London!
London. London. There's only one London in the world except for all the other ones,
which is really annoying. Couldn't there just be one? Thank you very much.
But we were called Londinium by the Romans.
And we said, "No, we're not gonna do that.
"We're gonna change some of the vowels at the end and then just put them...
"Because we want the 'ondon' sound." And I think that's what we're most attached to.
When I think of London, I think of the "ondon," the same o-n-o-n bit at the end.
And we have no songs. There's no songs. Well, there's one song for London.
But we should have a song that... 'Cause there's American songs.
New York... New York... Chicago... And Chicago... San Francisco...
You know.
But we should have one that reflects, I think, London vibrancy
and London fuck-offness.
London, London Why don't you all fuck off?
But come and spend your money Come around and spend your money
Have a good time then fuck off Then come back on Tuesday
At half past three 'Cause we need some cash just then
Then fuck off, come back, fuck off, Come back, fuck off, come back
I think that's...
That is the CD that's on sale in my trousers.
It's a standard beginning of any show, that,
all the way up Shaftesbury Avenue, except for every other theatre.
Tonight... Tonight I thought I'd talk about everything that's ever happened
in the world.
And the critics... I said this. Critics said, "No, you're not."
"Of course I'm not." And they said, "All right."
And I said, "Why the fuck did you say, 'No'?"
And they went, "'Cause we're critics."
And then we all met in a dark alleyway and we slapped each other.
But... No. 'Cause you people, you people here tonight,
you are the thinking people. You have to be. If you're going into theatres,
if you're going into these kind of things... Bill, Bill Bailey, most of the theatres.
The musicals are slightly different. It's not that they're not thinking, but they're more,
"Yeah. There's chickens on the... Throw them a rope, bring them a banjo
"They'll live forever as chickens with banjos and ropes"
You know. And people go, "Yeah, I love that one, whatever they're talking about."
And they all get married and have sex in trees.
And they're... There's more of a... A visceral ride, emotional ride, something.
But this... This, you have to be thinkers. You have to be thinkers out of the box
or at least lid thinkers to come here. I think you have to be lid thinkers.
You could have been dragged and you might be an in-the-box thinker going,
"Oh, my God, what's he talking about? What's all this?"
But, yes, out-of-the-box thinkers who make up stuff like,
"Look, we could put spoons and they could run space."
And people say, "What is that sentence you said there?"
"Okay, the sentence didn't make sense."
"We could put spoons... We could have spoons and they could run,
"I don't know, out of the box."
And there's lid thinkers saying, "Well, we can see Jeff. He's out of the box.
"And it's an interesting idea.
"Maybe we'll join him, maybe we'll stay here."
Then there's in-the-box thinkers going, "I've got a ladder.
"Could I see the out-of-the-box thinkers?"
Anyway. So, tonight, tonight we'll talk with the use of Wikipedia,
which has taught me so many things that I didn't know and neither did you.
Wikipedia has pages on everything. There's almost nothing...
Well, there was one thing I looked up and I couldn't find,
but I can't remember what it is, so it probably doesn't matter.
Everything is in Wikipedia. Run by Mr and Mrs Wikipedia,
who live in a toilet somewhere. They have no money, you know.
I have... This is an image I have with... They do everything with torches,
old-fashioned torches,
which are only used in treasure films now.
"Treasure's down here, sir."
"You need one of these."
"Oh, yeah." There's always about 12 of them.
"One for you. For the kids. For your wife.
"Who is that? It's Patrick. Do you want one?
"That's a Zoom ice lolly."
The Zoom ice lolly, the closest we in the United Kingdom
have got to the Moon.
I remember licking the Zoom ice lollies, all three colours, thinking,
"We're almost there, boys. We're almost at the Moon."
But, no, we were almost at the ice lolly stage of the Moon landing.
And we would finish the... And they're still... Are they still on sale?
Can you still get the Zoom? Ah!
You see? It was still... It's still wishful thinkment. Wishful...
Wishful thinkment. Wish fulfilment. Wishful thinking.
Wishful thinking and wish fulfilment is wishful thinkment,
if combined.
It was good, wasn't it? The '70s.
From an ice lolly perspective.
Yes, yes, so the Wikipedia people. And it's stuff on everything.
And you used to have arguments. How do you make...
How do you make spoons, Jim, Jack, Kenny, Rogers? Two people.
How do you make them? And if no one knew, you'd go, "Ah, fuck it."
And you wouldn't go, "I'll join a library.
"I'll join a library and I'll get a library card after six months.
"And then I'll look up spoons." No, you wouldn't.
You'd just... You'd just give up then.
But now we've got Wikipedia, we look up spoons.
And you'd probably get bored within three lines, if you notice.
It goes, "Spoons were made from..."
Within three lines, you're going, "Helicopters, helicopters...
"They took over the world... Chickens... Chickens drive helicopters.
"Alligators..." You know. And you can just keep going
until you get to one and you click on it and it says,
"There is no page for this person."
And you think, "Why did you put them in blue?"
Don't put them in blue and have no page. Just don't put them in blue.
We have been trained, like Pavlov and his dogs.
Pavlov would train his dogs. Yes, still applause for Mr Pavlov.
What a scientist.
What a scientist. What a guy
Make a pavlova with only paws
"That's a bit of crap." "We've got no thumbs."
Cake mix when I was a kid was a brilliant thing.
You'd make a cake for your mum and... The cake, with a big, wooden spoon.
And then you put that thing all in the bowl and they said you could lick the spoon.
And you went, "Oh, my God. This was fantastic.
"Wow, what are we doing with that?
"This is just... This is good. This is ready."
And then they'd take that, they'd put it in an oven and it would come out less good.
It was... Wasn't it?
It's not just me. It was genius before it went in and it came out, you know,
fine, but you have to put more stuff on it to make it back to this stuff.
Just don't put it in.
And then when I was a student, I was sitting there...
Well, it was before... It was after I was a student. I was unemployed for an entire year
and I lived in lslington and I watched telly. For a year, literally. Really. Seriously.
And I got encyclopaedic on the Australian daytime soap operas.
And I was watching The Sullivans, which would come on about a family
where, "We're going to go to war soon." And that's all I remember.
And they got on well, lots of fighting.
And I made... I thought, "I'll make some of this."
'Cause it just seemed really cheap. So... I was estimating margarine, sugar.
And then I just made the whole bowl and sat there watching The Sullivans, eating.
And I died. I actually...
They had to pump me, you know.
Cake was coming out of my ears. It makes a cake. Once it's in there,
the juices make a cake.
And you're going, "Can you... Can you get it... There's cake coming out of my ears."
So, that's how I remember it.
I phoned the police using the old phone,
which used to take for hours.
Why do they put 999 right at the end of the dial? Our emergency services, 999.
"He's dying." "I'm phoning."
"His leg has come off." "I'm doing it. I can't remember how many I've done now."
Why not 111? What bright spark didn't go to 111?
"Come, come now. Okay. Cool." That's it.
So, Wikipedia. Yes. On the very sexy computers.
With, like, the Macintosh computer. I have an Apple Macintosh computer,
very sort of touchy, sexy, feely. And you open it up and...
In the old days, porn would take forever to download. Do you remember that?
Friends tell me. Friends who can spell "porn."
Well, it was... That picture would come up.
And you go, "This is cat porn. This is a picture of a cat."
The picture's a picture of a cat.
But nowadays you're just tip-tapping away and a little box comes up.
"Would you like a software update?" And you go, "Yeah.
"Yeah, I'd like one of those." It's like a latte thing. "Yeah, why not?"
And then time becomes a different thing. Time becomes weird as it downloads.
Five minutes to download. Four minutes to download. Three minutes to download.
Nine minutes to download. Two minutes to download. Seven hours to download.
Six seconds to download. A light-year to download.
And then it starts asking questions like,
"Will you sign a new agreement with iTunes?"
And I've signed many agreements with iTunes.
I don't know what they want from me anymore.
Surely, they know I agree with them.
I'm just... I'm there, you know? Why do they keep checking
like I'm gonna go away? "No, I no longer agree with you."
We all agree. And they've made us liars. You can't say to children, "Don't lie."
"Well, you said you've read the terms and conditions, didn't you?"
No one has read the terms and conditions, no one in the world.
No one. Even the lawyers who wrote it wrote it like this.
It could say anything in there.
"We will take your buttocks and sell them to the Chinese." "Yes."
"Set fire to your hedges." "Why not?"
"Put your knee in a sling." "Yeah, gimme the..."
'Cause you're in "go" fever at that point. "Come on, give me the update."
'Cause it could be that one update, that one update that will make your life complete.
You know, like the Willy Wonka golden chocolate thingy with the...
Update, "Yes." And then sex with everyone and free chickens for life.
Whether they want to come or not.
But then it downloads and you have to do a reboot thing,
which is, basically, getting ready to go to the seaside with your bucket and spade,
the engine on, and your dad says, "Come on, everyone out of the car."
"What? Where we going? Where we going? Where we going?"
"Everyone back in the car." "Back in the car? We just got out."
"What the fuck was that?"
So, yes, and then you update the whole thing and nothing has changed,
which is a bit weird and annoying.
If you have a PC computer, I think it's a similar thing. You press the on button
and then there's a crank. You have to crank it.
