(audience applauding)
How are you? I'm very good, how are you?
Good.
Thanks very much for coming.
Thank you for asking.
You seem to be in a good mood, I was-
yes, go ahead. No no no no.
Huh? Your show.
Yes, okay, well I forgot, all right?
(audience laughing)
You know, I was a little,
I wouldn't know how to start,
I have so many things to ask you, but I want to,
I want to clear the air first.
I heard that you had heard somewhere,
you was a little angry with me cause you
heard somewhere that I don't like Irish food.
Is that the case?
Did I?
That's what I heard.
Hold on. Whoa!
(audience laughing)
(Richard stutters)
I know you had a tendency to get tipsy, but-
Speaking of tipsy,
but don't you like Irish food?
I, well, you know what?
I was misunderstood.
I said somewhere, and then I, apparently it
had got around in Ireland that I don't like Irish food.
It's just, I said somewhere,
they're not known for their cuisine.
You know, they're known for like throwing a
potato on your plate and
a piece of beef and saying get to it, you know?
No, no, no.
But, but see the best Irish food is Guinness.
(audience cheering) Yeah, well.
No argument there.
You had the wrong menu on the tables.
Guinness. Guinness.
Guinness is three of the four
Irish food groups I understand
There's the one, the only one.
Do you know what they say? They say, they say.
They say that, speaking of say Valentine's day,
they say that Guinness is an aphrodisiac.
I have not found it to be so but-
No, no, no, I know that.
Well the only thing that Guinness gets up is your hopes.
(audience laughing and cheering)
You all right?
Now, uh.
Do you know who we met first?
Who?
Oh yes, I met you. How can I forget?
I was invited to the white house.
That's it.
They had a party for the prime minister of Ireland.
That's it.
And they said, let's round up
every Irish person they can find.
(audience laughing) - That's it.
They put away all the good
furniture, they put out the paper plates with the
presidential seal on it. Yeah.
And I bumped into you there. That's it.
It was very exciting.
And I was amazed how tall you were, remember?
No one knows that I am, yes.
Yeah, that's why I get it.
So tall I said, you are tall.
Yeah Yeah.
I remember I tried to get to the president
who I really admire, your president, cause he loves Ireland.
Your president, I tried to get him
to drink Guinness that night you know.
Really? Yeah.
I said come on, you must drink some Mr. President,
you must have some Guinness.
Remember they had that table of Irish Dinners?
Oh yeah, it was great. They had kegs in the white house
for the first time. I swear to God, yeah.
The police came by at like 2 in the morning
and shut us down.
It was a good time.
It was great to see the First Lady and
the President trying to learn the Irish jig.
They were trying to teach them the Jig.
Yeah, yeah it was a lot of fun.
Yeah it was great.
And then the evening was over
and they cleared us all out of there.
What? I don't know about that,
I know you weren't allowed
to smoke so I used to sneak out on the balcony
and take a quick draft of cigarette
and then get back in again. It was great, it was great.
It was grand.
I had a really good night
That's the best thing about the White House,
is that, they there is a balcony to smoke on.
(audience laughing)
I wanted to ask you because, uh,
because you do have, I alluded to it before,
you do have a reputation,
as do many of the actors of your generation
of drinking some while you work or as you work.
Especially in the theater world and I was curious,
is that really true?
Is there you know-
Wouldn't it be terrible for me to lie on your show
and say it's not true? Yeah.
I remember, I'll tell you a great story.
Can I tell you a story?
Well that's sort of what these shows are all about.
Oh, I see.
This dovetails nicely for us, yeah go ahead.
Well
Quite a story, all right.
We had, there was the two guys who-
There were three of us, legends for drinking, okay?
And for having our, you know,
have a wild revelationary life.
One was Richard Burton, Peter O'Toole,
The great O'Toole and Harris.
And O'Toole and I did a play together down
in Bristol O Vic which is a very famous theater
in England.
And we have, and during the play,
there's about 15 to 20 minutes
when actually, we are not on stage.
So, every single night, we come off stage together,
dash across the street, took the taxis into the bar.
And we be throwing back beers and beers,
watching the time, making sure we got back on time
for our cue, right? Uh-huh.
Well one night, we got so engrossed
in telling stories that we forgot
that we were on stage and the next minute,
the door bursts open,
and the stage, and the stage manager came rushing on us
and said,
"Harris, O'Toole, for God sake, you run,
you run, there's a full house waiting for you.
The play has stopped dead. Come on."
We dropped our drink quickly down
our throat, rushed across the street.
(audience laughing and clapping)
Mustn't waste it. No no, no.
So we rushed across the street,
we were ducking taxis,
ducking this and that.
I dashed it. I had to make my entrance just before him.
As I hit the stage door over the ten, I heard my cue.
I thought, I would never make it, dashed up the stairs,
Dashed across, pause on stage.
Harris is not on,
O' Toole is not on.
I just dashed on, tripped over a wire,
slid right across the stage,
right down to the footlights and hung over onto the lap of
two or three sort of Bristolian old women.
(Audience and Host laughing)
And O'Toole was to come on next.
And this woman looked at me in shock,
as my sort of head was
in her lap.
