. Evens itself out.
No, I used to get a quite a lot. It's like you're a cunt from the
sun. I mean, in Scotland a cunt from
the sun and in London it was a prick from the sun.
Northwest, you're like that fuck whip from the sun.
Are they that? Yeah, anyway, you get the
feeling. Yeah, the picture.
Did you ever get into like any personal hairy moments where
somebody, somebody would sort of take take exception to who you
work for? Like, obviously, you know, I'm
sure you've got stuff online or letters, but do you ever get
into like a personal thing when you write like out for a beer
one night or or anytime you felt like?
Yeah, it's a good, really good question actually, Shane,
because it used to happen a lot. And again, I think probably
because where we come from and the way we were brought up, you
know, I wouldn't just walk away or run away when somebody
confronted me because it always like, try and get to the bottom
of it or try and disprove what they thought of you.
Because I think generally speaking, people expect me
because I work from a tabloid newspaper to have horns and be
the devil. And, you know, sometimes it's
worth spending that time to go look, I totally understand where
you're coming from, but you've got to understand why I work
there and why I do this job. And it used to quite often get
me in real scrapes. So I remember once in a pub in
London. There's a very loose connection
to you in this story, actually. Did you not work with, did you
not work with Stephen Nolan at one point?
That's so when I was talking about the the TV show The wall
for it was Nolan show, but I again forget that you know more
about Northern Ireland than I do.
So I was like, I'm not going to mention Nolan because you won't
know who Nolan is and it's mad to me that you know Nolan.
So yes, it was Nolan live. Great broadcast, I think.
I think he's a very talented man in there.
So so I walked into this pub in London, right?
And it was a leave and do for a me in my and we're having a
drink and I go to the toilet and this Skinhead fella, like
classic South London Hardman Millwall fan covered in tattoos,
grabs me by the the collar and he's like, you're that fucking
prick from the sun, aren't you? And I was like, yeah, I mean,
that's that jock prick from the sun.
And I'm like, yeah, that's me. And he said, how do you sleep at
night? Well, all the people in this pub
are paying for your junkie family's prescriptions north of
the border. Scotland's being subsidised by
the hard working people of England.
It's about time you got fucked off.
And actually like for five seconds I'm like, wow, like, is
that really what you think? And I don't know where it came
from, but I immediately just fired, stood up tall and just
said, well, you don't mind when we're spilling our blood for you
in Afghanistan, do you pricking out the way?
And I just felt this wallet when they're like he's chimney,
right? I've gone into like I've got
away from him. I've got in the toilet and I'm
like, shit, like I'm out my debt fear, right?
I'm going to get hiding because you know, he probably got the
better of me. I'm younger than him.
He's definitely harder. And I've got into the toilet,
gone into the disabled toilet, locked the door and I've text
another lad outside and who is an ex squaddy from Paisley and I
said I might need a help. I'm in the toilet.
And then the next thing I went outside and anyway, my ex squad,
the Paisley lunatic managed to have a little word in his ear.
But this Nolan connection is I'd forgotten that I was doing an
interview on Five Live about two minutes later.
So I'm like bleeding from the ear and the nose and Nolan rings
me a massively out of breath. I'd love to hear the interview
back because I'm shitting it. So I'm thinking I'm about to get
lynched. I'm on live on five lives having
this bladder over there, Nolan. And I'm just think I don't know
what I said in that interview, but what I really want to say is
I'm going to have to go because I'm about to be arrested.
So genuinely, I thought what you're about to say is some like
Skinhead Millwall Limited, but you up in a pub in London, you
phone Nolan and he came in and just cleaned house.
And that is in my head what happened.
And I'm going to keep, I'm going to keep that genuinely.
I will try and get that interview for you.
I'll try and use the big BBC Radio Wolster connections and
we'll see if we'll see if we can get that.
But yeah, I mean, that's it's the same kind of in a way.
I'm not a violent thing like that.
But with comedy where people think you're a certain way based
on characters you play. And I guess you weren't you
weren't playing a character, obviously.
But when you're a showbiz editor, you have to do things
that aren't really in your nature, like, you know, exposes
on people things that you, you know, you don't want to do.
And with stand up, you have never had anybody be violent
towards me. But I definitely have had to
like diffuse and walk away from things where people just have an
upset. Like, you'd be amazed.
Sometimes people can go from tell us a joke in a bar, you
know, when you're just having a drink in a bar to like being
really threatening, you know, guys.
Yeah, I forget it. Yeah, I totally understand.
And people also think they can say whatever they like to you
without any kind of recourse. And it it happens quite a lot in
the world now where people seem to have this get out clause of
just finishing off by saying I'm just saying.
Yeah, yeah. Actually, no, you're not just
saying you're, you're being incredibly rude.