And then they get contact and they spin the propeller and you get in.
"Come on, the PC's going." And then you put on a 78 record.
Move the horn around.
Caruso sings the update.
"Your PC is updated"
I've worked out that opera is just being... If you... If you...
You either learn opera or you can just get a microphone and go...
I'm going out down here I don't know what I'm talking about
It's rich people watching large people being shaken by small people.
And also, the words should not be clear.
'Cause I'm going to go to the toilet
That's not opera. Opera is...
I'm going to go to the toilet
And I never had a bath in there
Give him his marching papers
Send him to the chemist for tea tree oil
If you got that.
And the women sing crazy. They're so high.
It's like cats outside your window.
"Ow! I'm not a cat. Fucking hell."
"Tea tee oil!"
I'm going to give you tea tree all I'm the chemist
Bloody tiring this way.
But there are some songs which are faster.
Figaro, Figaro Figaro, Figaro, Figaro, Figaro
What the fuck did he do?
Did he eat something? What, has he got a bad leg? I know his first name. Continue.
Figaro, Figaro, Figaro Stevens
Went to the pub, went to the pub Figaro Stevens went to the pub
Went to the pub and read a French newspaper
So, I've learnt that the world is 4,500 million years old.
If you're very religious, then it's not 4,500 million years old. It's 6,000 years old.
One of these is not correct. Using simple logic here.
Now the science boys, they got anoraks, they got glasses, they got Bunsen burners
and petri dishes. I've gotta go with them
because they can bend glass, if they heat it up, you know.
And sodium chloride and potassium permanganate
makes potassium pomongadonkey.
What was the one that was...
Was that one. And all that stuff that we did.
And then, if you're religious, the religious boys, they've got a book.
And...
Some...some...some really interesting stuff in there, good stories in the book.
I mean, I think a lot of the people in there are true.
I think it's oral history. It's been... Stuff in there's true and there's slavery in there.
Hmm.
Maybe crime against humanity there. In a good, moral book.
Maybe it shouldn't be in. Maybe the editor should have put a line through
"how to sell your daughter."
Don't you think one of the popes would have thought, "We could... Could we?
"You know, we're dumping a lot of these books. Couldn't we just cross out
"the slavery bit and pretend it never happened?"
They left it in, till now. It's still there.
It makes me think there isn't a God. I... 'Cause I used to be an agnostic
and now I'm an atheist.
I'm all for spirituality and I think there's a lot of religious people
who've got a certain something. And I believe in us.
I don't believe in God. I believe in us, human beings.
But if God was there... Thank you, one person.
If God was there, I think the first line of the Bible should be,
"It's round.
"Looks flat, but it's round. Yeah, it spins.
"It's like a big football, but... Oh, it's very complicated.
"Imagine you're an ant on a football and you're spinning, but you can't feel it."
Shit, shit, shit.
"Sorry about the slavery. Couldn't get the staff.
"They seemed to like it." Shit. All right, forget this bit.
Right. "In the beginning was the Word."
Don't you think... If there was a God, don't you think
he would have flicked Hitler's head off?
Don't you think? You know.
"Oh, I'm not allowed to do anything." "Well, fuck off then."
If you're not allowed to do anything then what's the use?
Just piss off, and stop asking us to mumble things on Sundays.
"Please, could you possibly mumble positive things towards me on a Sunday
"in the coldest buildings you can find?
"Please, get some of your senior citizens to wear cakes on their heads.
"And to mumble ridiculously positive things about me."
No. He should have just flicked Hitler's head off. Hitler would have been going,
"I will kill them. I will tank them. I will tear them apart.
"I will bomb them. I will kill them." That's a hint,
you know, for a bit of intervention, isn't it?
And then he'd just give him a...
And the Nazis would be going...
"What other leader can do that?
"Shit. That's not supposed to happen, is it?
"Okay. Let's just go.
"Let's just go." And somebody... It might have happened while someone,
some other Nazi, was in the toilet coming out, "What happened,
"what happened? I heard. I heard a big shout.
"Oh, look!
"How does he do that? Wow, he really is the leader.
"Oh!
"Do you want to come back to my place? We'll have coffee."
Could have been the end, but, no, he didn't do it.
So, yes, 4,500 million years ago I do believe our Earth started
with a "place your bets" type of spinning thing.
And then we turn up, human beans, five million years ago.
Why the big pause, as the man in the pub said to the bear?
Or why the long pause, as the man in the pub said to the bear?
The bear said, "I got it stuck in a lift door."
I'm not telling jokes. I'm just fucking around with the idea.
It's the pause I'm interested in.
'Cause it is a big one. Have you noticed?
4,500 million years minus five million years
is 4,495 million years of nothing.
Well, there was stuff. There was...
I thought dinosaurs ruled the world all that period, but no.
They were around for 200 million years. So, we've been five, they've been 200.
And they weren't even ruling because if they were ruling,
on the Steven Spielberg movies, we'd see the dinosaurs were going...
"You can go away.
"You can stay. And you, I like you. And you, I can smell.
"You smell of sandwiches.
"You can come, 'cause I... Rumpy-pumpy.
"And let's eat him."
That would be dinosaurs ruling the Earth,
but I noticed from the films that they seem to just get up in the morning and go...
With a look of... Not bright as a button, you know.
A few sandwiches short of a picnic.
And they just go around eating and pooing each other all day,
for 200 million years!
Come on, that's not a god making that. If God did that, his children would be crazy.
And I think if he did exist, he had many children. I think Jesus proves this.
Jesus must be the seventh son of God.
A-sus, B-sus, C-sus, D-sus, E-sus, F-sus, G-sus.
That's just logic. That's just mathematical.
And Tease-sus would always be fucking about.
Pizz-sus does delivery.
Caes-sus started the Roman Empire. Cae-sus.
F-sus. City in Turkey.
Bee-sus was covered in something.
Some people applauding there, other people going, "What?"
"Bee-sus was covered in bees?"
But, yeah. Dinosaurs, dinosaurs, just wandering around.
No dinosaur poetry. Not clever. They weren't going,
"I wandered lonely as a cloud over hill and vale
"And I saw a small... And ate him.
"And then I ate... And then I pooed him out. And that was nice.
"What a day."
They didn't go to church. No dinosaur churches.
Very few dinosaur vicars going, "Welcome..."
"Thank you very much.
"Hello. Hey.
"Excuse me."
"Welcome to today's service. We will now sing Hymn 409,
"All Things Bright and Beautiful. "
All things bright and beautiful
All creatures great and small
All things wise and wonderful
They don't live on the planet at the moment
That scene did not happen.
Yeah, so not clever.
I think most of the dinosaurs were not clever from what I can tell.
The raptors do seem quite clever.
Smaller, about our size. They seem to be able to break into rooms.
Work locks, do computer stuff,
download raptor porn.
And then run away and not pay.
They could almost pass for us.
You put a little porkpie hat on a raptor, and it almost looks like a human being.
"Is this your car, sir?" "No."
"Do you realise how fast you were going?"
"l was very busy."
"You were going a million miles an hour." "Oh, really? Is that over the...over the thing?"
"Yes. The limit is 30 miles an hour."
"Oh? That's...awful"
"l was very busy."
"Well, can you show me your documents?"
"Good afternoon."
"I can't..."
"It's a raptor! Get me a dustbin lid!
"It's a fucking raptor! Run! Run! No, stay, chase him, something."
The raptors.
And then we turn up. The human beings of this world, we turn up 5 million years ago.
And that, I think, is the point where we started to walk erect.
And I think it must have been a gradual period.
I don't think we could have just gone...
"Oh, this is better.
"I don't know why we didn't do this a long time ago.
"Steve. Jeffrey. Come on, try this.
"I can see clearly now. The rain has gone.
"I can see all lobsters in my way."
It really gets interesting around too! time.
Tool time is...the Stone Age. That's when it kicks off. Stone Age.
Before the Stone Age, no stones, no tools. Hunting was bizarre.
"Come on, there's a bison! Come on, lads!
"Will you die, sir?
"Die, I tell you! You're in our territory! I peed and pooed all round here.
"l marked my territory quite clearly."
"Will you die, sir? Could you possibly? You could feed a family for nine years."
"Don't you look at me with those big eyes. Those big cow eyes."
"This could take hours!"
"Buggering hell! Come on, where are you? How can you be late? It's the Stone Age!
"There's nothing to be late in the Stone Age for. Bastards."
"Oh. That is much better.
"Did you see that? Did you see that?"
The others come running up.
"I picked up a stone. I hit the bison. He's just... He's gone. He's dead."
"This is brilliant, Jeff.
"This could be the beginning of an age."
"Well, that's what I was thinking.
"Provisionally, I've entitled it,
"'The Age of Big Things Falling Over 'Cause They're Hit by Small Things
"of a Much Denser Material.'"
"Just 'Stone Age.'" "Stone Age! Yes.
"You were always better than me at that, weren't you?
"Weren't you, Siegfried?"
We're not sure of the names.
So the Stone Age began. There were hitting tools, there were cutting tools.
You could cut the skin off an animal that no longer needed it.
"Are you sure?" "Yeah, no problem."
"That's very good of you."
"Thank you so much.
"Hang on. Stuff.
"I'm king. I'm king here now.
