The persona is that part of us we want to show the world to make ourselves acceptable and to make our interaction with others palatable. It is that aspect of us that everyone sees. We continue to develop our persona, and we hope it's enough for us to engage with others and for the world to recognize us. Jung coined the term persona based on the mask which was used by the Greeks in their play to identify personality and attitude of the characters. The Greek actors needed to make sure they exaggerated body movements so that the audience could understand what was being conveyed, and by whom, and in which tone. When actors were switching roles, they needed to be careful when changing masks not to show how— not to show the spectators their actual faces and the roles being switched. They would face to the back of the scene and put on the mask. Which is very symbolic. As Jung said, everything in our unconscious seeks outward manifestation. But how do we make ourselves heard? How do we project ourselves into the world and still maintain our true selves? Or is it our true self too painful to bear? As Matthew Arnold in his poem wrote, beneath the surface stream shallow and light of what we say we feel, Beneath the stream, as light, of what we think we feel, there flows with noiseless current strong, obscure and deep, the central stream of what we feel indeed. Fundamentally, the persona is nothing real, said Jung. It is a compromise between the individual and society as to what a man should appear to be. He takes a name, earns a title, represents an office. He is this or that. In a certain sense, all this is real, yet in relation to the essential individuality of the person concerned, it is only a secondary reality, a product of compromise in which others have a greater share than he. The persona is a semblance, a two-dimensional reality. I am Dr. Maria Kempinska. You can find me on www.mariakempinska.com. And I'm a psychoanalyst. In my therapy room, I dig deep, not just to reveal the inner psyche, the soul, and the individuality of my clients, which lurks beneath the surface stream, but to heal and integrate the wounds and pains of each individual's life and existence. Today I have the immense pleasure of speaking with my guest John Fleming, who is a TV producer, writer, reviewer, and blogger of comedy. Welcome, John, and thank you so much for joining me today. That's okay. That sounded a bit intellectual. I think I'm the wrong guest for you. I'm sure you're not. You are good though. I think Persona is an Ingmar Bergman film, isn't it? I never saw it. No, I didn't see it, but they're like that, aren't they, out there in, you know, in Scandinavia? Ah, you Swedes. Swedes, deep, deep. Deep, deep, because they have that darkness, don't they, for half of their day for so long. And they did things like Festen and, you know, those deeper, you know, psychoanalytic and very disturbing types of films, which are very interesting if you can take that. You have to take it in small doses, don't you? Yeah, well, I'm Scottish, I've got a dark psyche anyway, no doubt. We love the Scots, of course. So let me just ask you, what motivates you to write a blog or a post about comedy, and what type of comedian motivates you? What an interesting and awful question that is. What motivates me? Not bloody money, because I don't get anything out of it. I think it's a vocation, isn't it, dear? It's a vocation. It is. Like comedians have to be on stage to get the applause and to get the laughter, for some reason I have to write. God knows why. I like writing. I can write easily, but it's mostly based on interviews, which are a nightmare. I like interviewing people. I like writing the blogs, but the transcribing is a nightmare. So I don't know why I do it. Masochism. It's probably masochism. I'm joking. Yeah, but within that, you know, it's quite interesting because you have become this tour de force, haven't you? Because you did start the Malcolm Hardy Awards. I did. So come on, you, you always— you always like the challenging comedian. Um, I like the quirky and unusual and original. Yeah, and it's more than just quirky, unusual, and original because that's Harry Hill or let's say Al Murray, because Al Murray took on that persona, didn't he, of the pub landlord. Because did you ever see him before he became a pub landlord? I did. No. More interesting, I saw Jim Tavaré before he became the man with the double bass. Yes, quite. Jim Tavaré, I mispronounced it, Jim Tavaré. Jim Tavaré, that's right. Originally was, I thought, interesting but dull, and it wasn't very funny. He then for some reason got a double bass and he told exactly the same jokes in exactly the same way, and he was very, very funny, and he remains very, very, very, very funny. He's a very nice man, but for some reason the double bass maybe gave him confidence or something, and the confidence came through, I don't know. Yeah, I think, you know, both of you and I have watched comedy for many, many, many years, and you see comedians develop, and some of them have that comedic tone sort of straight away in some way or another. I don't think we're born with a comedic tone. I do think we acquire it, or I've, you know, in my PhD I wrote about the comedian and what makes us funny. And if you look at people like, um, Russell Brand, um, Jimmy Carr, and equally Robin Williams, all three of those, and maybe many, many more, uh, actually were funny in order to cheer up their mothers, or to either alleviate the depression of the mother, or to grab their attention, which Robin Williams did. Grabbed his mother's attention by being funny. Yes, ma'am. Sorry. No, so I was just going to say, so there's many different dimensions and routes to why a comedian is funny, but to take that onto stage and then within that time frame— because most comedians start off with 5, 10, 15, and then 20 minutes, and then it builds from there— to actually translate that onto stage, as you know, is a very different art form, isn't it? Yeah, I mean, people say, oh, you're very brave to go on stage and be a comedian, but most comedians actually aren't self-confident. I think most comedians lack self-confidence, and part of the reason they perform is probably because they lack self-confidence. Because they— I mean, I'm not in any way a performer, I'm just not interested at all. I'm not interested in developing, and I'm not a natural performer, I'm not interested. But very often I've talked to comedians and performers generally, and they say, well, the first time I went on stage at school when I heard the applause, when I heard the laughter, I knew that was for me. It's some validation or self-validation. So when they go on stage and get— and they're able to control an audience, they believe that they're as good as they hope they might be. So it's a sort of masochism in a way, because if you go on stage and you have the most wonderful gig in your life, then in the back of your mind you're thinking, the next time I go on stage, it won't be as bad as that. But I still have to go on stage. If you go on stage and it's awful, then you think, I'm as bad— they think I'm as bad as I think I am. And there's some sort of self-validation going on there, and you have to have a lack of confidence to go on stage, I think. Yeah, and also I remember