And I hear it all the time in in company and I'm really conscious
and really aware of it now. It's like if ever you're in a
room and somebody meets an accountant, they go, oh, you
must be boring in a bean counter or my brother's a dentist,
right? My brother's a dentist.
You should hear what people say to him.
You know, he's probably the most gentle, kind, generous, skint
human being I know, and everyone just assumes he's a money
grabbing a evil man and I can't stand that.
Comedy is the same. You know, I've got to know a lot
of comedians over the years, and the people behind the Tears of
the Clown are very, very different.
You know, well, I think that's the thing of you'd be amazed at
how many comedians aren't always on, you know, whenever you meet
them in a bar or, you know, if you and I are having a chat, you
know, I don't need to try and make you laugh every second, you
know, because when you're on stage, that's what you do.
But I think a lot of the time, comedians on, myself included,
we're always like, in a way, keen to like impress came to be
seen as the funniest people in the room.
But you just, you can't keep that up.
And that's what people when they sort of tell us a joke and they
get a little bit of aggressive, they think you're just all we
always on. And obviously that's that's not
the case when you're like just relaxing with friends.
And so whenever you whenever you left the the song, whenever you
sort of got out of like you stopped your did you stop
journalism at that point? Is that when you went straight
into broadcasting? Yeah, it was really tough
actually because I mean, when I left the Sun, I was deputy
editor in London, right? I did about a year back in
London. Before that I was there to tell
the Scottish Sun for about 3 years and I'd been thinking for
a long time that I wasn't coping very well with the job.
But all the fun ended when I left.
Bizarre. And pretty much overnight I went
from having a carry on and being being out all the time doing a
job I loved to being an editor of a paper during a referendum
in Scotland and the mood just changed spectacularly.
And is this straight, this odd transition in journalism where
you go from being a reporter or a writer to being a boss and
suddenly I had 150 staff or whatever it was in Glasgow and
the fun just stopped. I didn't enjoy that as much.
And you know, I kept being told by people further up the
business, there's time for you to put your suit on and grow up,
son. And, you know, one day you'll be
the editor of the paper or you'll be this or that.
And I didn't, I realised to me about a time I didn't actually
want to do that because you ultimately have to make people
redundant. You are responsible for all
those terrible mistakes. Even if you're not to blame, you
are ultimately responsible. And I just found it really
uncomfortable. And it, it was getting loaded
and loaded in my head. The criticism of the, the
journalism in the paper and, you know, allegations of racism and
misogyny. And but I've got to remember as
well, I've been through the Leveson Inquiry, 3 criminal
inquiries. And so it was, you know, a very
fast growing up period and the fun, it just gradually ran out.
But what I've been doing since about 2011 was working on XFM.
So I had a show there for about 2 1/2 years doing a lot of telly
as well. So I was on the extra factor.
I did ACDS with Dave Berry and I was really loved and all of that
stuff. But I had this constant problem
with people just assuming you were a tabloid monster and
everyone was just scared of you, which I found quite odd.
It's like, why are people scared of me?
You know they are not. Eventually I call it take brave
pill. I had to and it took a lot of
time for me to pluck up the courage because also
financially, I don't think people really understand you.
By the time you're a deputy editor, the biggest paper in the
country, you've got certain perks like wonderful expenses, a
great salary, one term incentive bonuses, other bonuses built in.
So it was like walking away from financial security.
I had brilliant healthcare and all that.
To suddenly pack that in to be the evening show host on an
indie music station. It was a bit of a gamble, you
know? But I just worked out the
equation. Like, what price?
And it's something a lot of people should think about.
What price do you put on your happiness?
And I could just see myself like, dying at 50 as an
alcoholic with a broken marriage and weighed up the things that
were important to me, like my mates, my wife, my kids.
Like, you know, I hated walking into a pub and people I really
liked just thinking, oh, you're that Dick working for that evil
rag. And I just couldn't handle it.
I mean, I'm not embarrassed to admit it.
I really, really struggled with that because as much as you like
to say you've got the Piers Morgan rhino's arse skin and,
you know, you can cope with criticism, I found it really
hard. And especially when there's
people you really respect and admire.
I mean, I should think they're probably Dicks for being so
judgmental about me, but it still bothers me now, you know,
I'm still four or five years on trying to sort of tell people
I'm not that guy from the Sun. And please don't judge you based
on your profession. But then at the same time, I
probably upset a lot of people in my time there.
There is a certain part of me that has to serve my penance for
those crimes. I'd say it was very, very like
liberating to go to XFM, especially because XFM was such
a cool station. And I know it became Radio X,
but it was a a station. I was very, very jealous that we
didn't get here. You get it online, But you know,
Ricky Gervais was on was on was on Russell Brand and it it, it
just seemed like a great place to be.