"I'm king... I'm king of this area.
"I wear the cloak... The cloak... The cloak... Shut up!"
"I think you're supposed to hang it up until it dries. Otherwise, flies."
"Shut up, Twiggy. I'm king of the flies." "You know, this is almost a book."
"If your name wasn't Twiggy, but Leonard."
Language was developed 100,000 years ago. Before that, no language.
Before that also, no religion. You can't have religion by grunting it.
It just... You can't get moral ideas out by going...
"Ha-ha, I don't know what you're..."
The Ten Commandments in grunt.
One...
Two...
No. Three... The rabbit.
Four. You get a bag, and you put it... And then...
And then you take it and put it in the toilet. 'Cause it's... No...
Five. You got a thing. I don't know... My mother...
Okay. Forget five.
Six... Never eat shit.
"l have no idea what you're talking about."
We're pretty sure that was the first identifiable line of language.
"l have no idea what you're talking about."
One thing was huge before language and that was Scrabble.
'Cause Scrabble, after language, it became about words.
Before language, it was just, "Put the letters down."
There were no rules. Everyone was a winner.
K, T... FUNGTABL-SKLINGDUNG.
"Seventy-six."
ASTINGBOXISCRANKEZANGGA.
"That's105. It's a triple word."
"Dang."
Scrabble was invented by Nazis to piss off kids with dyslexia.
This is true. They proved this one.
The word "dyslexia" was invented by Nazis to piss off kids with dyslexia.
What's the point of coming up with a word like "dyslexia" to explain
a word-blindness spelling problem.
"They have a problem with the words. It is a difficult thing.
"We've called this problem...
"Car 22, pickup..."
"It has seventeen silent letters and the face of a rat in it."
Just call it "bonk." They suffer from bonk.
They have a word-blindness. We call it bonk. "Excuse me, miss, I've got bonk."
"All right. All right, just chew something at the corner of the class." "All right."
I would have preferred that to sitting there and spelling "colour" with a "K."
I did fantastic l-Spy. It was brilliant for l-Spy.
l-Spy with an "S" for "ceiling." It went on for hours.
Till my brother was throttling me.
"'.S' Ceiling." "Ceiling's not with an '.'S"
"Of course it is!"
So we were hunter-gatherers. We were killers.
We were killers only 2,000 years ago. Hunter-gatherers. Hardwired into our brains.
And I think our journey...
I don't think there's any reason why we're here.
You know, the meaning of life? I don't think there is one.
I think we're just accidentally here. I think it's that random, kids,
'cause that would explain the so many millions out there,
and people talk about the Earth being in the Goldilocks place,
where we're not too close to the Sun, not too far away.
I think it's just now, 'cause there are probably other people out there.
But while we're here, we may as well do civilisation.
Just be civil to one another.
'Cause we got the killer thing in... And assassins, they took drugs.
Maybe as a reward or maybe to make them just jump over the idea of going out
and killing people. And it was hashish.
That's where the word comes from. They were hash-assins.
No, it's true. No, it sounds silly. They were hash-assins.
Read it, it's on Wikipedia. You can look it up on your iPhones while I'm talking to you.
It's true. I've done it.
It's there and they were talking about... They would give them hashish and say,
"You are hash-assins now.
"Help yourself to hashish and then we'll go do hash-assinations."
"He's off his rocker, isn't he?"
'Cause I do think that hashish is one of the worst...
It's the wrong drug to give to people who are gonna go out and do something.
Unless you say, "We're going to take over a Mars bar factory," then...
Yeah! Come on!" There was an empowerment there.
"We're all going to go and dive into bags of sugar."
"Yes! Yes, of course!"
But apart from that, organised hash-assinations is just crazy.
You get there... "What? What? Hold this, hold this.
"Get behind the hedge. Get behind the..."
"Bing-bong!
"He's not... He is here.
"I'm sorry about this. We just... We're hash-assins.
"No, we're hash-assins.
"We gotta kill you. We're supposed to kill you.
"Do you have a Kit Kat?
"If you've got a Kit Kat, that's like a Get Out of Jail Free card.
"You have? He's got... Have you got three?
"You've got four... He's got a four-bar one. Come on, all right.
"Shh! Schtum. Close the door. Fuck off. We should do this everywhere.
"Get Kit Kats." Ding-dong "Got a Kit Kat?
"Or just a Cat Kit? Like a Meccano Cat... Ah, forget it."
Then the guy gets on the roof with a briefcase.
with the briefcase.
"All right, all right. Yeah. I'll assemble it. All right.
"What the fuck is that?
"Attach Part A to Part B then to Part C...
"Apply transfers to model aircraft...
"These are the wrong instructions.
"What? Yeah, no, I'm here. I'm here. I'm here.
"I haven't... I haven't got a gun.
"l have got a vacuum cleaner.
"Yeah. Well, it's in a similar briefcase.
"It just looks... I know. I know. I know what you said. I know.
"Don't bring the vacuum cleaner. But it's a Dyson Slimline.
"It's really lightweight. It's orange.
"The ball type. Goes around corners really well.
"All right, all right, I'll pack up here. Shall I Hoover up before I go?
"All right. All right. I know, I know.
"Look, I'll throw it at him. How's about I throw it at him?
"No, it's not very accurate, but it has a fantastic element of surprise."
And we now, I think, in modern days,
maybe we have more of a sense... More of an empathy with people.
We can see horrors going on. We saw the tsunami.
We saw the thing in Mumbai. We've seen films.
Maybe it's not visceral, but you can...
You get a very good visual sense of what has gone on in the past.
Back in the Battle of Hastings time, you didn't have a clue
what happened in the battle. You were either in that battle,
or you just fucking forget it. Or you watch a tapestry.
The Bayeux Tapestry tells you in panels what's going on, but...
It's weavers. Weavers were the war correspondents.
Weavers were the photojournalists of the day, going,
"Come on! Come on!
"Oh, my God, look at that! Get that down, Kelly. Put that here!
"What are they doing? Oh, God. Keep moving! Keep moving!
"Don't look at the weavers! Just move on!
"Do some weird haircuts for the boys, all right?
"Give 'em a bit of a laugh, eh?
"Willie! Big Willie! Do it, give him a wave. Hey, Big Willie! Good luck.
"That's the Duke of Normandy, the bastard.
"Come on, win, you bastards! Shoot someone in the eye.
"We've already done that panel.
"I've sewn this to my leg. Is that a problem?"
The paparazzi. They were paparazzi. Very early paparazzi, going,
"All right. Anne Boleyn, Anne Boleyn, how's it going, love, eh?
"Just hang on a second, love, trying to get you down all right.
"You don't want to look like a weirdo, do you?"
"I'll do three noses if you're not careful.
"Just slow down, baby. Push your breasts up a bit.
"Is your sister with you? We'll do a double panel.
"All right. All right, good luck. You gonna marry Henry?
"All right, keep your hair on.
"I've sewn this to my leg as well. Is that a problem?"
So we were hunter-gatherers. We hunted and gathered.
I would have elected to be... I would have chosen to be a hunter.
It seems more fun. It seems more dangerous and more...
You put face paint on your thing. It's makeup.
It's almost me, action transvestite. That's what hunter-gatherers were.
We see it with the Native Americans. We're there.
The gathering... The gathering seems slightly more...
"One, twelve, thirteen,
"twelve, thirteen.
"Twelve. How many you got?" "I've got seven. I give up."
"I've lost the will to live."
"We've only got 19 berries. They're gonna kill us."
Suddenly the hunters return.
"We are hunters. We have returned with stuff on our faces,
"having killed bison and buffalo and beavers and badgers
"and balloons, which was weird.
"They went pop!
"We killed mainly 'B' animals today.
"Tomorrow we will kill cats and chinchillas and crocodiles, then dogs and dingoes,
"then elephants and eels, and then fungus.
"That'll be a long day.
"How many berries do you have for us?" "A total of 19, sir."
"That's a bit crap.
"Seven hours for nineteen berries? That's two... That's something an hour, isn't it?
"Never mind. Put them all together and make a smoothie."
"Needs a bit of Turkish yogurt." "Oh, they haven't invaded yet."
"We haven't invaded yet."
So it was the hunter. And we all looked pretty good.
That was the one upside of the Stone Age period.
We looked fucking fantastic, man.
Come on! Let's go hunting just in underwear. Come on!
"Janine, Stavros, Kenny, Rogers, two people, come on.
"Well, you look brilliant. In fact, hold me over a pond, will you?
"I want to see what I look like."
The only way you could look at yourself in the old days.
Everyone looked a little bit hangy-downy.
I look a bit hangy-downy.
So that was it. 10,000 years ago, the ice went away, going,
"Bye! Bye! Good luck with civilisation. Invent fridges."
And off they went. And that is when the hunter-gatherer period
moved into the agrarian period. Farming.
Farming is a step up in civilisation.
More cultivated. Groups and communities can grow.
But it's a step down in sexiness. There are no farming films.
No Farming. "Bruce Willis in Farming. Farming III.
"He was just a farmer. Someone stole his beans."
"You fucking stole my beans, MacGruder! I'll chase you on my yak!"
"You'll never catch me! I have a yak, too!"
"It's on Top Yak. It's one of the best yaks in the world."