And she said out loud,
(Imitating) "Good God, Harris is drunk".
(audience laughing)
And I looked at her and I said, Madam,
if you think I'm drunk, wait till O'Toole
makes his entrance.
Oh God.
(audience clapping)
I love it, I love it, I love it.
You know, it's funny.
Cause you mentioned Peter O'Toole, but, but it's, you know,
with in the last couple of years, it's become more,
I think more chic, probably in the last 10,
15 years and correct me if I'm wrong,
more chic actually probably to be Irish.
There was a time probably when you were starting out.
I'm thinking in the fifties, when,
when being an Irish actor,
trying to make a living in England was very difficult.
It was very rough.
We, it was very,
I think I was the first Irish born actor
to play leading roles.
And to get academy award nominations.
And that was the very, very first.
And when I got to England first though,
it really was tough.
You were cast as the policeman or as a Navy on the street
or you know, a laborer, you couldn't get it.
You could not get a decent job.
And I remember a story that I was doing in my first year out
of school, drama school,
I was playing in Macbeth and I was playing a small part
in Macbeth, of the doctor.
This snobby, sophisticated, racist English actor was playing
Macbeth.
And he had to have a whipping boy.
And it was Harris because he was Irish.
(Imitating) God sake.
Harris, can't you allowed to speak the English language
correctly? Don't you know,
you don't don't pronounce it like that.
Oh, for God's sake.
Can't you scatter the right marker.
(Speaking normally) God, I thought I hated this man.
I said, I swear to Christ.
I get you one day.
So now you must remember I'm playing
the doctor, came the opening night, packed house.
Harris is playing the doctor and the most,
and the most important scene in Macbeth
is when lady Macbeth commits suicide.
And I, as the doctor have to come on stage
for my tiny little part,
my only little entrance.
And I'd have to say, and Macbeth turns and he says,
(Imitating) How goes the queen?
(Speaking normally) And I have to say, the queen,
my Lord is dead.
And then he stops. And he says she should have died
hereafter.
Now, it leads into the greatest soliloquy from Macbeth,
which is tomorrow,
tomorrow and tomorrow creeps without petty pace from day to
day to the last syllable of recorded time.
That's his cue.
I give him the cue and I thought I'll get him.
(Audience laughing)
I hate, I hate him.
Harris, The queen dies.
Harris comes on stage.
The actor says, " How goes the queen?"
And I said, she's fine.
(audience laughing)
She's great.
She's grand.
She's terrific.
She'll be right down now any second.
She is terrific.
I stand up, I said she's terrific.
She's grand and I know I'm fired.
She is great and she will be right down now
any minute
and you'll get on great together.
And I got off the stage quick.
And the last thing you heard me say,
going out the stage door was 'Taxi'.
You are fired, fired.
(Audience clapping and cheering)
They didn't call back after that point.
Oh my God. All right.
How much time do we have here, Jeff?
Hmm? Oh, great.
Cause I don't, I do not want this to stop.
I'm-
I will come back.
Will you come back sometime? Sure.
Please do come back. Sure, sure.
I do want to mention,
I do want to mention it is Valentine's day and you have a
reputation for, you know, the many loves in your life.
You've been married. How many times?
Twice. You've been married twice.
Okay. And you've had a romance difficult for you.
They threw me out. I mean, I mean,
I'd have to I'm I must tell you.
I am the closest friends of
my two ex wives.
They were totally justified throwing me out.
I mean, I was impossible. Totally impossible.
Never there, never here,
never home, always away somewhere.
I tell you a funny story actually.
My first wife.
I don't think you can miss.
My first wife was, was divorcing me.
Right? Uh-huh.
And she had this sort of very shrewd lawyer and the,
and my first wife was a sweetheart.
And I'm an, I, I she's a sweetheart.
Today, she's my best mate.
But he never, her lawyer never told her,
but he hired a private detective to follow me around London
to build up a kind of case against me.
There was no need to build a case against me,
just open the newspapers.
And there was cases against me.
Just say, it's Richard Harris.
There it is.
A justifiable divorce on her part.
So I was tipped off that this guy was following me
and he was watching every move I made and
I found out his name and
I found out his home number.
And I kept it in my pocket.
Well, about a month afterwards,
I was in the Dorchester hotel in London and
I was really drunk.
I had, I drank about a bottle of vodka, a brandy,
it was actually, right?
And it was about three o'clock in the morning.
And I thought I'd have some fun.
So I get his card out of my pocket and
I ring him up to his home.
And in a very tired voice, he said, "Hello?" and
I said, are you Mr. So-and-so, the private detective?
He says, yes I am.
Well, this is Richard Harris.
You can hear that because he didn't know.
He didn't think I knew.
I said, well, I got to tell you something.
I said, I am piss-drunk.
I don't know where I am.
Could you please tell me where I am.
Put in this on news. If nothing else,
put in this on news.
Oh boy.
I hope, I got to mention this.
The hunchback is a, so that everyone should watch this.
The hunchback is on TNT this Sunday at 8:00 PM.
And I really do hope you come back.
This is, this is the most fun we have on this show.
Thank you very much for doing it.
Thank you.
Richard Harris, everybody. (audience cheering)