And yeah, I mean, it's was it, I'd say I'd be mad to go from
like, especially when you're OK, when you're, you're a showbiz
editor, you're working every hour of the day.
But whenever you go to them, being just editor of the
Scottish Song, your phone just doesn't stop.
And like you say, you're probably dealing with subject
matter that you never were dealing with before, and that's
got to stay with you. But to me, you don't seem like
best possible way. You don't seem like a
journalist. You know, you don't.
I've met journalists whenever they're I've met journalists
when they're off duty and they're still in journalist
mode. You can tell they still want to
not get something out of you, but but the, their mind works in
a way where they're almost too inquisitive.
If, if that makes sense. And then I'd say it was a it was
a fascinating thing to do. And you know, you're talking
about making a documentary about, you know, going back to
speak to people, but you, there's, there's some sort of
script and the fact that, you know, especially you were so
young in that job and, and you know, like you say, you, you
totally stepped away from it. I want to ask you while it's in
my head, there is a story that I read recently involving 2
Scottish guys. I don't know if you ever had any
involvement with it back in the day, but they pretended to be
American rappers and they were on TV and they got a record
deal. And do you know the?
Story. It rings a bell.
Yeah. There's something in the back of
my mind. Two young Scottish fellows who
were in uni together and loved rap music and they would rap in
their Scottish accents, but they they were not taken seriously
anywhere, but they were very, very good.
And one day, like after a few drinks, they were like, should
we just rap in American accents and pretend that we're American?
They did warm up for, I don't think it was Public Enemy, but
it was somebody massive in like it wouldn't have been the O2 in
London at that point. This was this was like the early
90s, maybe late 90s and they got a record deal.
They recorded either an EP or a full album.
And we're just getting away with it.
They were they would do like press interviews in full
American accents, but they were just two young Scottish guys.
And eventually they got rumbled because I'm nearly sure Sony was
the label they were signed to. Sony's lawyer was like, we know
all about you have done background cheques.
And I remember reading that recently that article and being
like that is very, very, very cool.
But I remember thinking, I'd love to see that as some sort of
screenplay. But but it sounds like you're
you're you know, your time working, working with the sun
and and everything that happened around it.
That that sounds like a screenplay in itself or yeah.
I had a great colleague, A producer called Joe Attiwell at
Radio X and he was an actor and he suggested, you know, I'd been
telling him stories about my time in the paper and he said it
would make an amazed worst day of my because I kept telling him
what he's gonna fall off his stay with horror.
Like I remember 1 when I was at the Scottish paper, I'd wrongly
identified I'm murderer on Page 1.
I think the last, the last e-mail before I left the night
before was I want to hear from every head of department
unequivocally with full confidence that this is
absolutely our man because there's something niggling me
about it. And they all came back saying,
Yep, this is the right guy. This is the right guy. 6 O clock
the next morning, I get woken by a phone call from the person on
page one saying, why have you got a picture of me on page one
of the paper? And it turns out he was a law
student, so and he's seen the paper because his parents, I
think they were news agents. I remember putting the phone
down and saying to my wife, this is this is it, you know, this is
the mistake that's going to cost me my job or my career.
But by that point, I was getting to the point where I was going
to bed and I thinking, what is in the paper tomorrow that I'm
going to end up in court over. And it wasn't just things like
that. You know, I I without going into
detail because I just, it's not worth the trouble, trouble with
gangsters and all sorts of threats.
And man, I gotta remember, right?
You're 32 now, are you? Yeah, right.
So I was 32 years old. Edit in the Scottish paper with
a three-week old baby and a three-year old son commuting an
hour every day from Perth to Glasgow with A and by the way,
it was a colourful group of staff in Glasgow.
People are loved dearly, you know, but they were quite
difficult folks to work with. And you're suddenly this young
lad who's been in London having the time of his life, standing
up on a desk in front of them all saying right, let's let's
get busy. And I think in the first month I
saw the helicopter crash in Glasgow.
It was one of the few witnesses, like you say, the referendum was
happening. So I was getting followed home
by yes and no campaigners. I was getting abuse from a post
day about the stuff that was in the paper.
I was going to the pub and getting attacked because of
things that had happened in the history of the paper by people
who had known since 1983. And in the end there are a
couple of times I said to them, this is like, I'd have like I'd
hit the self destruct button and just get so absolutely leathered
that I realised I I need to do something about this because
it's not going to end well, you know?
Yeah, yeah, I mean, especially Jesus at my age, like I still,
I'm 32, but I still think if if you if I didn't think about it,
I'm like, oh, I'm, I'm in my early 20s.
I don't think of myself as a 32 year old guy.