Not exciting films. "Look, the grass is growing."
And that's why farmers keep animals. To make it more rock 'n' roll!
More exciting. Most of the animals they keep by choice are noisy animals.
Cows go "moo" and sheep go "baa" and dogs go "woof" and cats go "woof"
and pigs go "woof" and horses go...
And donkeys go "ee-ore". And pigs go "onk."
No. "Woof" or "crack." No, they don't go "crack."
Maybe they take crack. I'm not sure. I'm not sure there.
Jury's still out on that one.
Ducks, geese, all noisy bastards. They keep no snails.
No badgers, no stoats, no weasels, no...rabbits.
All very quiet. Gazelles make no noise. Except for this noise.
Because they leap. You couldn't farm gazelles, could you?
You'd have to keep them in a bag.
"You want a gazelle, mate?" "Yeah, all right.
"That's not a gazelle. That's an eel."
"Shit. Got the wrong bag.
"Here you go. Oh, it's gone."
They have wings, you see. In the early days.
You can tell by...
Giraffes. Giraffes have no safety noise.
They don't have a signal. Like chickens have a safety noise, which is...
Unless you wedge a trumpet on their face.
And then it's...
And you can train a chicken to do jazz.
Which I would encourage all farmers to do.
Then the farmer's wife would say, "What the hell is that?"
"That's my jazz chicken."
"But how does he make an embouchure?" "He has a beak."
"l wedged a mango in there."
Oh, you've box clever there.
And he wouldn't actually wake you up, would he?
He'd be like a permanent snooze button. "And now it's 6:00 am. and jazz chicken."
12:00 noon and people are going, "Milk me, motherfucker, milk me.
"Get this milk out of me. Someone plug in, for God's sake.
"I've gotta rub myself against a tree."
We don't know... How did feral cows milk themselves in the old days before farming?
There must have been wild cows in the old days.
Cows who were crazy. Wild.
"Fuck you, buddy. Yeah."
Cows who would drive through the streets in cars.
"Is this your car, sir?" "Moo."
"Do you realise how fast you were going?" "Moo."
"Is this your friend?"
"Moo."
"Eh, Sarge, I think there's a raptor and a cow in a car.
"Get everything here."
"What do you mean everything?" "I mean everything!"
As Gary would say.
"Moo."
"Do you realise how fast you were going?" "Moo."
"You were doing three miles an hour." "Moo?"
"He's going faster now."
But giraffes have no emergency sound.
If a giraffe sees a tiger in Africa, it would have alarm and surprise
as two of its main emotions.
Two of the emotions of the Spanish Inquisition.
Fear. Well, fear, fear and surprise. Fear because, "It's a tiger."
And surprise because it's a tiger and there aren't any in Africa.
So what's it doing there? Is it on holiday?
Have they come over with pirates?
Through the Gulf of Aden? My hometown.
So, yeah. And it would turn to its friends and say nothing. It has no...
Nothing. It should hire a jazz chicken to sit on its back and go...
Or the jazz chicken could go...
- -He could do that.
And then it'll go, "There are bees coming!" "Not bees."
It has no way of saying tiger, so...
But it can cough. If you look on Wikipedia, they can cough
and so that's what they must use.
A very British method of pointing out alarming things.
"There's a tiger over there.
There's a fucking, great, big tiger.
"Tiger at four o'clock."
"Film. Two syllables.
"First syllable. Sounds like.
"No, first syllable. First syllable.
"Tie? Tie?"
"Second syllable, sounds like...
"Ger."
"Ger?"
"Tiger."
"Tiger. Tiger."
And then they do go. You see them go.
And where do they go to?
Where do they go to? The giraffes who run.
Well, they're taller than Africa, that savannah bit.
They're so tall, they must hide behind giraffes, that's what I've worked out.
One giraffe is here and then the other giraffes just line out.
"Just stay in line. Back a bit, back a bit, back a bit.
"Forward, forward a bit. Back a bit."
And the giraffe pretends, at this point, he pretends to be the Eiffel Tower.
C'est fantastique. C'est tres belle.
Oh, Paris bon nuit, c'est si belle.
Boom, fish and chicken
Sur la plage, quel dommage
Qu'elle sausage Tu m'appelles, oui ma mere
The tiger's walking around going, "Where are we?
"We were in Asia, then Africa, now we're in France.
"I can't stand this. Give me the iPhone."
Noah, he knew about animals. Oh, yes, he did.
And he's mentioned in the Bible, which I think are oral histories.
I think it did happen. There was a flood, there's flood stories mentioned in the Bible,
mentioned outside the Bible. We saw the tsunami, we know they happen.
Now the big point is, did God tell him to make a boat
or did Noah just use his Captain Common Sense?
'Cause a number of us, if we were somewhere where it was raining
and raining and raining and raining and raining and raining and raining,
and we had a big pile of wood,
some of us might put two and two together and go,
"I'm gonna make a bloody boat."
Others might go, "I'm gonna make a hairdresser's."
"I'm gonna build a monkey emporium. I'm gonna build a big set of wooden shoes
"that would fit a giant."
But he made a boat. He was quite sensible. And what did he put on the boat? His family.
What else? Animals. Which animals? Any he could find.
Did he put two of every animal in the world on the boat? No!
How could I be so sure? Try it.
Just try it. It's impossible.
And there is such a word as impossible. You can't...
It is impossible to eat the Himalayas.
There's no such word as "can't"? Well, try eating the bloody Himalayas.
"I got full after about two mountains, you know."
You're not gonna get through that. So he was there,
and he built this boat.
And just trying to get everything on there would be a nightmare.
And it had to be everything, from two dung beetles
up to two giant squid. All of them.
All the fish had to be there because we know they were bad, some of them.
Sharks are bad, you know? Very few good sharks.
Very few sharks say, "We've found a child.
"He was swimming about having a bad time.
"We were going to eat him, but we thought it is not our way anymore.
"Since the Geneva Convention on sharks,
"the agreement that sharks made with humans.
"We took his leg but that is our trade.
"We call him Stumpy.
"Or Thumper. I think his name is Kenneth."
So Noah would be there, saying, "All right, Margaret.
"Margaret, just stuff them all over the boat.
"Lash one giant squid to the roof. Just do it.
"It's raining, Margaret, it doesn't matter.
"Just put them anywhere. Shove them in cupboards."
A giant squid sticking out of the cupboards going, "There's no towels.
"Is she there? No towels.
"Giant squid diary, day one.
"Got to the boat. Everything rather damp. Must inform TripAdvisor.
"Seem to be running out of ink.
"Met a number of animals. Interesting ones. Cat, dog, squirrel, a mouse.
"I will eat them later.
"I can't find Horace. I think he's lashed to the roof."
And the whole two by two thing doesn't work.
Two by two animals. "All right, here we go. Kids, we're gonna get them up two by two.
"Two tigers, two cats, two dogs, two fish.
"Two rabbits, two squirrels, two llamas, two blue things, two zebras.
"How many is that?" "That? So far, two tigers, Dad."
"What do you... Oh, no.
"What happened?"
"It just seemed to... It became a Wendy's all-you-can-eat kind of...
"Do we have a psychotherapist on board? Because I think
"I need to readjust after that."
It wouldn't work. Lions and tigers eat everything.
It's like putting students on a boat with a load of cake mix, isn't it?
It would just be a munching fest.
I've been up close to a lion and they just do that.
And after 40 days and 40 nights of rain,
which is 40 days of rain, isn't it? The nights are implicit, for God's sake.
It's a month and a bit of rain. Don't drag it out.
Forty lunchtimes and forty afternoon teas.
Just padding out the Bible. After that period of time, they'd be there
from the Bible, on the bit of land, saying, "We're here."
"As the ark makes landfall, what a historic day.
"God's plan has worked. The ark has made it with two of everything.
"And here they come, this is Noah and his family first.
"Trying to get a word in, they're rushing away,
"they're probably meeting some friends, late for a dinner appointment.
"And lions and tigers, there they go.
"Well, they're chasing... Made friends already, I suppose.
"No one else at the moment, must be packing.
"Just getting their things together. What a wonderful, glorious day.
"Here comes a squirrel, just running out there.
"Mr Squirrel, how did it go?" "No. It was a nightmare, man.
"Don't go there. It was crazy. They killed everything. Those stripy bastards,
"they killed everything, man. There's nothing there, man.
"It's all dead, all dead, it's like a ghost ship.
"l escaped, I hid in a colander."
"Oh, shit." "You gotta write that down in the Bible.
"It was a bad plan, man, bad plan. Noah's plan."
"What happened to your wife?" "She got away.
"Got away in a boat with an owl and a cat."
"Did they take anything with them?" "Yeah, they took spoons and a helicopter,
"a little toy one and a Gatling gun."
"An owl and a pussy-cat went to sea In a beautiful pea green boat
"They took some spoons, a helicopter and a Gatling gun..."
"Yeah. It's not poetry."
So, civilisation, that's what we're about, and while we're here, 'cause I don't think
there's actually a reason why we're here,
but while we're here we may as well try and be civilised, just a little bit British.
Just a little bit getting up in the morning and saying, "Hello, how are you?"
Walking on.
Can't stand the man, myself.