talking to Sean Mayo about this, and he said, I know that when I'm on stage, exactly that, I am good, I know what I'm doing, that's the area of my life I'm good. Yeah, you know, because in so many other areas, he, in his opinion, he was, um, in his opinion, in other areas of his life, he wasn't as good. Now, whether that stemmed from childhood or whether that stems from a recurring problem, not just for him but for others in a relationship or in everyday life, that would be interesting to do actually, you know, sort of to sort of just analyze but there's so much to it. But you choose the comedians that are more quirky, outspoken, but also there's a certain amount of truth in what they say, isn't there? You can't be a comedian that is successful and funny without a certain amount of truth. Do you agree with that? Well, you can be a complete fantasist. I mean, you can— I mean, Harry Hill doesn't really tell any philosophical truths, I don't think. True, true. But is there something in there that everybody relates to? Uh, no, I think it's— so, I mean, comedy— I have a terrible cough, by the way. Flemming by name, Flemming by nature. I inherited it from my father. Hold on, I don't know what else I was going to say there. And, uh, what was the question? Is there something that we resonate with even in his fantasy world? That is something we recognize, that quirkiness, that silliness. I mean, I think most comedy— well, the reason people laugh, I think, is as a reaction to something unexpected. So there's a punchline at the end of the joke, and it's sort of like performing comedy is a bit like performing magic. It's all to do with misdirection. So in magic, you're looking at the wrong place when suddenly something happens somewhere you're not looking. And in comedy, you have the audience going along a storyline, even if it's a short storyline for a gag, you have the audience going along a storyline line for a gag, they're looking in one direction, they know what's coming next, they know what's coming next, they know what's coming next, and then suddenly out of left field from nowhere comes the punchline and they react to that in shock and it's like a big 'ah' but instead of gasping they go 'hahaha' and laughter is a sort of release of tension, it's something unexpected that happens. And so you created the Malcolm Hardy Awards, And from the Malcolm Hardy Awards, why did you choose Malcolm? Now, for those who don't know Malcolm Hardy, tell us a bit about his background. Well, Malcolm was interesting, he was interesting. He was a nice, moral, middle-class kid who decided not to be that particularly moral, to be amoral really, to an extent. And he spent most of the '70s in jail for various petty offenses like sort of setting fire to cinemas and stealing things. And so he had a wonderful general knowledge because he used to listen to like Brain of Britain and things on the radio when he was in jail. Anyway, when he came out around about the early mid-'80s, he came out around about the same time that alternative comedy was starting. And so He said, well, when you come out of jail, you can do one of two things: you can either become a taxi driver or you can become a performer. So he became a performer, and he ran a club called the Tunnel Palladium, and he also managed acts. Sorry for the cough. So all these acts were starting up, and he could encourage them, and he was wonderful at encouraging acts and telling them how to succeed and managing them. And then once they became famous, they ignored him and then just full letter worded on him because he was a shabby old man and they didn't want to be associated with him. But in fact, he was very talented. He wasn't a very good comedian, but he was a great MC because he could charm everyone. Yes, so true, because I knew him and he used to perform for me very, you know, sort of quite often. And he had The Greatest Show on Legs, um, where they did the famous balloon dance. I mean, comedy in the 1980s was slightly different because you went to a comedy club, it was really sort of variety. So you got a stand-up comic, you got maybe a poet, God help us, or you got a mime, or you got a juggler, or you got someone doing something really bizarre and indefinable. So I remember there was a man who used to torture teddy bears. Oh, that's right, yes, yes. And it was a great act, it's relevant to you I think, and I can't remember his name, terrible cough, sorry, a great act. And he came on stage in a sort of an Arab robe and a fez, and the fez was open at the top, and he gave a lecture. As far as I remember, it was like an academic lecture. And as he did the lecture, he had a spoon, and he put the spoon into the top of the fez and took out what appeared to be his brain bit by bit. It was Semolina. And as he took out bits of his brain, various— his brain did started to deteriorate, so his motor reactions chain, so he would twitch, or he would have— it was like he was— you were seeing this man's brain deteriorate as he ate it bit by bit, and so the lecture fell apart. And so it was simultaneously very, very funny and very, very, very, very sad and rather unsettling because it was like— and disturbing— it was like a flash forward to your own old age and your own sort of, you know, it was very strange. Great act. You wouldn't have that sort of act now because you go to a comedy store, a comedy club now, and there's like 6 young men in their 20s talking about masturbation and watching porn. Yeah, and also coming back to that time, you know, stand-up, stand-up, sorry, go on. Yeah, and so stand-up has become very much, you know, sort of prescriptive, but in the early days when Malcolm was around, they were very much more outspoken, everybody was trying things. You had people like Roy Hutchins who was quite psychologically based, but coming back to poets, Benjamin Zephaniah was one of my closing acts at that time. So he was the first sort of poet rapper, I think, and he was absolutely amazing. So, and obviously John Hegley was a poet who also closed the show. As you say, they wouldn't necessarily finish today. But why did you choose Malcolm, and what is it, your penchant for these comedians that have that outspokenness? Jane, Jane Godley, is outspoken in that way. Also the now very famous, and has been sprung back into the psyche, the media psyche, of Jerry Shadovitz. What is it about those people that actually you love and that you want to promote, that you are intrigued by? Well, there's two questions here. I sort of stumbled into Malcolm because I was researching on a show called Game for a Laugh and we wanted Bizarre Acts, and Malcolm was managing most of the Bizarre Acts, so I went down his club to find Bizarre Acts and talk to him, and sort of got to know him that way, and we became sort of vaguely sort of matey, and then later on we both worked at Millgate Television, which was providing all the entertainment for BSB, the precursor of BSkyB, so I suppose we sort of got to know each other that way, we stumbled into it. I'm interested in bizarre acts because they're different, I mean, just because they're different. I mean, I can sit through those 6 20-something male comics doing the same stand-up routine now, but it's not that— they're all much the same, really. And then comedy has sort of