So that level of, of responsibility and yeah, I mean,
it must be beautiful to in a way have, have all the all, all that
experience, all that life experience, but kind of be away
from that, from that world. Now.
Is there anything you want to do at the minute?
Like is there, is there like a a big project you have always had
in the back of your mind or something like you you want to a
curiosity that you want to check off?
It's a really funny time in my life actually, Sharon, I'm glad
you asked about it because I've obviously had 5-6 months at home
just thinking about life, right? And then I turned 40 in March in
lockdown, I think it was 3 weeks in lockdown.
And you know, the existential crisis just started raging
through me. You know, I was like, what am I
going to do? Because I've just left Radio X,
right? You know, COVID, cutbacks, tough
times, I didn't see it coming, you know, because, you know, I
just thought that I'd sign a new deal and continue there.
But I'm fortunate enough, I've got a lot of other interests in
my life. So, you know, things that aren't
particularly public. Like I do a lot of crisis
management behind the scenes for troubled famous people.
I also do a bit of mentoring for young talent.
So young sportsmen in particular and young musicians who are kind
of becoming very famous and need some tools to equip themselves
how to handle that. And I really, really enjoy doing
it. And the crisis management stuff,
it's quite interesting because you know, you, it's classic
portrait on gamekeeper when somebody's in the depths of
despair and you can just put a comfort and arm around them and
say, look, don't worry about this, we'll get you through it.
And here's how we're going to do it.
And I've been doing that with some very high profile people.
And it's, it's great to see that some of the experiences I've got
over the last 20 years are coming back to help me.
I also have a share in a whiskey called Copper Dog.
And I really enjoy doing that, you know, working, selling
whiskey around the world, which is really exciting.
I mean, we've been hit hard by code again.
Like we sell most of our ski and airports.
So that's been a battle of laughs and during the last six
months. But it's coming back together
now. So that that's going OK.
But what I don't know what I'd love to do really is I'd love to
get, you know, I want, I want to do something meaningful on
radio. You know, I'd love to replace
Ken Bruce when he finally hangs up his microphone.
I think that job is fantastic. Radio to 10:00 in the morning.
A comforting, welcoming Scottish voice.
But Gavin Kimbruce is an absolute legend and brilliant on
the radio. But I mean, other stuff.
I've got really serious grown up ideas, right?
And I don't want to bore you with a really funny podcast, but
I've got, I hope you don't mind this right?
But having a 10 year old son and I said bought her, I'm really,
really worried about the world they're about to enter with
social media and just things like body dysmorphia for young
girls in particular. Like my affectations that my
little girls picked up from Youtubers and pop videos and
stuff, and the pressures that she feels from things she's
seeing on social media. And I don't think we're
equipping young people properly to deal with that.
And it's a bigger picture thing as well.
It's like everybody now is a newspaper, right?
So you make a decision every single day.
And what you publish on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram,
whatever I have to Discord, whatever you use on YouTube.
And I don't think young people are fully equipped to do that
stuff because you're offering an opinion, quite often an extreme
opinion. You realise this is a comedian.
To get a big response you have to be pretty shocking, right?
And if you're not shocking, you just blend in and you're
basically realising what it's like to be a tabloid newspaper.
If you don't have a big headline or a big bit of salacious gossip
or a picture of somebody half naked, you ain't going to sell
in newspapers, right? And people are now making
dreadful mistakes that are life changing mistakes at 161718 that
will affect unemployment for the rest of their lives.
And I just don't think we're doing enough to help them
present themselves digitally. And I talk about this loads with
training, media training and stuff, you know, about the
digital tattoo. You know, it takes me 50 minutes
to look through the life of Shane Todd.
And I know I can find something in your past that could
potentially your son Hitler. Yeah.
You'll find.
This you'll find it and it's it's like it's great when you're
late 20s, early 30s and you're a stand up comedian, but you know
when you've suddenly got an 18 year old who wants to go to
university and you have to enter the corporate world to pay those
bills and somebody sitting in front of you in a panel and
says, Shane, you've made this joke here about sectarianism in
Northern Ireland do. You think that?
Oh yeah, by the way. And it's like.
Those exist. And it's like, you know, I've
been really irresponsible in the past.
So mass social media and things, but it's something I would like
to do a meaningful job to help preserve the mental health of
young people in the future by giving them the tools to make
the right decisions. Online, But you're right,
because I can, I can get away with that.
I can justify that because I'm a comedian, because I do stand up
and I can say, oh, I came from a place of humour.
But you're right. If you know, if my son grows up
and you know he makes a joke, how often do we say it when
somebody goes into a reality TV show, a kid basically, and, and
tweets they sent when they were 14, you know, in 2012 come come
back to haunt them. It does seem extremely unfair
because when we're 14, we're not who we are now.