It's a little bit like that. And the Egyptians and the Sumerians,
they started it off, they started the ball rolling about 5,000 years ago.
They said, "Come on, irrigation. That's a good thing."
And the pharaohs were going, "I'm 12 years old, I could die sometime."
"You're very young, sir." "Yeah, I could die, so I wanna die in a pointy thing."
"All right, we'll make one. About head height?" "A mile high."
"Bloody 12 year olds."
"Come on, lads, cut some rock."
And it was all kind of sandy,
and they worshipped Ra, the Sun god, Ra. They had a song.
Ra, hurrah for Ra He's up there near the stars
But they're not there They've gone somewhere else
And he is there, it's up there. It's quite hot It's hot, it makes all our ground crappy
And that's why we have irrigation, La, la, la, la, Ra, Ra...
I'm not sure what the song was. But it was something in that area.
And the worshipping of the Sun god, that is the circle behind Mary's head.
Mary and Baby Je, you know they got the circle,
and you grew up thinking that meant they were very, very good, very, very good
or the Colgate "ring of confidence," remember that one?
Actually, it means sun worshipping.
It was slid in behind Christianity. Christianity, "Hello."
'Cause Christians worship Chris, of course.
That's what it should be about. Christmas is when we remember Chris
and how he so brilliantly landed on that pagan ritual
of being born on the 25th of December.
What is it with Christianity?
There was all these pagan religions, and then Christianity went,
"That seems to fit."
Well, it was, and all those people... A lot of churches are built on pagan sites,
so people turn up for their pagan rituals, "Let's go and worship on the feast of bingo.
"Where the fuck did this come from?"
"Ooh! It's not bingo any more, it's Mr... It's Mr Chris.
"Well, let's worship him then, shall we? Whoever's here, we'll worship."
So, the Egyptians did a number of groovy things.
Five thousand years they were there, and they invented a language, a language,
written up on there. And it was a nightmare for newsreaders.
"Here is the news in Egypt:
"Man with a hat, man with a hat, dog, dog with a gun,
"walking, pig, pig, pig, coming, man,
"duck with a gun, man, there's an eyeball walking along,
"chicken with a banjo, dog, really powerful dog, comes along,
"and the cat got him in an arm lock. Three things, big eye, big eye, fish, cat.
"It seems the orgy in the zoo continues into its seventh year.
"That's what I'm guessing. Here's the weather with Janine."
"Thank you. It will be sunny forever."
And now, the Greeks.
So, the Greeks came in, 'cause the Egyptians all died in a car crash.
And the Greeks, they had democracy, two Greek words.
"Demos" means people. "Ocracy" is a kind of inflatable cat
full of helium going, "Vote now, vote now."
Kind of like Blade Runner, in my mind.
So, they had democracy, which is great, and it took off there,
it flowered through the Roman period, 500 years of democracy,
and then it went, somewhere around Caesar, the third son of God.
And they also, not only had that, they had the Spartans.
The Spartans were... The elite fighters of today are based on the Spartans.
And the Spartans were just crazy. Get up in the morning...
"Kids!" "Dad!"
"Spears!"
"Breakfast."
"How many did you get?" "Got eight." "I got seven."
Just mayhem. Death by numbers.
Yeah, the Spartans. The men, of course, were huh! But the women were also huh!
The children were huh! And the dogs were woof! and the cats were woof!
The slugs were...
And the sheep shh! - silent.
The most deadly sheep in the world. They were the only predator sheep
the world has ever known.
They would wear bandanas, like the kamikaze pilots,
with ancient sheep runes on them.
They had not a clue what they meant.
And they would sneak up on wolves, they would creep up in the dead of night.
Shh. They would never make a bleat.
The wolves would wake and go, "Sheep!"
"What? I'm the wolf who cried sheep."
And the irony was writ large upon them.
And the sheep would be in a stand-off with the wolves,
'cause they knew they were more powerful, but the sheep were brave.
And the sheep would take a rusty blade and they would say, "Look at this!"
And they would shear themselves.
"Come on!
"I've got my jacket off now.
"You wanna come outside?"
And the wolves would go, "We are outside."
"Let's fight, motherfucker."
And the wolves would go, "This is not in the book.
"Grab their clothes and run."
As the audience realised where the joke was,
the wolves in sheep's clothing would run down the hill,
run into a local market, buy Slurpees, run off, and never pay.
"Hey, I thought they were sheep." "They were wolves in sheep's clothing."
"I didn't know. New thing to me."
And it started a whole spate of that, wolves in sheep's clothing, dogs in cats' clothing,
pigs in giraffes' clothing,
which looked odd, and ants in elephants' clothing,
which was the biggest bluff of all. "Move or we will trample you."
"You're the flattest elephants I've ever seen."
"We are covert elephants. Work for the national secret people.
"We're taking leaves back to our nests."
"Elephants don't have nests."
"Shit."
"We will trample you
"with our noses."
Said the man.
I like the scene up till there, but I don't know where it goes after that.
Suddenly a cow turned up. "Moo."
"You again?" "Moo."
"Can you give me lift to the shops?" "Moo."
"Is that a yes or a no?"
"Moo."
"All right, I'm coming with you."
"Stop writing on the windows." "I thought you just said, 'Moo'."
"Moo."
Just moving that mime away.
So, Spartans.
They fought the battle of Thermopylae. The Battle of Thermopylae,
made into a film called On the Good Ship Lollipop.
That was the first film about it. It's an anagram.
On the Good Ship Lollipop, Battle of Thermopylae.
It's exactly the same letters. It's almost exactly the same letters.
It was a Shirley Temple film. She was in her Jodie Foster Taxi Driver period,
she was trying to do more edgy children's films.
But anyway, she wanted... "I want to make film, one about the Spartans.
"About the Spartans at Thermopylae."
They said, "All right," and it was On the Good Ship Lollipop, and they did that.
On the good ship...
"Shirley!" "Spartan!"
...Lollipop
But they tested it on children in America, and the children actually exploded.
"Shit, they're going!"
So, they decided to edit all the violence out of the film.
And you can't tell. If you watch On the Good Ship Lollipop, you can't tell,
except if you look at Shirley when she turns in a certain light,
you can see a little bit of blood coming out of there down her chin.
But the Spartans were crazy, they would oil themselves before battle,
so no one could take them alive. "I've got him! Hang on."
"These guys, it's like fighting fish over here, Xerxes.
"Xerxes, put the Scrabble board down, mate.
"Who invented travel Scrabble?
"Come on, we're trying to do something here."
These blokes, they were tactically very clever
because this is 300 Spartans against 50,000, 100,000 Persians? No one knows
how many Persians. They now think it could have been all the Persians.
Persia was empty that day, they believe.
If you'd walked into Persia, just empty, except for cats and carpets.
People just helping themselves.
"We're here on the border of Persia, and there's just people with carpets,
-"and cats trying to protect them." -
"Give us a carpet. Get away with a carpet."
"Vote now."
The Spartans were clever as well, tactically clever,
they got the Persians to attack them in a very narrow place,
which was the corridor of a Student Union party.
Get our cake mix out the window! Take the booze, run!
Take the Watney's Red Barrel.
I didn't have that, no. It was more Tennent's.
Cans of lager.
Anyway. So, yes, so that was the Spartans.
Greeks fought in the phalanx, they would have a whole group of people
with 20-foot spears. You couldn't get at them, they had 20-foot spears.
Unless one of your group was crazy enough to say, "Don't worry, I'll lead the way."
Sacrifice himself on the spear.
Can't do that.
Shit.
"Told you.
"Extra two foot on my spear.
"God, he's heavy. I'm gonna wiggle him off the end."
"Crap."
"They'll think you're signalling!" "I'm not, I'm just trying to get
"a dead guy off the end of my spear.
"They'll probably think he's a pole vaulter having a really weird...
"Having a real tough day at the office."
These gigs are just for me, you realise.
"Come off my spear.
"Hang on.
"Okay. Okay.
"I can't see anything. I can't see anything.
"Hang on, hang on...
"Okay. I'm good."
Then the Romans came in with a short, pointy sword, turned it sideways and went...
"Ha-ha!"
"Hang on, hang on, hang on.
"Welcome to the second line of defence.
"I'm just going to get a sherbet or something."
The Romans took over everything, they built aqueducts, viaducts,
they could move ducks around faster than anyone ever had.
Everyone was confused by this brilliant move
that meant that ducks were always in difficult places to get at.
You never knew... Where were these ducks coming from?
Even the ducks were going, "We don't know why we're here."
And the Roman's going, "I think they're supposed to be on water, really."
And the men seemed to rule the empires. In fact, the women ruled the empires
with the use of poison.
And the men would say, "I, Lucius, I will kill Gaius Cassius,
"and I will be emperor of Rome."
And the women would say, "Good luck, Lucius, have a peach before you go."
"Thank you, Calpurnia.
"People of Rome..."
Now my young, 3-year-old, idiot duck son will become...
The Romans did a hell of a lot, man. They did a hell of a lot, very industrious,
very good at killing, death by death.
Death by killing with big, pointy things.
They were good at that, but they did this with a language
which we know from school is silly. It's too bloody complicated.
It's just got nouns and a masculine, feminine, neuter, bisexual, hermaphrodite
and straight transvestite.