changed. In the 1980s and so on, when it started, it was alternative comedy, and now it's just stand-up comedy. There's no alternative, it's just stand-up. And stand-up, stand-up, stand-up's okay, but it's the same, same, same. I want something different. Malcolm had an interesting idea, which was there was a difference between talent and skill. He was never much impressed by mimes, or particularly wasn't impressed by jugglers, because he said almost— not everybody— almost anyone who practices, you know, 8 hours a day for 10 years will become a skilled juggler because it's a skill. But not everyone can become a stand-up comic because it's talent, because you are either funny or you're not funny. I mean, I know someone who shall be nameless and who isn't known who's been doing stand-up comedy for 15 years, and he's desperate to be successful stand-up comic and he works really hard at it, but he doesn't have the funny gene for some reason. It's just not there. It doesn't work because he doesn't have the talent. So some things are skillful, like juggling. Some things are talent, and if you don't have the talent, you don't have it. You're born with it or you're not. But, you know, coming back to Malcolm, and he was what the British call idiosyncratic and eccentric, and I love that about him. And but also, as you say, he was a lovely man underneath it, wasn't he? So, and also very, very easygoing and fun, but people would have seen him quite differently on stage. But coming back to you, John, you and your beginning, your upbringing, tell us about your upbringing, your parents. My parents, well, my mother was, because it was that generation, my mother was a housewife, and my father was, they were both brought up, well, my mother was born near Perth, but they were both brought up in southwest Scotland, which is the back of the And my father, when he was about 15, it must have been something like that, he ran off to join the Navy, and they said, "You're too young, go away." But then he went back again when he was whatever the appropriate age was, 16 or whatever, it would have been 16. So this was 1936, so he joined the Navy just in time for the Spanish Civil War, and then of course the Second World War, and then, and he was based in Malta, and that went on until he was invalided out in about 1948 or so. I wasn't a big invalid at that. He had, it was like TB and things. It wasn't a physical, you know, it wasn't a broken leg or anything. So, and then he then got into doing marine radar, which is sort of finding fish with radar. So he was electronically minded. So he was electronically minded. My mother's father was a joiner, a carpenter. So they were both very practical people. I'm completely impractical. So I don't know where that came from. Factual things, forget it. So I'm not manually dexterous, they were both manually dexterous, so I don't know where any of that comes from. I don't have any sort of showbiz creative background at all. My mother didn't read books because when she was in her early teens, some schoolteacher said, "Oh Agnes, you have no soul for poetry," and this of course meant that she felt, "Oh God, oh," and she felt belittled, and so she never really read books after that. That's such a powerful statement actually, because just that one comment seems to actually sort of go right into the heart. It sort of falls into our black hole and it sort of is amplified, isn't it? And actually makes such a big difference in our lives. But you're a book reader, you're a writer. Where did you get that skill from? I have no idea. It's a talent, not a skill, if it is a talent. I mean, it's something I have. As you can tell, I'm not vocally fluent. I am verbally fluent. I can write quite fluently, but I'm not vocally fluent because I'm all over the place. I blub blub blub blub blub. I gibber all over the place. Now, why that is, I don't know. Possibly a defense mechanism. I don't know that if people underestimate me, then I have the advantage because they're underestimating me. Maybe that's something to do with it. And I know when I was doing television research, I— if you were on big, big, big time Saturday night shows like Game for a Laugh or Surprise, Surprise, I think Sunday night shows, and you went off to some far-off place in the middle of nowhere in the Midlands where people had nothing to their lives and they just wanted to be on television for the sake of a bit of interest, then you were the big-time TV person coming to visit them. So I had to play myself down, you know, I'm just like you, I'm an idiot, I'm more of an idiot than you are. And therefore I think there is something psychological about me that I do want to— I don't want to perform, I don't want to be the centre of attention, I do like to be in the background. And therefore if I if I gibber a bit, then people underestimate me, I think. Yeah, but isn't it also that, you know, you have quite a lot of power with your blogging? People do read it, you do, you know, you created the Malcolm Hardy Awards. I don't give a full letter word, don't care. No, no, but that's what I'm saying, so it actually does give you a little bit of influence, let's say, so you can affect people's lives by listening to what you actually, or reading what you write. I don't think there's an ego thing there. No, no, I'm not saying I don't think it is an ego thing. I don't think the ego has to be part of it. As you say, it's your talent and it's got to be expressed. Yeah, I think what it is, it's, it's, I see really good acts and I think, oh, they deserve to be helped and no one's paying attention to them. I think I should give them a bit of attention. And you've got the capability of doing that. But you moved from booking acts and that's how you met Malcolm. How did you become friends with somebody like Malcolm? What was it that, uh, well, he was in— you know, I mean, he was an interesting man. He would know, and of course his onstage and offstage persona were totally different. He was, he was rather sort of shy, rather. She was a bit shy. Uh, this is nothing to do with me, but, uh, the— I helped him write his— well, I wrote his autobiography for him, Heaven's Above. Uh, I read his autobiography from him, so I know lots about his background. There was a point where he came out of Borstal or somewhere when he was in his teens, I think, and he came out and he went round to visit his girlfriend, and there was some other bloke in his girlfriend's house because she'd been having it off while he was in Borstal. And he said to me, before that I was always faithful to women, after that I was never faithful to women. And I thought, oh, I'd asked his mother about this and she said the same thing. Yeah, after that he just He wasn't faithful to anyone at all. And then there was some sort of psychological— like you say, that single incident can change your whole character, and suddenly kapow, he wasn't remotely faithful. I mean, that's the ultimate betrayal, isn't it? Yeah. Oh yeah, I mean, it's just destroyed your ego. Yeah. And also there was an incident at school where he did lots of naughty things, and then that's fine, you get— you do naughty things, you get found out, you get punished. But he did— there was something he was I can't remember what it was, it was something he didn't do and