We're not we we say silly things for effect and, and we don't use
correct terminology. Every single one of us has has
said something or whatever back in the day, either trying to
impress people or just because you just didn't know.
So, So no, that seems extremely worthwhile to me.
And I, I do very much have the feeling now of my son is 6 weeks
old, But what is 15 years time going to look like?
Especially because social media now, I think it's just like a
complete I'm not going to say so because there's so much great
stuff there And and even as a football fan, so I need social
media to to find out what's going on.
The read about debate, but but I despair.
That's so much of it. That's so much of it so.
That's part of the reason that I think I left newspapers is
because when you spend your entire life, it's basically in
an argument, whether it's in the paper with people who disagree
on social media. And it does eventually take its
toll on you. And you know, I remember having
an argument or being quite pissed off when a comedian just
said brazenly to my face, you're an appalling human being because
you work for the sun. And I'd seen him doing stand up
about 3 days before and he was talking about getting into the
sea and wanking over the naked women he could see on the beach.
And I was like, right, you know, that's actually a criminal
offence, right? And if I, if I caught you
wanking in the sea over my 1617 year old daughter or my wife,
I'd get in the sea and drown you, right?
So don't cast aspersions maybe. And also you've got to remember
that I've got a pile of newspaper cuttings for the last
15 years of my career that at some point my children will leaf
through and pass judgement on me.
And that's going to be, I'm not entirely comfortable with it,
right? A lot of it, I'm very proud of
it. A lot I'm not.
People like to, you know, sling mud kind of like that in a way
that anyone do not needs to have not done anything wrong in their
past, needs to not have said anything and it's become a thing
now. I could talk about this for a
long time, but comedians policing the content of other
stand ups and it totally, totally blows my mind.
I, I, somebody made a comment on a bit of material I had done.
I typed that person's name in the YouTube and the first video
I saw that comedian says the word retard.
Now it was an old set, but within the first couple of
sentences of the ACT. So you can't, you know you
can't, if you've done anything wrong before, you just can't
really bring up on what someone's doing now.
We're all massive hypocrites, aren't we?
You know, And I, like, think of myself as a liberal person, an
incredibly liberal person. My politics are always massively
at odds. With the publication I worked
for, but life is a compromise, right?
And how many people in the world can truly say they are
completely ethically aligned with the company they work for?
And like, it's, it's really tricky.
And you know, I think about this all the time, you know, like my
kids growing up, but there's so many different levels to this.
It's about opinions that you offer without really
understanding the subject. And Twitter is appalling for
that. Now you know, you people see
things trend and they think, right, I'm going to have an
opinion on that. And you, if you look at my feed,
I've just become pretty vanilla. I'm quite a beige personally.
I'll occasionally get an argument about football at you,
but I just don't want the minute I see people arguing about land
of hope and glory, I just think Chuck my phone in the sea.
But there's another one I'm interested in talking to you
about, right? Because you, you're definitely
part of the world that exists, right?
And I'm fascinated by this subject.
We did a big bit of research at the paper about the lunchtime
habits of working men, right? And traditionally anybody born
from 1980 and before, we'd have a pint maybe at lunchtime or at
the end of their work, read a newspaper, have you know, they,
they would eat Greg's or whatever.
And then we suddenly found that there's a change in culture
where labs were having protein shakes, taking pictures of their
6 packs and then spending most of their time on Tinder and, and
all the rest of it, Bumble. And it was like this huge
change. But now there's this body
dysmorphia, men, you've got to be 6 pack body fat below 6.2%.
And then I got in the habit of like, I got really into fitness
and training because I had the time to do it.
After newspapers and the amount of abuse I got for posting about
the gym and keeping fit and all the rest of it, it was like
another level of social media bullying.
Yeah, 100% I, I think I do it some.
I'll put the odd published photo of myself up 100% I'll put them
up, but I will sort of just try and beat people to the punch in
that. A couple of months ago during
lockdown, my wife took a photo outside of our house and I was I
genuinely just happened to be in it and and I'm assured of so I
would send it to friends and say, like, what do you think of
our new wall? But I'm clearly like, you know,
working out topless in it. So I think if you almost do that
and undermine yourself and make it look like, listen, I want, I
want some likes on this. I want some positive comments.
I think it's totally fine. Like I've just started working
with the PT online and I was thinking like, do I post my
progress pictures because maybe there's someone else like doing
the whole thing? And and then I was like, I don't
know, as a committee, maybe you can't do that.
But I think as long as you accept you're going to get
abused doing it, you definitely, you definitely can.
And it's like anything like it's the same as a guy putting up a
picture of his new car, you know, because he thinks his car
looks good, you know, and he he wants people to know he's got a
new car. You know, I think if you're
putting in effort, you know, in terms of fitness and working out
and you just want to, you know, you want to show people the
results that Angus totally fine as long as you are OK with what
you're about to receive as a result of it.