They have an accusative, a nominative, a vocative, a locative,
an ablative, a dative and genetive.
Couldn't they have had 19 more?
I mean why stop at 27? I mean, it goes on.
If someone says, "Do you want a beer?" you are stuck in the idea of
I'm the object, I'm... The beer's the object, no, I want a beer.
Yes, I do. "Yes" is affirmative. I want affirmative action but the beer is...
You are the object. No, the beer is the object. The beer is coming towards me,
that's a motion towards, that's to, so dative's gotta be in there somewhere.
Just mime me an answer. Thumb? Yeah, all right, mate.
How did they get the messages out...
When Hannibal attacked through Spain, up and over the Alps,
how did they get the message out?
I mean, 'cause Hannibal actually won a whole bunch of battles,
and maybe that was because they just couldn't speak to each other quick enough.
Messengers running from one battle to another going,
"Centurion, Centurion, alarum, alarum miserarium,
"minerarium, miserarium, alarum miserarium.
"Touten de soldatens
"er, mourati on the party."
"Quod the fuck is the... Quad erat demonstrandum?"
"lch bin messengare." "Si, naturellement."
"Und ich couriere nach here from a long way away-re
"mit newsum tres mauvaises de le battle-arium, the battarium
"the pugnacco of the peoples and the tuti of the mutis
"on the booties."
"Quod the fuck are you talking about here?"
" It's difficlarium. "
"Hannibal!" "Hannibal? Hannibal."
"Si, Hannibal!" "Oh, didus knock mentanatem Hannibal?"
"Si, si, Generalissimo Hannibal."
"Hannibal?" C'est tres dangereux! "Si. Er kommt, mein Herr. "
"Arriverarm, arrivederci? No. Arriveramus?
"ls... Veni, vidi, vici!" "Veni, vidi, vici?"
"Si, veni, vidi, vici. Hannibal." "Mit soldates?"
"Si, mit soldates. No, tout seul, bucket and spade on holiday, I think.
"Naturellement mit soldates, mit total soldates,
"Multo soldates, infinitata soldates, "
"lnfinidate soldates is mathemelaticus totally impossibiliatus. "
"No.
"Ask Pythagoratus."
"Yes, ist te truthum. It's the veritum."
"Pi?"
"Danke schön. "
"Have you tried just not cooking this?
"C'est pas mal, c'est pas mal, mate. Rhetorical...
"Gas markum quoi?"
"Gas markum 3.141
"It's a jokum, it's a jokum, He's a funny lad."
"High-fives, Pythagoratus.
"Square of the hypotenuse."
"Have you finished?"
"No, 'cause cette fois
"Hannibal is coming 'round the mountain when he comes.
"ls coming 'round the mountains when he comes."
"Coming 'round the mountains? Coming 'round the mountains?"
"Coming 'round the mountains when he comes."
Singing...
"Mit pink pyjamas?"
"Kein pink pyjamas."
"Cette fois er kommt mit elephantein. "
"Elephantein?
"What the fuck elephantein erat?"
"Elephantein tres dangereux. Elephantein tres mysteriosum.
"Front part is elephantain and is similaris con ein squirrel. "
"Hey, man. Don't take the piss out of me.
"I'm just here, you know, looking for my wife.
"Have you seen a boat?"
"Imagine this maximum squirrel upside-downus, back to frontus.
"Tailum ist nosum.
"Back part is elephantein is smilarus but a magnus pigus. Bigus pigus.
"Bike pump.
"Attachum mit duct tape. That is elephantein."
"Das ist elephantein? Run, motherfucker."
It's too big, too long.
All that takes far too long,
and Hannibal would overrun them, and kill them all and set up a charity.
English is good, it's taken off because it's such a simple language
at its base level.
"Hannibal's coming!" "Hannibal? What with?"
"Soldiers." "How many?" "Tons". "What else?" "Elephants."
"What are they?" "Pigs and squirrels. Run."
The English have gone, the English have gone. God, they had such a quick language.
You have to have a tea party to work out the Latin stuff.
Yes, we got rid of one of our you's. We had two you's, we got rid of one.
The whole familiar you. "Aren't you my father?"
And the unfamiliar you. "Who the fuck are you guys?"
So, we got rid of the first one.
That was all the "thee" and the "thou" one that the Pilgrims used,
wouldst thee, wouldst thou, would thee, thy, thum...
Wouldst thou? Thou wilt disagree. Thou wilt have a bad time over the fact
that thou didst send us away...
Why don't you all just go?
Go and hang in the middle of the country.
So, yeah. The Romans all died in a chariot crash,
and then Charles Darwin wrote a famous book in 18 scritty swam swums,
and that book was an interesting book 'cause it was called,
Monkey, Monkey, Monkey, Monkey, Monkey, Monkey, You.
And it just took off like wildfire and it caused an outrage in the monkey kingdom.
Monkeys were furious about it. They were flinging poo at electrical fans
that had been specially set up for the occasion.
Because "the shit hits the fan" is a saying that is post-electricity.
Pre-electricity it's just...
"Did you just throw a poo at my fan?
"What's the point of that?
"You want me to switch the electricity on?
"Well, we've only just had it wired up. I don't see..."
"I see, yes, yes.
"Yes, the shit has certainly hit the fan now."
Before electricity all they had was
"Then the shit will really hit the Archimedes screw."
Much slower.
So, yes, that was it, evolution, evolution,
and we have evolution all the way from the beginning up to now,
including all of us, the genetics that go through us, the inbreeding,
non-inbreeding, the Royal family.
Well, it's good that the Royal Family... They shouldn't have sex with people.
The idea of being commoners...
We have an idea of commoners. "Commoners" is a horrible word.
I think it should be "real people."
That's what the House of Commons should be. The House of Real People.
And the commoners, they're real people, you see?
So, the Queen Mother, she was always crazy,
she was shot out of a cannon for her funeral, as you know.
That was her dying wish, "Shoot me out of a cannon."
It was kind of a Robin Hood thing going on there.
She was a Scottish lady, oh, yes.
She was... You never heard her speak. Do you remember the last 40 years,
you never heard a word but she was there going,
out of a cannon? Come on.
"I'd like to see the Solent one more time before I land in the Isle of Wight.
"Come on, you fucker. Give us a break."
Something like that.
But the Queen, I just have a problem with monarchy
because obviously in the third millennium hereditary privilege is insane.
Yes, I hear your silent yes.
Hereditary privilege? How do you explain that to children?
"Why do some people live in fantastic houses
"and we give them cash out of our taxes?"
"Because er...
"I don't know, that's a good question, small child."
It is an interesting question. You know, it's gotta change.
I think Charlie's doing something, you know,
he's doing organic farming, he's doing stuff. The charity he does is good.
Some of the kids are doing stuff, but Liz and Phil,
Liz and Phil haven't done anything, Liz and Phil just sat there.
'Cause they got in at '52 and then immediately the Queen introduced the new...
Then in the '60s, the Queen decided to change the way that...
And she encouraged people to...
And in the '70s, she completely redistributed...
And realised she had too much wealth, so she decided to...
Then in the '80s, they set up a charity to do...
And then they encouraged other people to...
And in the '90s, they just totally relaxed, and they said, "Everyone, why don't you..."
And then in the 2000s, they've set a great example by...
Stop me at any point.
I think she's got 20 years left, she's in there,
but she essentially does what she does on the stamps.
Do something! Just do something! Open your house up!
Give all your houses away! Do something!
Change your hair. Smoke a cigarette. Drive a car.
Wave a bit. Fucking wave. Where's the fucking wave?
We paid good money, we want some fucking waving.
Got cash, got cash, do waves. Don't you think?
Anyway, so, evolution.
We can see evolution with fish. Fish swim in the sea, they're very thin,
they breathe through their necks.
And they just seem to be... They have very short memories, I believe, fish,
and so they seem to just be going, "Oh, oh, oh, oh..."
As if someone's just told them, "You realise you're fish,
"and you have very short memories." "Oh.
"Oh. Oh.
"Oh, I didn't realise. Oh, no."
And then the mudskipper is a fish that walks along on its legs.
You can see the evolution with the mudskipper going along.
And if you look right deep into his eyes, you can see him going,
"I'm almost there, I'm almost there. One day I'll have a house and a Ferrari.
"I'll work on the Stock Exchange. Lose loads of money down a toilet."
And then fish fly, fish fly. In the sky. They must be up there going, "Oh, wow."
And then they must stop in trees occasionally and go, "Oh."
And then birds are in trees, they're going, "Who the fuck are you guys?"
"Oh, no."
"We're birds, we eat fish." "Oh, crap."
"Fly, Freddie, fly!"
You ever seen birds chasing fish in the air?
It just looks so... You go, "I gotta have a drink, that's weird."
So, that's the fish side, that's evolution. Then on the creation side,
God got the world and he went, "There it is, it's blue, don't fuck it up."
Can't stand the man.
We don't know what that means.
It's just funny, but we don't know why.
But now he didn't do it in one go. Which, I think, why take six days over it?
Why not just go... He did it six days with one day for prayer.
Why not do two seconds...
And then you've got seven days for prayer. And they could just be up there going,
"God, you're really great, you're really fantastic.
"Dear God, we thank you, especially for what you did on Tuesday.