he was blamed for it and he never forgot that, that he was punished for something he didn't do. I think maybe that's the way lots of criminals, that they get funny, they realize life isn't fair and so they rebel against it by just going way off the system. So what was your teenage life like? What was your school life like? Well, like I say, I was born in Scotland. I was born on the west coast at Campbelltown. When I was 3, I went to Aberdeen in the northeast, and when I was 8, so to do my father's job, when I was 8, I came down to Ilford in Essex. It was Essex then, it's London now, which is basically just beyond the East End. So because I moved when I was 8, I think I was more gregarious when I was in Scotland because I remember I had little chums. And then when it came down to the primary school, aged 8, which is like halfway through primary school, everyone had made their own sort of friends and their own little groups and things. I made lots, I made friends at school, but no one lived near me out of school, so I didn't really have any friends out of school. So I think I became more, I'm an only child, I think possibly became more solitary then, or more able to cope with, with solitariness then. And then when I went to secondary school again, no one really lived anywhere near me, so I had lots friends in my little clique in the school, but no one really out of school. So what did you do out of school? How did you spend your time? Well, I don't know, because I, I don't know whether— I think I was more gregarious up in Scotland, because out of school I'm not— I've never been a joiner. My grandfather was a joiner, but I'm not a joiner. Uh, my parents tried to persuade me to join the Scouts, and I thought I didn't really want to go to sort of cold fields and lie on the grass and be uncomfortable. I've never really wanted to join in with groups. My worst fear would be being in the Second World War and having to do community singing and all that. Oh, people, lots of people doing the same thing together, never attracted me at all for some reason. That must be a basic thing within my psyche, that I don't want to be part of a faceless group. I want to plow my own furrow. Not to make myself famous, but just, I want to do my own thing. I don't know where that comes from. Your individuality. I mean, Jung called it— said, uh, not only Jung, the Greeks called something called the daemon. I often talk about this, that everybody comes in, uh, with their own unique spirit. And, uh, Hillman, James Hillman, calls it your acorn. So that from within you, your parents come there and they sort of help you grow, and then your unique spirit develops, but it's how does it develop. Are we given enough of the fertility, if you like, the fertilizer, to be able to grow? I mean, I don't know if it's relevant, but I'm a cat person, not a dog person. I've never particularly been attracted to dogs because in order to own a pet dog, it has to— you have to beat down its character, so it has to obey every word you say. Whereas a cat, you know, you can't really train a cat. Cat does whatever it wants to do. I always say dog people want little animals that'll trot around after them and look up at them adoringly and obey their every whim and think they're godlike creatures, whereas cats just look down on you, don't give a full letter word. Yeah, they don't care, they're very independent, but to get them to love you is quite an art, isn't it? But that's sort of the same thing, that I like the individuality of cats, whereas dogs have to suppress their individuality to be your preacher. So when you left, um, school, what did you do then? How was that for you? What was it your— how was there a difference in your life then? Well, well phrased. Um, uh, my character's changed somewhere along the way because when I was 11 and I did the 11+, I was sick over my exam paper because I was so nervous. And I was very nervous and, well, I was always shy, I think. I was very nervous at 11, but then round about O-levels and things, I became less nervous and didn't really— I wasn't nervous about exams and so on. And then I did my O-levels and A-levels and got into Bristol University to read philosophy. But then there was a girl involved along the way here, and so being an immature chap, as I, I had my heart broken by this girl— not, not her fault, and then completely silly and stupid and immature— I tried to top myself by taking only the tablets I could find in the medicine chest. What I hadn't taken into consideration— well, because I wasn't thinking straight, of course— what I hadn't taken into consideration really was the fact I was absolutely full letter word starting with SH at chemistry. So, so bad my chemistry master left school and went to New Zealand, I think, to escape me. But I was useless at chemistry. So these tablets didn't really work. So I just took anything that was going. And so I lay on the bed waiting to die and didn't. And so I hadn't realized until then that my interest in words, I hadn't realized till then that if you double over in pain is actually a literal description of what happened. So it was like someone was pulling a scythe through my stomach, and so I couldn't stand straight or anything if I stood up. And it would come in waves, so it would be really painful, then pain, and I started coughing up blood. And then this just happened, I don't know, every, you know, 10 minutes, 8 minutes, it would get quicker. The gap between the pain and the coughing up blood got quicker. And then it started to get less quick. And so instead of coughing up red blood, I was coughing up brown blood. And the gap between the pains was getting more. So obviously it wasn't going to work. It had gone wrong. So eventually, after God knows how long— I was alone in the house— eventually I phoned an ambulance and got taken to hospital. How long were you in hospital for? I can't remember, to be honest. All they had to do was pump my stomach out. So I think I was probably there a night or something. I mean, there wasn't any— anything damaged about me physically. Just pumped up the drugs. And did you go back to uni? Did you stay at uni and complete your philosophy course? That was the point of the question, wasn't it? So I got into Reid Philosophy University at Bristol, and then because I didn't want to go because of this, this girl, which was stupid. And because the school thought I should, I was persuaded by the school with no persuasion involved. I was persuaded by the school to study for entrance to King's College Cambridge to read English. And because I had 3 A-levels, A, B, E, and they wanted a 4th A-level, it didn't really matter what the grade was provided it was a 4th A-level. And I can't really remember, but I did get an interview for King's College Cambridge. And the bloke said something like, he's, I think, I think because at that time the entrance involved French and I was obviously not going to pass the French exam because it was a factual exam, and so he said you don't have to pass the entrance exam, you just have to put up a good show was the phrase he used. So I was going to take the entrance exam to King's College Cambridge, didn't have to pass it, just had to put up a good show, but then Is it out of order, isn't it? During the studying for Cambridge, that's