It's about being comfortable in your own skin, isn't it?
Because, you know, I always say this in media training.
If Mother Teresa was on Twitter or social media, somebody would
say she had shit shoes, right? So you could be a St and the
world's nicest person and you'll get destroyed for it.
Like I when I live up in Scotland, right, I've got this
beautiful view, like looking across Loch Leaven and
Perthshire across to the but Oak Hills behind me, the looming
hills to one side of me. It's just a lovely place.
And in my head, the view and it's an amazing, the countryside
in Scotland because they see, I'm going to sound like an old
man here, but the seasons are magical and it just makes me
happy, right? So I keep posting these pictures
from my house. And then one year I got a
calendar from a friend of mine, from his wife with a little
sarcastic comments and each month saying our house is bigger
than yours. And here's one where you can see
a little bit of my car. We've got more money than you.
And I really took. I was really, really upset.
And still I'm really upset about it because it wasn't, it wasn't
in any way flaunting wealth. It was me showing a picture of
what was making me happy. Away from the newspapers of
course. The whole body thing so I I have
Crohn's disease so about got diagnosed about five years ago
and I lost I've always been like a little bit being right, but I
lost maybe 2 1/2 stone and I'd be a naturally slim guy.
So I have a horrific picture, which I can, if you want, you
can see it where I did my first workout after coming out of
hospital. And I it's, it's, it's like it
would make me uncomfortable to look at.
So whenever I, you know, work out now or the fact that I'm in
way better shape now, like I'm in good shape now, I have no
problem. Sure, you know, I'm proud of
that, you know, and I remember with me and my wife, who was my
girlfriend at the time, we lived in this really small apartment
and I have always been like played football like yourself.
And after I came out of hospital couple of months, I was like,
I'm going to do a workout here. And I remember so clearly she
was watching Emmerdale and I went down to do a couple of
press ups and I went down for the first one and I just
couldn't get back up. So five years on, I'm like in
really, really good health at the minute.
Thankfully my condition's very mild, but I'm, if I do take a
photo of myself and I'm like, I look good with the shirt off
there. The fact that you will get some
people you know commenting negatively on it.
The fact that I feel way better and myself outweighs those
comments. So like 0 problem because it's a
small price to pay for like feeling feeling really good
again. So you know what, that's a
perfect example. I had no idea about your medical
history, right. And I when I look at pictures of
you and you do stuff like, I think fair play to, you know,
he's a young man looking after himself.
And it's that whole attitude again, we live in a culture now
where people feel it's appropriate to say that should
be shut down or it shouldn't happen.
My actually, just to say fair play to you.
If it's not for me, I'll scroll on to the next thing.
That's entirely up to you. It's like people who used to
slag off the sun for having Page 3.
It's like, well, you're not outside and summers demanding
that they take down the the, you know, the stockings and
suspenders and sex toys in the window, you know, just live and
let live, you know, be your own person.
It's totally cool with me. And like every now and again I
look at mates of mine who are posting massively homoerotic
pictures of themselves, you know, oiled up and sick facts
and all this, that they are your bail ends.
But it's nothing I wouldn't say to them in person, you know?
And it's just mainly out of a place of damn, I've let myself
go. Oh, I mean the, you know, there
is a level to it and like when someone has clearly set up a
picture of it too much and there's a will involved, that's
when you're like, no, I can't take the person you for that.
I definitely can't take the person you for that.
I talked about this on the podcast I did 2 days ago.
There's a song I heard recently, The Staple Singers Respect
Yourself. And there's a line in it about
something. The effect of if you see a man
preaching with the Bible on the street, let him do his thing.
And that really hit home to me because I would have like seen
workout photos of people a couple of years ago and I
wouldn't have commented really on it, but I would have been
quite like, I would have rolled the eyes.
I would have cared way more about what other people were
doing and what they were posting.
And like, when I heard the lyrics of that song, I was like,
yeah, I care way less not about what other people do.
So if I saw someone on the street preaching with the Bible,
I would have thought about it for hours.
You know, why is that person doing that?
I would have looked on, you know, like really
voyeuristically. And now I'm like, I don't know,
voyeuristically is a word. But but now I'm like, the the
less you care about what other people are doing and and try and
work out why other people are doing what they're doing, the
more you could just worry about what you're doing and and your
own thing. I think it's, you've got a
wonderful perspective on it without even realising it
because you come from Northern Ireland, right?
I one of my favourite nights out in the world, as I've said, is
in Belfast. And I remember I'm first coming
across to see concerts there because it would often be the
first night of a tour for a big artist.
And it was quite intimidating coming to Belfast, right,
Staying in the Europa, the most bombed hotel and you know, and
all that stuff you hear and also seeing grey Land Rovers
trundling around town all the time.