"That was really... Was it Tuesday? No, never. That's right."
You never wake up and you hear, "God's given everyone an extra banana.
"What a wonderful day it is! Extra banana for everyone."
Never. Anyway, six days of making the Earth, like he's making a train set for his kids.
After a while small animals will be following going, "Who are you?"
"I'm God." "Why are you taking so long?
"We've got no food."
"All right, I'll make you food. Sorry about that. What are you, badgers?
"Squirrels? Chicken?"
"We eat nuts, man. Have you seen a boat?"
"Haven't made them yet." "Well, what am I doing here?"
"Right, badgers. Badgers eat bok choy."
"No, we don't. Not eating that. It's supposed to be pak choi, anyway."
"It's called bok choy." "Pak choi." "Mandarin." "Cantonese."
"Not eating it." "All right, sprouting broccoli."
"Holy crap, I see badgers can be choosers."
What?
What, you've heard too many bok choy, pak choi, sprouting broccoli,
badger creationist jokes this week?
"Oh, yeah, up to here, every other person saying them.
"Can't... Just wading through them this Christmas.
"That old chestnut.
"Didn't the Greeks use that one?" Fuck off.
"All right, Mr Badger, creme brulee you shall eat."
"Creme brulee? That's hardly brulee, that's singed."
"All right, that's creme flambee now."
"Creme brulee, creme flambee, where did you learn French?"
"While you were pissing about making the Earth.
"l was on Rosetta Stone.
"We were all sitting around there going, 'La chaise est sur l'éléphant.
"I don't know what he's talking about."
"Day one in the giant squid diaries."
"Nothing, it's a void. Day three, isn't it?"
"Shit, running out of ink. Why, why, why? There's no water yet. Bugger, bugger."
"All right. Give me another Letts diary, will you?"
Do you remember those? Every Christmas you get your Letts diary.
You fill in just the first six days and then blank.
Did everyone do that?
Then about June you'd rediscover it and start filling it in again
and then go... Then you'd backfill it with lessons.
Okay, I saw one kid doing that.
Anyway, creationism has turned, through the mind of a Sarah Palin,
into intelligent design. And I have two problems with intelligent design.
One is the intelligence part of it, and the other is the design part of it.
Because, you know, there's some things which are wonderful in the world,
and some things that are horrible, disgusting. Cancer.
Intelligent design, or just weird fucking stuff going on? Cholera, all those things.
If we were God for half an hour, we would ban poo and pee.
Why do we have poo and pee? You say, "Oh, waste products."
Why not just eat food and do stuff? There's no logic to waste products.
Just efficient use of energy. Eat it and boom, go do stuff.
Poo and pee causes all those... Coughs and sneezes spread diseases.
All the poo and peeing diseases, cholera, all that... Out the window,
if we were God. And then you say, "You might need the poo for crops."
Well, no, the crops grow because of sunlight. Or because they want to.
Remember you're God.
So the appendix, it sits next to your oesophagus your entire life going,
"Any grass? Is that grass, mate? Is that grass? What's that, bok choy? No?
"Arsehole.
"What's that, spinach? Well, do you want... Forget it.
"No, it's horrible. I don't want to touch it.
"We've got an appendix here, but forget it.
"Asparagus! That's like grass, isn't it? Big grass? Big grass, mate?
"Do you want to run it through me and Jimbo? Machine? One careful owner.
"This is insane. I'm calling Intelligent Design."
"Intelligent Design." "Yeah, it's the appendix."
"Yes, the appendix. Any news?"
"Well, what the fuck are we doing?
"Did you put us here on duty to deal with the grass?
"I mean, it doesn't eat grass. Haven't you noticed?
"It might be evolution."
"Yeah, well, it might be, motherfucker.
"We don't wanna be here. We're just sitting here, doing nothing.
"We want to be somewhere else. Where?
"We want to be in the back of books.
"You put an appendix in the back of books. Go on, put it there,
"and then, we don't want page numbers, we want Roman numerals.
"Real teeny, tiny ones.
"And then we want endless lists of rubbish that no one ever reads.
"Or, they'd read two or three of them and then go, 'Oh, this is crap.‘
"And then they go back. You do that. Otherwise... Otherwise we will explode."
Your appendix explodes, just like John Hurt in the film Alien
when that thing comes out. And that looks like an appendix with teeth.
Your appendix very rarely gets huge and eats the rest of your crew. That's true.
But that's it. Cows have four stomachs. Why do they have four stomachs?
Why not one stomach? Why don't they do it like us, just eat stuff and then poo or pee?
They have four crappy stomachs, or useless stomachs.
They eat food, it comes back up, they chew it again, it goes back down.
It comes back up. It keeps going up and down.
By the fourth stomach, surely it's coming up and they're going,
"This did not need to come back up.
"This should have gone the other way.
"I now understand 'shit-eating grin.' I know what it is.
"Should be shit-eating grimace."
Cows should be in corners of fields going...
Never see that. Or they should be in cars going, "Moo."
"We like him."
"Moo."
Cow and raptor.
Cow, raptor.
"Moo."
"Go, cow, go." "Moo."
"Put all the moo in the bag.
"Got lots of moo."
"What the fuck is moo?"
"I think it's air."
Work on the first draft of this script.
So, I think we look for rules to live our lives.
And I decided to take all the religions in the world and all the philosophies,
because I think religions are philosophies with an extra top coat of mystical
things, you know. Stuff for people living in trees. Or clouds.
Or trees. If a god lived in a tree that wouldn't work, would it?
"I am a god." "You're living in a tree.
"You're like a bird, aren't you?" "Yeah.
"But... Oh, bugger."
What I chose from all the religions and faiths in the world,
and I decided to try and live...
You know, you want some rule, direction to live your life by.
And "Do unto others as you would have others do unto you" seems to be
one thing you can just grab hold of and is really good.
And it's not perfect, and you're gonna be grumpy at people, or shouting or whatever,
but if you try that one, I think it's really good.
And you don't need anything else. And then there's the Ten Commandments.
Now, that's a lot of commandments. I think humans, we like simplistic.
But anyway, Moses, charismatic individual, mentioned in the Bible,
mentioned outside the Bible. Grew up as an ancient Egyptian,
which means he was an Egyptian who was really old at the age of three.
"Oh, yes. Come over here, young man.
"Excited are we?"
He would say. And, so, he was actually a Hebrew person
who was smuggled in and adopted.
And all the Hebrew people were enslaved in Egypt at that time
because they were there on holiday and it all went pear-shaped.
And Moses grew up and he killed a slave owner. And he rushed off and hid
and became a shepherd to get out of being sent... Put on trial, whatever it was.
And while he was up on the mountain with his sheep, a bush caught fire.
And he said, "Right. Come on, sheep, get out of here.
"It's looking kind of biblical around here."
And the bush said, "Moses, Moses, come back here."
And he said, "Hang on, sheep, just wait. What is it?"
"Moses, you must leave this place."
"l was leaving when you called me back.
"What the bloody hell do..."
"No, I mean you must leave this area, on a short to mid-term future,
"on a geopolitical basis."
"For fuck's sake,
"you're a very complicated bush.
"We're not used to that round here."
So, yes. He ran over to the sheep.
"It's a slow burn," he said to the sheep.
"Look, sheep. I gotta go. Get out of Dodge City."
"You lads, you get out of here. Run, you run from here.
"l have to go and do things. So you run and you find the Spartan sheep.
"They will train you to be ninjas. They will train you to be kamikaze.
"That's not really useful.
"That's a kind of thing. All right, forget it, it's too complicated."
"What?"
"Moo."
"You're mooing sheep. You must find the Spartan sheep.
"They will train you to become leaders of sheep. And I'll meet you in the final scene."
"Okay."
So he runs off. He goes down to his friends and says,
"Come on, lads, we'll get all the Hebrew people and leave this desert.
"Let's go to a desert."
Yeah, change is as good as a rest.
"I want to go to Surrey." "No, it's a bit rainy there."
Let's go to the desert. He says, "Let's go tonight, under the cover of frogs."
So... 'Cause there were ten plagues that landed on Egypt.
And, you know, there's a plague of flies.
Plague of locusts.
And a plague of frogs was one of the weirdest plagues I've ever heard of.
If that came from God, he had lost his marbles.
Because a plague of frogs is not a plague, is it? It's just a lot of frogs.
It's more frogs than usual.
To be a plague, you have to be able to go, "The flies, the flies!"
"The locusts, the locusts!"
And you're never going, "The frogs, the frogs! I'm drowning in frogs!
"Help me, Mama, help me!"
"Pull Jimby out of the fil... Out of the frog pit.
"The pit of frogs. The frogs have got him." "Don't lick their backs."
Who came up with a hallucinogenic back of a toad?
Was that God on crack cocaine?
"Look. B-sus, just look at this.
"B-sus, lick the back of that.
"Lick that. Lick the back of that toad. Lick the back of that toad."
"Dad, you've said that for half an hour now."
"B-sus, you're covered in something." "What, Dad?"
"Wow, this is really good toad. This is a good year. What year is this?
"1927. Wow, excellent toad year."
Toads came up with the line, "You lick my back, and I'll lick yours."
If he created a frog plague, then he must have been going,
"All right, T-sus, P-sus, D-sus, L-sus, I want another plague."