when I tried to top myself. I didn't go to university, started studying for Cambridge, tried to top myself, and then left school. And then instead of going to university, somewhere along the way I spotted a course which was Communication Studies at what was then the only polytechnic in Britain, the Regent Street Poly. And it was Communication Studies, which was radio, TV, journalism, advertising, with on the side a bit of sociology, psychology, linguistics, and literature. It was an excellent course. I was year 2 of a 3-year intake, that was the second year of a 3-year course, and so at the end of the course you didn't get a degree because no one ever actually finished the course, you got a diploma. So I got a diploma in Communication Studies, which was a wonderful, wonderful course. But of course no one knew what the hell it was. If you went for a job, what's communication studies? And now it's all media studies, which is all theoretical, but that course was very practical because, you know, it was the Regent Street Poly, which was halfway between Oxford Circus and BBC Broadcasting House. And so our radio course was supervised by a shortly retired BBC radio producer. Television course was supervised by a guy who at that point was producing a Spike Milligan show for BBC2, The journalism part of the course was run by the production editors of the News of the World and so on, and they could all get— they knew everybody, so they could get excellent lecturers in. So if we had to do a lecture, if we got a lecture about arts in television, we got Humphrey Burton, wasn't it, who was head of arts at the BBC. So we got heads of department. If we had a talk about the newspaper industry, we had Cecil King, who was the chairman of the Mirror Group Newspapers. So it was a great course. And we had, you know, a television studio, everything wonderful, of course. But of course, then we knew what the hell it was when you left, so it didn't really help particularly. But it did help you. But coming back to that moment when you took the tablets and you were in hospital, how did you actually get through that? Because that is a very difficult space to be in, isn't it? And, you know, now there's a lot more focus on particularly young men taking their own lives. How did you get through that sort of every second. Funny, I was talking to somebody the other day actually, who, uh, a colleague of mine, a very amazing, uh, healer. And he had, um, a problem with his stomach, I believe. He had— was throwing up, or part of his body, he was, uh, a part— you know, one of his veins had burst and he was actually— blood was pouring out of his body and he didn't know whether he would live or die. And he said, I was lying in bed for about you know, 24 hours debating that life-death moment. How do you get through that? And has it haunted you? And has it stayed with you ever since? No, I mean, I wasn't thinking straight at all, so I wasn't really sort of consciously working through anything. What happened was I got released from hospital whenever I got released from the hospital, and I still wasn't really right in my head. I ran away from home, ran off to Edinburgh because every year, all the way from since I was an embryo, we went up to Edinburgh every year because we had a— my father had an aunt who lived there, so we went up to her. So I went up to Edinburgh because I loved Edinburgh, which is why I like the Edinburgh Fringe so much to an extent. And then— oh no, so before that or after that? No, after that, I think. Because we're talking about the ancient days of the 17th century here when I was young. The, apparently the GP, because in those days you had a personal GP, the GP apparently told my parents he wasn't going to put any of this down on my medical record because it would affect my future job prospects. So I don't think there's anything about this on my medical record. But in those far-off days, I mean, if you took your life, it was no longer illegal to take your life, which it once was, but it was frowned upon. So they said, oh, wouldn't you like to go into a mental asylum because you tried to take your own life and you're 18? And I thought, well, I'll get away from things at least. So I went into Barley Hill Mental Asylum in Ilford, in Goodmayes, and I was only there for one night because the doctor sort of started asking me lots of questions, obviously, and sort of being very invasive and said, oh, you 'Oh, you're quite fluent,' he said, which I was at that time, I'm not anymore, and he said, 'Oh, you're quite fluent, do you mind if I bring in lots of students and we can all listen to what you say?' And I thought, well, I'm only here to get away from things, I don't want to hide in a tent or something, and here you are, I'm an exhibit. So I discharged myself after a day, that's right, and I discharged myself after a day, and then I ran away from home. That's the old— so, and as for, I mean, looking back through the mists of time. I mean, it has had an effect. I thought it didn't have an effect on me, all this taking me trying to kill myself thing. It wasn't a cry for help. I wanted to die, full stop. So I'm now— no, I don't have any fear of dying. I don't want to die in agony like Aireen Nieve or something, but you know, I don't have any fear of death. You know, at some point I'm going to die. Fine, okay, if I die tomorrow, don't matter. I'm not going to try and kill myself again because you can't do that without phenomenally and adversely affecting other people. You can't do it. I mean, there's a Dorothy Parker poem, "You Might as Well Live," isn't it, where she goes through all the various ways of killing yourself and the downside of each and then says, "Well, you might as well live," at the end, that sort of thing. So I just sort of plow on. But I think another thing, there's two other things. One is I don't look backwards. I don't look at the past. So lots of people worry about the past and live in the past, and I don't, because you can't change the past. You can't— you can change the future to a certain extent, but not really. I mean, if Putin decides to bomb London, there's nothing I can do about it. So I only worry about things I can change. So I don't really look at the past. I've got a terrible memory to begin with, and I don't give a full letter word. So I don't look at— I don't look backwards. I don't— I try to look forwards and plan. But I really only live in the present. And there was some other point, but I've forgotten it because I have a terrible memory. No, and it's like, you know, sort of, how did it affect your life? And you've just gone through that. And when you hear about young men trying to take their lives or successfully taking their lives, what do you think should be done? Is there something that we're doing wrong in society? I think this is the thing people go through. I mean, I, I frankly, I don't think about it. I think they should do what they like, take their lives, you know, but I don't really think about it. Yeah, you're not— is this an existential, or do you think religion helps, or do you think it doesn't matter, it's down to the individual? I think religion must help, but I'm not sure that religion is a very good idea. Oh yeah, the other effect was that, so I was in— I, I, I, I tried to top myself, went to the hospital And I must have been there for a day because at some point my poor parents, who had no inkling of what was going to happen and were terribly distraught and hurt and weren't thinking straight because of that, came in to visit me. And what you do if you go and visit someone in hospital is you bring them fruit. So they brought me some oranges to eat, and to cut, to open the oranges, a very nice short sharp knife with a nice sharp point and a serrated edge. 