And you know, you're living, there's this great thing, you
know, if you turn up, dress for war or expect a fight and you're
just turning up and it looks like everyone's.
But then you meet people from Belfast and think, oh God,
wonderful, wonderful people and having to grow up with conflict,
right? You develop a certain
understanding of how to deal with the candour of your
language and, and things like that.
So you know you've got great experience with even realising
it. And it's something that I think
that the world's sadly lacking at the moment.
You've got to be conscious of the words you use.
And I certainly am from my time in newspapers.
And there's a great documentary you should walk watch called The
Fog of War. And it's all about the Cuban
Missile Crisis and how the 11 wrong word could have ended the
world right. And we've suddenly got a
president in America who says the most inflammatory stuff.
And it's like you've got to learn from history in those
respects. And it feels like the same for
me in a really in a smaller sense on social media.
You've got to be careful about the candour of your language and
how you say it and how you present it.
And like, we all make mistakes. I still make mistakes now.
But I, you know, yesterday commented on one of Ian
Sterling's pictures on, on Instagram because basically Ian
Sterling gets every job I want. He's a Hibs fan, 10 years
younger than me, going out with Laura Whitmore.
I was just like, I just posted that there's this Gore Vidal
quotes. Like you know, every time your
friend succeed a little part of he dies.
And I never heard, I don't think he exists.
Go now. He's just he's just in your
head. Ian Sterling.
I've never no I've heard of. And it's funny, isn't it?
It's like I look back at what I posted 2 days ago and read it
and thought, oh God, that sounds like I'm the bitterest twat ever
and it was meant and sometimes things don't come across
properly. But you're absolutely right.
You have to. Yeah, just be conscious of that.
I would love to do like an in studio podcast with you next
time you're ruin this part of the world.
And I think we should definitely have a pint and I think we
should definitely figure out ways so we can bring down Martin
Kemp, because there there are ways like you have the contacts
and I have the time and the and the hatred.
So. So yeah, we need to just bring
him down. I think here's what we do.
I think we take our Gary first of all, because Martin is
nothing without Gary. Gary wrote the songs.
Martin has the quiff, all right, and he knows it.
So you've. Got an opportunity, Roman
Kempshire way in there, isn't it?
You know the host of the Capital Breakfast Show, You know.
I mean, Speaking of like, you know, Roman Kemp is a is, is a
very popular young guy. And Speaking of very popular
young guys, that's the last thing I want to chat to you
about is I saw on Twitter that I was talking about, but what
other people are doing and not really caring about what other
people are doing. The only thing that I am jealous
of in this world really is the fact that Harry Styles follows
you on Twitter. And I got to be honest, like, I
love, I love my son. I love, I love my wife, but what
I love equally to those things is Harry Styles.
I mean, the guy is an artist. I genuinely own hard copies of
both of his albums, which I would never buy CDs anymore.
But I feel like, you know, if Harry gets like even £1.50, even
if Harry gets 150 from that, he can buy himself some sweets or
so, you know, whatever he wants or flares.
So I got to ask, have you met Harry Styles?
What interaction have you had with Harry Styles?
And more importantly, well, can he come to Northern Ireland with
you? And what does he smell like?
Sorry I just I get a little bit uncomfortable and bit red from
the shadow. I'm going to go over this top
here and tell you information you weren't expecting that might
actually blow your mind. So when I was working, I did
quite, I did two or three series of Extra Factor back in the day.
It's like the Alan Hanson pundit that I just sit at the end going
disgraceful, you know, and diabolical.
It was with Holly Willoughby and I loved it.
I loved my job doing that. It was great fun and I was lucky
enough to get to know the One Direction boys when they came
through and Simon Cowell actually paid me to do some
media training with them back in the day.
So I met them before they were massive and they they were
again, really lovely kids. And I still speak to Louis quite
a lot. Obviously now again from the the
Irish Connection. He, he's just a lovely, lovely
boy. But it's mad to see them grow up
and become multi, multi millionaires when you first met
them. They have a penny in a pocket
and they're no considerably wealthier than me.
But Harry is just such a lovely human being.
And in the context of what we were saying about apologising,
there's one story we were getting on grey and we played
golf together and all that stuff.
Me and Harry and I wrote a front page story about him sharing a
jacuzzi with a girl on holiday and he told me it was bollocks
and we still ran it because we had a picture of him in the
jacuzzi. It was probably totally
innocuous. And I really, I'd like to
apologise unreservedly to Harry for that because it was an error
of judgement on my part and it probably tarnished our
friendship. But we've seen each other since,
and the information I'm about to tell you now, it's probably
slightly creepy and unusual to talk about.