"You've had ten, Dad. Well, you've had nine. This'll be the tenth.
"You had a plague of toads, and a plague of helicopters,
"a plague of people with weird haircuts, plague of dripping."
"The dripping, the dripping. But there's no bread."
"I want another plague. Who are those green lads over there?"
"They're frogs, they're playing canasta, world championship."
"Who's winning?" "Frogs are, 2to1."
"Who are they playing?" "Other frogs."
"Put them in a DC-9, I want them down."
"Great Pharaoh, huge, green monsters are falling from the...
"Small green monsters, quite small.
"Just frogs."
So they strapped them to their heads and they ran and ran.
"There's frogs escaping." "It's okay." And they go up through...
And they went through the Red Sea 'cause a giant squid held the water back.
"Go on, good luck, good luck."
"Giant squid's diary, day 3,009.
"Helped the frogs. No.
"Helped the Hebrew people get out
"of Egypt. Running out of bloody ink again.
"Got a biro.
"Helped the Hebrew people to escape under the cover of frogs.
"Was glad to help. Links with Noah. Saw Mr Squirrel again."
"It was hell in there, man. We were enslaved.
"Squirrels were enslaved." "For what?" "I don't know."
"I'm going to marry a chicken."
So then they wandered in the desert for 40 years.
And if I was with that group, after 23 years, I would have turned to them and said,
"What the fuck is going on? 23 years just wandering in the desert.
"I'll give you 17 more years and that's it."
And after 17 years, 30 years, 40 years, and after 40 years,
there are obviously people going mad, going crazy.
They're going, "I'm gonna have sex with my foot."
"I'm gonna eat balloons till I explode."
"I'm gonna set fire to my buttocks." "I'm gonna staple my toes to a tractor."
"I'm gonna fill myself with sand and sell myself to a taxidermist."
And Moses said, "Look, you can't do this. This is insane. You can't. There are rules."
"There are no rules!" "All right, I'll get 10."
So he runs off and comes back, "All right, here they are."
"Rule one, never piss in a toaster.
"Never eat barbed wire. Don't call yourself Mr Jimjams.
"Never scrape your brain with the back of a comb.
"Don't put your toes in a fire.
"Never Sellotape your eyelids to your mother's."
"What? These aren't rules, you just made these up on the way back from the hill."
"I couldn't find anyone with... Just... I'll get better ones." Runs off.
Two hours later he comes back. "All right, all right. Here we are.
"Always keep quiet. Run up a tree if you see anyone.
"Keep your tail clean. Keep your nuts and your makeup in a hole in the tree."
"This is...
"These are squirrel rules." "Hey, man. Don't have a go at us, man.
"We got good rules. Yeah. We know what we're doing, man.
"This is my chicken."
"Who are these people? They're not Hebrew squirrels and chickens."
"They're just with us. They're with the band."
So, yes. So then he said... They said to him. They said,
"Moses, look, Moses, we want real rules, rules you can write on rock.
"The three R's." So he said, "All right. I'll go get them."
As the audience worked that joke out he ran away.
He ran off and he was away for months. About two months. A long time.
Must have been, because by the time he returned, they had smelted metal.
That's a Discovery programme, channel, thing. That's a... Smelting metal?
"Oh, he's not coming back. He's probably eaten by bears.
"Let's smelt metal.
"Let's make a cast-iron version of a god."
And it never works. If you watch it, it's very difficult to make a proper mould
and get it all working out, especially in the desert after 40 years.
Pour it out and go, "There, a golden calf."
"Looks like a badger that's head's exploded."
"That's a stoat covered in sick."
"That's a man who's eaten too many balloons."
"Whatever it is, he's called Jimbo and we're worshipping him."
"We worship thee, O Jimbo, our lord of thistle.
"Please bring us kazoos on the hour, every hour."
And then Moses returned and he said...
He was furious and he smashed the tablets of stone on the ground.
He said, "What are you doing?" And they all went...
He said, "You call those kazoos?
"'Cause no one recognised the sound."
"They never do, Great Moses.
"For some reason, that joke always screws up at that point.
"You can't do... We can't do kazoo sounds."
"Don't practise now, they're filming."
"The Force is with them."
"With them?" "Yeah."
"Look, look, look, I've got rules." And he said he got rules.
"Rock rules. Rules written on rock.
"And they're the Ten Commandments, but you don't need them,
"because the one, 'Do unto others,' is a self-policing rule."
Thou shall not kill. Do unto others as you'd have others do unto you.
Would you like others to kill you? Probably not.
So don't kill other people. Would you like your stuff being stolen?
Probably not. So don't steal other people's. It's self-policing.
So those are the two main ones,
and then there's other ones in the Ten Commandments
"like, you know, don't put your knitting on the stage, Mrs Worthington,
or something. I don't know. Never Sellotape your hair to a tractor. These things.
And there's one in there that's just completely bonkers.
Thou shalt not covet thy neighbour's ox.
What?
What, was that all the rage?
Were people going, "Oh, my God. Have you seen Steve's ox?"
"What? Where? Where?" "Don't look now."
"It's a genius ox. It's the most amazing ox I've ever seen. It's brilliant.
"It's just... Have you seen... It was on Top Ox. It was on Top Ox.
"You know Top Gear? It's Top Ox. This ox can go 0-50 in under a year.
"It is the most amazingly sleek...
"Built by the Germans, you can hang your washing between his ears.
"He really has the biggest face this side of Christendom.
"This is one motherfucker of an ox."
How were... Why were people coveting oxes?
It isn't thou shalt not steal the ox, or eat the ox, or set fire to the ox,
or have sex with the ox, it's just covet the ox. It's just wanting the ox.
How do you have an ox market, how do you sell oxes if no one wants them?
Any trade will not work if no one can covet anything. It must have been weird.
You know, people saying, "Thou shalt not covet thy neighbour's ox."
"He's not my neighbour, he lives across the road, number 23.
"I'm off on a technicality."
I used to say it's thou shalt not cover thy neighbour's ox.
And that makes more sense, because you can't find your bloody ox.
"Where's my ox? I can't bloody find the ox now. I was in it.
"Jim, have you seen my ox? I can't bloody see him anywhere.
"Someone's just run off with my ox. Where's your duvet?
"You've lost a duvet, I've lost an ox. There's an ox and duvet stealer going around.
"I'm gonna tell the local... Hang on, look, there's your duvet.
"It's moving.
"Jimbo...
"You covered up my ox. You covered my ox.
"Thou shalt not cover thy neighbour's ox. And I'm your bloody neighbour.
"You're gonna go to hell for this."
And finally tonight... In 1969, the Americans landed on the Moon.
And I can prove it, because the Russians were also trying to get to the Moon.
The Russians had the first satellite in space, the first man in space,
first woman in space, the first orbit in space, the first space walk. A load of firsts in there.
Very good. Well done to them.
And they didn't get to the moon first. I don't know if it was the money...
Not sure what the reason was, but, they were very close.
They were sending an unmanned probe there.
So, they would have taken photographs. And if the Americans had not gone,
they would have said,
We have photograph, we have videotape.
"It's a book, a thing, it's a cow... Two syllables.
"Come, scientists of the world. We will show you proof."
And they would have proved it. Six times, they could have proved it.
The Russians, they weren't getting on with the Americans at the time.
So... A bit like now.
So...yes. So, they did go to the Moon.
And I had a lot invested in that as a child in Bishop's Stortford watching,
I didn't live there, but I just thought that, "I'll go to Bishop's Stortford."
'Cause it's such a crazy name.
'Cause obviously a bishop did have a stortford there, whatever it was.
So, yeah. And when they landed on the Moon, that was the time.
If there is a God in the universe he should have come down and said,
"You're the first ones to make it from the blue one to the grey one. Well done.
"You win Smarties forever, and congratulations.
"Neil? Neil. Neil, well done. And, Buzz. Buzz Lightyear? You Buzz Lightyear?
"You Buzz Lightyear? You Buzz Lightyear? You're box clever. Well done.
"Take off your helmets, relax. Welcome, welcome.
"No, don't take your helmets off. It's a joke.
"Sorry, I'm a bit dry. My humour's a bit dry. I hung out with the British for a while.
"Now, so, yes. Well, this is the grey one.
"And it's just the top coat. We're going to paint it at some point. We're thinking pink.
"What do you think of pink? I'm trying to do a snooker thing. Blue one, red one, pink...
"Yes. Yes, I'm God and I live on the dark side of the Moon
"along with Darth Vader..."
"Hello."
"And Pink Floyd."
"Hello."
"Who do an excellent group impression of Darth Vader.
"And here we have a young friend, the raptor." "Hi."
"And the cow." "Moo."
"They just drove here, being chased by these sheep."
"These are mad sheep who've been trained by Spartan sheep.
"We have a squirrel here." "Hey, man, don't come here. There's crazy fuckers here.
"That raptor's insane, man. It's going to kill everyone." "And this chicken."
"And Mr Gerald, the giant squid."
"Giant squid's diary, day 3,009."
"We're here on the Moon with the human beings, they've made it to the Moon.
"They've probably got 100 more years before they blow themselves up. Can they do it?
"Can they be civilized enough? It's up to them, they have to think out of the box."
"Good night." Good night.