'Give me the oranges and the knife.' So I sort of took the knife, and when they left, they sort of under the covers, I sort of ran it over my wrist a bit and didn't do anything, gave it to the nurse. But that's, I think, the result of that. I think looking back was that I don't trust anyone anymore, because even people who have your best interest at heart, who love you, who have the best interest at heart, can kill you. So I don't trust anyone. Yeah, and is it— do you think that they're unconscious? And also that they— coming back to that moment we've talked about with Malcolm, that moment when he found his girlfriend with somebody else, and as I said with your mother where the teacher said that one thing that actually dampened her spirit towards learning. Yeah, and there's nothing you can really do about it. The teacher didn't mean to destroy her lovely reading. And my parents just weren't thinking straight, and they didn't mean to give me a knife to suicide. And this is it. Do you think talking about it helps? It doesn't particularly help me. I can talk about it, but I can shut off. Like I say, if I can't change something, it doesn't matter. Yeah, and I don't worry about things. I worry away at problems that can be solved, but I don't worry about things Generally, I don't worry about things. Obviously, there are some things I regret in the past, and it's always a matter of pity, but there's nothing I can do about it, so it doesn't sort of damage my psyche long term, I don't think. So do you think that by looking at comedy— you've watched so much comedy, and also to some extent from the sidelines, you've watched a lot of comedy— do you think that helps you in your everyday life? Do you enjoy it? That much? Does it lift your spirits, or do you now get annoyed with comedy and annoyed with the, as you say, the stand-ups that regurgitate same old same out without any innovation, the skill without the talent? I don't get annoyed. Well, they have talent. I don't think I get annoyed with them. I'm not that— I mean, the cheap bit of psychology would be to say, well, I was sad about X, Y, or Z, and therefore I watch comedy to get a laugh and to to hide my sadness from myself by, you know, if you don't laugh you'd cry. I don't think that really affects me. What interests me in comedy I think is the structure, how you get to the point where the audience laughs uncontrollably, because I mean the comedian is up there and the sole aim of the comedian is to try and control the minds of the entire audience to such an extent that the members of the audience can't control their own bodies, so they laugh uncontrollably, and the comedian is in control of that. So at that point, he or she has total control over these, in a sense, lesser beings, and therefore their ego is boosted by controlling the motor actions of the audience. The audience actually isn't in control of themselves at all physically. Their brains can't control their bodies, they laugh. And the person controlling them like automatons is the man on stage or the woman on stage. Where that gets us, I don't know, because I start to ramble. I start to ramble. No, but it's interesting because coming back to the people that you prefer and talk about, you know, like Janey, Janey Godley, the Scottish comedian who's now just going through a terrible time with her cancer. I'm not sure if she's through it, but she also took that on stage, as you said. And you were telling me when we were talking— I know Janey as well. That she actually talked to the audience about her cancer. Do you want to go through that? Because that's quite an interesting aspect to stand-up comedy and a comedian who can impact on the audience. What did she do? Well, no, in fact I didn't see that. I haven't seen her perform since the cancer thing hit. What I have seen, it's online, is there's a recording of her— as you know, she wrote an autobiography and she was sexually abused by her uncle between the ages of, I think, about 5 and 11 or 5 and 13. And she eventually got him prosecuted, you know, 30 years later or something. But there is a wonderful clip online and it's fascinating, and it's fascinating because it shows two things. One is the structure, well, the way that— it's the way you tell them, it's the way you tell them that's important. That's right, I worked with him actually. She's talking to a home audience in Falkirk or something. If you look online on YouTube, it's called something like Fuzzy Felt Jesus because that's a later part of the act, and it's the very, very, very beginning of the show, and she goes on stage at the very beginning of the show and she says, okay, just before the show starts, I just have to tell you I was sexually abused by my uncle when I was a kid, pause, but don't worry, I got him killed for my birthday later on, and the audience laughs, and she says, I did, I got him killed, and the audience laughs even more, and she says, that's not a joke, he was killed, and they laugh even more, and she says, 'He got his balls cut off,' and they laugh even more. And then she says, 'And so,' and then she starts the act. And that's fascinating to me because what she's saying is not funny in any way at all. She is saying a man got murdered, the audience is laughing, and the more she says that it's true, the more they laugh. And someone said, I don't know if it was me or someone else, maybe Stuart Lee, someone said that the thing about Janey is she doesn't tell funny stories, well she's not a gag merchant, she doesn't tell gags at all, She's a storyteller, but she doesn't tell funny stories, she tells stories funny. So nothing, almost nothing she says, if you listen to it or write it down, is actually a funny story. If somebody else were to do it, it would come out in a very different way. I remember doing that, writing down, you know, some comedians' work, the work of various comedians, and it's definitely very personal., and the interpretation is theirs, isn't it? Because you cannot model that, it's not like, as you say, a joke. But coming back to somebody like Jamie, she has always been a very, you know, a tour de force. She gets on stage, as Malcolm is, as Gerry Shadovitz is. Do you think that's a part of your character as well, that you are a tour de force, although you're slightly hidden? That sort of outspoken, you can say things in your blog that you can't, that other people will read and listen to. The things that you're saying today are forward, they're open, they're outspoken. Is that that hidden part of you? I don't think so. I've never— well, I used to drink until I was in my mid-20s. I used to drink socially, so if people went to the pub, I'd have half a lager for the whole evening or so. I never drank I've not been a drinker, and I think a lot of times people drink so that they've got an excuse to