- I was doing these shows in New Zealand.
We had to apply to the government
to see if they could still go ahead,
and then we kind of flew to New Zealand,
stayed in the quarantine hotel.
There was a trivia quiz every night
to keep the morale of the hotel guests.
The number one prize for that trivia quiz
was an extra night stay at the hotel.
(laughs quickly)
I don't know who came up with that, but it is fantastic.
- [Tom] This is 'What A Joke'.
- [Fortune] With Tom Papa and Fortune Feimster.
- [Presenter] On Netflix Is A Joke Radio.
- Do you guys wind down for Christmas?
Do you get giddy about that?
- We do.
- Yeah, I actually did just put up a Christmas tree.
That's big for me.
- Oh, you did?
- Yeah, I forgot to tell you that.
(laughs quickly)
- Yeah, way to bury the lead.
- Yeah, are you in London?
Is that where you live?
- I am, yes.
- It seems very festive over there.
- Yeah, it's sort of,
I always get a bit weird about Christmas.
I mean, I love it,
but I always find it sort of oddly traumatic.
You never quite know what's going
to leap out of your relatives mouths.
(Tom and Fortune laughing quickly)
They're now so wary of me,
that I'm going to then put it into my sort of stand up act,
but two years ago, my mum said during,
this is why I think of it,
during the Christmas meal,
'I don't see the point of flavored condoms,
it's not like my vagina can taste'.
And it's like, solid point,
there's logic there, but it's not the time.
(Tom and Fortune laughing quickly)
- I have a feeling this contributed
to you wanting to be a comedian.
Some colorful people in your family.
- I think it's the same with all of us, hey,
that you sort of,
that they either don't talk and you want them to talk,
or they talk too much,
and you want me to shut up, you know?
And you you sort of realize the further
we get into stand up that we've,
you know, we've been made by our environment,
and you realize that we've taken on, you're like,
you know that horrible moment where you're like,
(sighs loudly) I'm my dad,
my mom, my auntie,
you know.
And then you have those lovely moments
where you're so delighted to be related to them, you know?
- It was cool.
I very rarely see this where someone comes out
with a special and a documentary at the same time.
- Yeah.
- It was very cool because it was,
to see the fraught nature of the pandemic,
and you were getting ready to go
on your tour and do all this stuff,
and then roll into isolation where you just
have this documentary with you and your parents,
and padding around the house.
And then to see the ultimate end
of all of that with the special,
which is very funny, was a very cool thing.
But I,
the one thing that really caught me in the documentary,
because I have a similar aspect,
is that your mom is the one who gave you the comedy,
but your dad is the one that gave you the drive.
And your dad kind of took offense to it,
that he wanted you to know, no,
I tell him he's great all the time.
(all laughing quickly)
- But the phrase he used, it's that weird thing,
'cause I haven't really watched the documentary,
and then I kind of watched it back.
And it's like a hyper version
of listening to your own voice.
Do you know what I mean?
- Oh yeah, it's rough--
- God!
But it's the line where my dad says,
I tell him he's great.
You know, I'll use phrases like flavors of excellence,
which is so great.
Do you know what I mean?
It's just like, hey,
did you enjoy the show?
There were flavors of excellence.
It's like, come on.
We know what we're like,
just even if you didn't, do you know what I mean?
- Totally.
(Fortune laughing quickly)
- Why you wearing makeup?
It's not that you knew that there was a camera coming,
and you've got makeup on?
- No, I've been out--
- Is he wearing mascara?
- [Mum] Why don't you shave that tidy?
- I would ask the same of you.
(mum laughing quietly)
My mum loves the fact that I do stand up.
Like she'll come to the same show
20 times in a row and still laugh.
And I'm like, you've seen it.
Yeah, but I forget.
- [Producer] Does he like you putting them up?
- No, he didn't like.
See, I wanted to put the pictures.
He said, I'm not a shrine.
Should we put them out?
I mean, they're wonderful!
This is a painting that I did with him years ago,
in my kitchen years ago.
(laughs quickly)
He hates it of course.
(laughs loudly)
- I mean, it's just creepy innit?
Who paints their son?
- I don't know what lockdown was like for you guys,
but I realized,
and I've got lots of friends who are musicians as well,
but it really made me kind of
fall in love with our art form again.
That was what got me through.
Just the idea that you could wake up,
and try and write jokes,
and get lost in those jokes or those thoughts
knowing that eventually there would be an audience again.
And then that moment when we all got
to kind of connect with our audience,
not to sound too wanky,
but they were really special gigs, weren't they?
That feeding when you were like,
I'm happy, you're happy,
this is gonna, you know,
and this is it.
This is England I'm talking about.
We don't, you know.
(laughs quickly)
We don't normally have that level of giddiness,
but I think I heard whoops last July.