But if it's Harry. Styles if it's that he likes my
videos, I mean, listen, it's great to know that information,
but I think it might not be blow my.
Mind Shane, he is he is blessed he has he has got he's been very
fortunate in the when things were being handed out.
Now, young Harry, when I was working on X Factor, it was Matt
Cardle who won it, I think that year.
And Matt Cardle said to me one day I helped write his bio for
one of his albums and he said, tell you what, Harry Styles has
got a massive cock. And I was like, all right, all
right, OK, thanks for telling me that.
And he was getting his hair cut one day on X Factor and he just
felt this thump in the back of his head and he turned around
and Harry had hit him with it. And I remember him telling me
that story, thinking that's slightly unusual.
And Matt Karl said to Harry, he said, you know, you are gifted
you, you've been very fortunate there, young man.
And Harry had no idea because he was just such a young man.
Anyway, years later, a couple of years later, maybe usually, I
was playing golf with him and there was a communal shower
situation at the end. Now, Shane is a man who played
football. You know, we have showered with
a lot of other men in our lives. That's true.
So I thought I'm going to check out and the rumours.
The rumours are Truish in he is a very, very well enhanced young
man. So I have, I had, sorry, I can't
really speak. I had asthma up until I was
about 21. So I haven't had asthma symptoms
in about 11 years. But someone get me inhale an
inhaler #1 number two, let me just say, if I was getting a
haircut and Harry Styles hit me in the back of the neck with his
penis, I would turn around in record time.
It wouldn't have touched the back of my neck because I just
found out in that chair. That's all I'm saying.
Yeah, that's that's. I'm really glad I know that.
And it's only fuelled my quest to meet Harry Styles even more.
He's a brilliant boy and you know, if anybody deserves to be
blessed like that, it is Harry and I'm sure he has put good
use, sensible and we should point out for the younger
listeners, you know, always to be responsible.
And I think he just pays it. He's a great kid.
You know, this is funny. Like, you know, I thought you
might have asked the question. But like, normally I get
pestered, like, oh, you went away on holiday with Jamie
Dornan and what's he like? And it's just soul destroying to
be around a man who looks vaguely like you, but an
enhanced, wonderful, perfect version of you.
Oh, I'm totally aware that like, as much as I'm a little bit of a
vain guy, I'm totally aware that if Jamie and I ever worked
together, it would only be I would be his stand in from a
distance on a project. Like 100% I could be a stand in
in the fall if they were doing like, I don't know, a
mountaintop scene and they were filmed from ground level.
Yeah, I often say that I'd say I'm the drinking woman's Jamie
Dornan. That's a joke stolen from Jimmy
Nesbitt, who opens his after dinner by saying he's the
drinking woman's George Clooney. You know, I as much as I like
that line, I would still probably go with Compton.
Compton, a grey coat or or whatever the, the Liam Gallagher
line. I think that will be the Twitter
bio. Gordon, I appreciate you taking
the time to do this. It's great to chat to you.
I hope the next time we are we're sitting down like this,
It's face to face and I can ask you more questions about Harry
Styles. But yeah, you're you're an
absolute gentleman. Thanks so much for for taking
the time. Let's play 5 aside.
I mean, the world is our oyster. Really, Shane.
Shane What? You you.
I've never really had a chance to talk to you about two things
that matter a lot to me. Michael O'Neill, the greatest
Northern Irish Hips player and Northern Ireland manager there
has been. Doing a great job with Stoke.
I just generally how the real truth of my career and my life
is that all I've ever really wanted to do is play football.
And the the career was really just an opportunity to to play
at Rod Stewart's football pitch, maybe one day be selected to
play. And do you remember the match?
That was my dream. And then UNICEF charity match.
I just want to play football with people.
That's all I want to do. So when I come in Northern
Ireland, I want to go to the Spanish bar.
I want to drink Guinness with you.
I want to record another podcast.
I'd like to go out on the tear with Martin Compston and Jimmy
Nez. But, and I would just like
everybody I see to say Fauci and Parshar because they must say
nothing. We can, we can definitely,
definitely arrange that. And also I want to play in
Soccer Aid, the UNICEF match as well.
And I think what you and I should do is find a rival
charity like Oxfam and set up a new game and ultimately try and
put UNICEF out of business. I think that's what we that's
what we should do. Yeah, fuck those kids.
Oxfam, Oxfam soccer annual game. I mean, we'll work in a better
title than that, but I think we should have the first, the first
annual one in Belfast when you're.
Yeah. Definitely, we do it in Belfast
and then we'll have a game against the UNICEF folk and
we'll all be like awful horrible like revolt and aggressive guy
chinning people 2 foot. Tackles.
Yeah, I would like that. Gordon, thank you so much.
Chat to you soon. Appreciate it.