behave the way they want to behave but socially can't normally. So they can say things or they can do things when they're drunk that you wouldn't normally do. And I think, well, if I want to say something, I'll just say it. Why get drunk? I don't like the drinks. I stopped drinking when I was about 20-odd. People assume I'm a recovering alcoholic, but I just never liked drink. I've never had any problems with saying since I was 20, I've never had any problems saying what I mean. I could be xenophobic here and say I think the Scots are more honest than the English, but— Oh yeah, but that could be true because you've got Frankie Boyle, Gerry is Scottish, Janey is Scottish. I think Scots people would tend to be more straightforward and say what they think, whereas English people might go around the houses to trying to avoid saying things. Yeah, did you think there's sort of a little bit more socially careful, you know, sensitive sort of— I don't know, I think I couldn't express this carefully, but I think this Calvinism has something to do with it. I think that, I mean, and under Scottish law, unless it's changed, if you promise to sell— if I promised to sell you my house at £100,000 and someone comes along and offers you £200,000, offers me £200,000, in England I can just choose the bigger offer. But in Scotland, verbal contracts are legally binding. So your word is your bond. As soon as you say something, that's it. And I think psychologically that might be slightly something to do with the Scottish and the English mentality. The Scots, if they say something, mean it. A lot of my— through a lot of my life, people have not actually believed what I said. So if I say, if this happens, I'll do this, Yeah, I think that's so true. Years ago when you went to the Stock Exchange, it was all done on a handshake, but it's changed over here, hasn't it? But not in Scotland, you're quite right. Yeah, and as you say, I had a reputation in television for being difficult. What this meant was that if people didn't pay me the way that they'd agreed to pay me, I just walked. Okay, I said, well, if you don't pay me the way I'm walking, and then they were so surprised. Because they assumed if I said I'd do X, Y, or Z, then I wouldn't, that it was just talk. And it wasn't. If I say I'll do something, I'll do it. And do you think that's happening more and more, that's something in our world that people are hiding behind, that the words are not their bond anymore? People are just lying, basically, to use the— let's say it as it is— there are more people telling untruths. And do you think the media plays into that? Well, there is Mr. Trump, of course. Well, without getting too political, do you think the media— because, you know, sort of the media itself, there's a lot of politics that is, you know, it's sort of being bandied around— but do you think the media plays into giving one perspective and another is going on? I suppose it might be linked to the fact that you can't say certain words anymore because, you know, if you say certain words, it might offend certain people, and, uh, oh, you can't do that. Well, Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me appears not to be true anymore, because if you say certain words or express certain views, they'll be terribly uppity about it. I don't know how linked those are, but coming back to the outspokenness and the thing that captures all of us, you know, in our psychology, Jung called something— said something is called the shadow. Now The shadow, some people misinterpret actually, and I hear this quite a lot amongst people, that it's only the dark side, but also the gold sits in the shadow. So, um, somebody that I've always enjoyed and had great regard for as a comedian is Jerry Shadovitz, and so have you. And now he's going back on stage in a bigger way because he was, um, you know, sort of people talked about him at the Edinburgh Festival. But talking about Jerry, Do you think that side of yourself comes out and really in your ability to trust the word and to be outspoken in that, to actually have the confidence to walk away, is part of what happens with the comedians that you like? There is that. If you were a comedian, would you be like Gerry or Janey or Frankie Boyle? Well, I can probably not. I, I don't know what I would be like because I'm not, I'm not a comedian, uh, because I, uh, I I just don't get a thrill out of it. I've got no memory, I have a terrible, terrible, terrible memory, so I couldn't remember anything, and as you can hear, I'm not vocally fluent, which you have to be. I mean, Janey can talk for 2 hours without— I mean, I remember Janey walking up Dean Street with Janey towards the Soho Theatre, and she was doing a preview of her upcoming Edinburgh show, and she not only didn't know what the show was— she knew the title, but she didn't know what the show was about, she didn't know the first line, she didn't know the opening line, she had no opening line, and then she went on stage and she stormed it, it was brilliant for an hour, and I've seen her do 2 hours without any script at all. Certainly when I knew her well, she'd never had a script at those Edinburgh shows, because she once didn't get nominated for the Domaine Perrier Award because the various judges for the Perrier Award in comedy went to see the shows, and they went to see her show, and when they got together they realized that they'd seen totally different shows, because she wasn't doing a show, she was ad-libbing an hour every night, differently every night, and the rules at that time said that you had to, you got the award for a show, and they decided eventually after lots of argument that she wasn't doing a show, she was simply talking to the audience. And she was, Janey Godley, that idiosyncratic standalone personality. But they decided she couldn't be nominated for the prize. Yeah, crazy, isn't it? She wasn't doing a— that was, that was the criteria, that their criteria. Yeah. And then that's, that's, that's one thing I like and don't like about comedy. So Michael McIntyre, brilliant comic, absolutely wonderful. I admire him tremendously. I wouldn't go and see his show though, because if he did— he does a show in Nottingham tonight, and he does a show in Southampton tomorrow, he does a show in Aberdeen the next day, it'll be exactly the same show with exactly the same pauses and all that sort of stuff. I'm seeing a well-honed piece of machinery, but I'm not actually seeing different things. I've got a high threshold of boredom. I can go to the Edinburgh Fringe and see the same show 28 days in a row and enjoy it because it's different every night, even if it's roughly the same. It's just different. But don't you think that's what television demands? From people. Yes, yes. So I mean, Janey can't be— Janey isn't a gag merchant, so she couldn't be on what's that one that's just been cancelled where you do the gags. Well, she could, but Janey's not a gag merchant. With television, well, Charlie Chuck's the example. Charlie Chuck, if you remember him, was on Rees and Mortimer a couple of series, and I believe they stopped having him and had Matt Lucas instead because Dave, Charlie Chuck, couldn't do characters, he could only do his own character. I think I've got lost in this explanation, but— No, but