And that is, yeah,
you don't hear that over here.
(laughs quickly)
- I also didn't realize that you came up with Oliver.
John Oliver.
- Yeah, yeah.
He's a good mate of mine, yeah.
So I used to support John Oliver and a comedian
called Daniel Kitson over here on tour around universities.
And John was, I mean,
John was brilliant, he's incredible.
But he was, you know,
he would always steer you away from,
shall we say, mainstream bits and pieces.
You'd just be like, you know,
trying to do something that's a little,
I don't know.
I'm like 19, I stumble into a bit that's a little bit hack,
it's working.
I can always see John at the back of the room,
just going like this.
(all laughing loudly)
Waggling a finger, do you know what I mean?
The best comedy older brother.
And everyone's laughing,
and yet you could see him going no,
no, no, no, no.
(Tom and Fortune laughing quickly)
We listened to George Carlin on the way,
and this is not George Carlin, is it--
- That's hilarious.
You're like, but they're laughing?
- Yeah, exactly!
Slogans don't work.
We're British.
What do we do with slogans?
Ignore them.
Every beer in this country, drink responsibly.
(audience laughing loudly)
Exactly!
(audience cheering loudly)
Nobody in this country drinks responsibly.
Weekends in this land are like the fucking purge.
Just (yelling quickly).
You have two days to live, England.
Kill or be killed.
(yelling quickly)
We get so hammered,
we look like there's things you see outside garages.
You know, who's there.
(groaning quickly)
(audience laughing loudly)
(audience cheering quickly)
- Is it a pretty supportive comedy
community over there in general?
- I don't know what it's like in the states,
but there's not many dicks over here.
Everyone's kind of cool, you know?
- Yeah. - Yeah.
- Oh, that's nice. (laughs quickly)
- There's a couple dicks here, but not that many--
- Yeah, there's some dicks.
(laughs quickly)
- Not a ton.
- I remember doing a gig in Finland,
and do you know the sort of children's nursery rhyme,
'Polly Put The Kettle On'?
- I don't know that one.
- No. - Yeah.
Nor did the Finnish.
I had this bit that was really funny in the UK about just,
you know, that Jack's climbing a beanstalk,
and the boys in the nursery rhymes
are doing all these cool things,
and we have a nursery rhyme up here
where Polly puts the kettle on,
and it was a disparaging thing about,
do you know what I mean?
The grand old Duke of York's got 10,000 men,
to Polly, all this stuff,
to utter silence.
Because you don't know in that moment,
you're like, Jesus Christ,
I am dying on my arse!
But you don't know that they're going, who is Polly?
What the fuck is this guy going on about, you know?
- Yeah.
- This is the one that really got me.
I was in Helsinki,
and I saw a guy before the show eat,
I was eating some chips down by kind of the harbor,
and this seagull kind of swooped
to try and get one of his chips.
And this guy grabbed, I'm not making this up,
He grabbed the seagull midair and went (yells loudly),
like that, and just screamed at it,
like with a sort of Finnish bellow that was like,
I've told you!
Like that.
And the seagull was kind of like, okay.
And then he kind of threw it the other way,
and it kind of flew off.
Now I retold that story, again to utter silence,
because the crowd were looking at me as if to go,
well, this is what you do if a seagull grabs your chips?
He steals your chips, he grabbed him--
- Put the seagull in it's place.
(laughs quickly)
- Well, it's so nice spending time with you.
Your special is really, really funny.
You have a very,
it's funny when you just mentioned Carlin a little bit.
There is a depth to your comedy,
but it's also very silly,
and animated, and just pure funny.
It was really, you know,
a lot of times we'll turn them on
and you don't get through them all.
But I was very excited to watch all of your special.
It just, it kept drawing me in.
You're a very good comic.
It was very nice having you here.
- Well, you know,
I'm also English, so I cannot deal with praise.
- You don't have to comment.
- I'll tip my top hat to you.
(all laughing loudly)
(tense music)
- You know how we do Joe's Question of the Day?
- Yeah?
- Well, Joe came up with a Joe's
Question of the Day Christmas Edition.
(Christmas music)
- What is your favorite holiday memory
or Christmas present you received?
- I think the best gift I ever got was when I was like 10,
and I really wanted this game called Chutes Away.
It was a game where you were an airplane,
and you would drop little plastic parachute guys,
and try and get it into a rotating thing below.
- Pilot the plane over a target, chutes away!
- [Tom] The ads were so intoxicating.
I was like, I gotta get that!
And I asked Santa for it, wrote a special letter,
not even a list, it was just Chutes Away.
- [Advert Presenter] Chutes Away!
- And then I got it.
And then the game wasn't as good as it was advertised.
- [Fortune] Oh.
(both laughing loudly)
(upbeat music)