I hear what you're saying. I think it's so, you know, sort of— the trouble is a lot of comedians make it because of television and become famous through television. There's also a pressure to be funny on television, isn't there? I know what the point was. So Charlie Chuck would do great shows, wonderful shows, but they weren't exactly the same every time. Exactly. If you did the same show twice, it'd be in a different order and perhaps different things would be in it. And what you want in television is you want to do the camera rehearsal, the dress rehearsal, and the recording exactly the same so the director knows what's happening. So it has to be exactly the same, the movements have to be the same pretty much, the words have to be the same pretty much. Yeah, so you absolutely know and can regurgitate. Yeah, and then if I see a show, I don't want it to be exact, I don't want to see Michael McIntyre, I want to see some show where there was a There was a comedian, now famous, who I won't mention, I saw in the early days and he had a very high reputation and I loved him. But basically, if he did a show, maybe 85% of it was okay, maybe 10% of it was absolute rubbish and 5% was pure genius. And I'm perfectly happy to see the pure genius. Well, maybe, maybe 90% was rubbish, but the 5% genius was so original and so wonderful. I love seeing that. And there's an act called Busby Graffo, who's no longer around really, and he had a very, very musical act, very, very, very good solid act, very good, very entertaining, wonderful act. And it was okay, fine, but if he got heckled then he'd fly off at tangents and he'd be brilliant, I mean so good, and then he'd come back to the act eventually, but the way he flew off at tangents when he got stimulated by— he got heckled and he'd reply to the heckle, then his reply would lead on to some other thing he hadn't thought of, and he'd be flying all over the place with all these ideas. And brilliant. And that's what I like. I like the— it's the unexpected I like, it's the unusual, it's the things that just happen on the spur of the moment I like. Yeah, and that, as you say, happened very much more in the early '80s when everything was being tried out as the alternative comedy. Because now people go up to Edinburgh Fringe and they want to be spotted by a TV company, so they do things that they want TV companies to see. And don't you think TV has spoiled comedy? Well, yes, because it's changed it from being— well, it hasn't changed TV comedy, it's changed stand-up comedy from being different and new and alternative and homogenised it into being a straight stand-up with gags that you can cut out. If you've got a a 5-minute routine with 10 gags in, then the TV director can cut out some gags to make it a 2.5-minute routine, that's ideal. So the necessities of television mean that, you know, it's better. Maybe, I don't know because I've not seen it, maybe some of the streamers are better because they just record shows and just let people do whatever the hell they want. And do you think because of that comedy is going to change? Where's the direction it's going to go into with comedians? God knows. Hopefully somewhere unexpected. It might be people like Jerry Sadowitz, more outspoken people have more leeway because on the streamers you can do whatever, more of what you want. But I don't know, I have no idea. And what about you, where are you heading? God knows, death. Before that. We're all there. I'm heading to Poundland because I'm that sort of guy. It's a glamorous and glitzy world. I never had any career plans, it was always a bad thing. I just meandered along and things happened. If somebody inspires you, you write about them, do you? Yeah, I mean, I only write about people who I— well, I can see a really bad show and I think, oh, he's really interesting, or I'll do a blog about him. I'm not thinking about anyone specific at all. But it's the people that I'm interested in. I'm interested in people, I'm interested in how people think. And I think that's what I love about comedy, and I think we both love that, is exactly that, that comedy gives people an opportunity to express themselves, but also it's contained within the framework of let's help the audience enjoy me, you know, so they've got to create the art, the talent, it becomes an art form, the skill and the talent becomes an art platform, doesn't it? Yeah, yeah. And I love that aspect of comedy, and I do think that if people work at it— and you've got to work at comedy, you can't just sit there and not bother with it— whether you are Janey— I watched Janey right from the early days because she did open spots for me, and I helped her, you know, develop. We had clubs in Glasgow and Edinburgh and did loads of shows up there, and she was one of the people that we found up there. And she's a good friend and, you know, she's an amazing performer, as you say, over and above her content, her material, and that's what makes a great and exciting comedian. I can't wait for that to develop more, but it's also an opportunity for everybody to learn how to be funny. So I just want more people torturing teddy bears. Yes, that was so funny, I wish I could think of his name now. But he was great and there was a lot of interesting comedians at that point. I think he ended up working for Tower Hamlets in some sort of social area. Oh, well, that makes sense. So coming to the end, and John, thank you so much for joining me on Your Mind Matters. If you have a message to give to the world, what would it be? Well, I mean, Malcolm always had a great philosophy of life which I thought was— I can't spare this really particular quickly, but, you know, 'F it, don't matter, do it, don't matter, don't matter.' I mean, there are people starving in Africa, aren't they? Not all over, around the edge is fish. And I think this is a good philosophy of life because it stimulates people into buying fish, eating fish, and getting more omega-3 and healthy. And as you say, you know, sort of, there is an area in all our lives— particularly we are lucky over here— that there is an area we can look to and you know, sort of get some sustenance from, some nutrition. And if you can't, help those that do need help. But I do think the world of comedy helps people along that journey. I'm a great— well, my— both my MA and PhD and all my work, most of my work has been around comedy and psychotherapy. And I love that element of people being able to just— and the British ability, you know, Scottish, English, Irish, all have the ability to make people laugh and to engage in the humour, and I absolutely love that. And you talking about Malcolm was very much part of that, you know, and the work you do by identifying the idiosyncratic, the unique, that 5 minutes of genius as you say, the Lenny Bruce which was 5 minutes of genius in amongst that disruptive, right, early on in the world of stand-up, or comedy let's say, is so powerful, so pertinent to look out for that instead of the regurgitating comedy that everybody goes through. Look out for that 5 minutes of genius, it could change your life. So John Fleming, let's look out for your blog with the next person, the next genius to look out for. And this is Your Mind Matters, I'm Dr. Maria Kempinska. Thank you so much for joining me today.