October 24, 2024 • 15 mins
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Here we go.
Speaker 2 (00:02):
Please welcome. Stephen fry is an actor, author, comedian, activist
and former Twitter Stephen, I got a bonus ten minutes
with you.
Speaker 1 (00:09):
Very excited about Steven bo.
Speaker 3 (00:15):
Okay, my next guest. Everyone is it's big for me.
I'm having a bit of a fangirl moment. You'll know
my guest as potentially one half of a bit of
fry and Laurie with Hugh Laurie. Maybe for his work
on Jeeves and Wooster. I remember that is also a
longtime host of the quiz show Qi. He's been in
Wild Vfa Vendetta. Maybe you'll know him from his Emmy
Award winning documentary series black Adder, potentially or being one
(00:37):
of the funniest men in the world that has shaped
the way we look at comedy. Now, the one and
only Stephen Frye is on the show. Hello Steven, Welcome
to Australia.
Speaker 1 (00:45):
Mitch, thank you, and Heallo Australia.
Speaker 2 (00:47):
Oh it's so good to have you here. Are you you?
Speaker 3 (00:49):
We were talking off the air, but this is what
sixth seventh Trip down Under?
Speaker 1 (00:53):
Yes, that's right, first one in nineteen eighty one, as
a just graduated student, we did a show at Edinburgh
that won an award and an Australian impresario I think
it would be the correct word called Michael Edgley came
round and said, do you guys fancy a tour of Australia.
It was me and Hugh Laurie and Emma Thompson. We
(01:15):
were all at university together and we've done this show
and we said yes please, we'd love the idea. So
literally a few months after Edinburgh had stopped, we were
on a plane to Melbourne and then Perth Earth was
interesting then. This was nineteen eighty one.
Speaker 3 (01:33):
It's interesting now, Steven, Yeah, yea.
Speaker 1 (01:35):
Well it was half a nineteen fifties city. There were
still shops that had that sort of yellow cellophane in
the windows, an old sort of combination underwear then. But
half of it was what you might call Bondifide, you know,
Alan Bond had just started to become this big thing
(01:56):
in the America's Cup was going to be won, and
it was a whole turnaround for the city. So it
was very exciting.
Speaker 2 (02:01):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (02:02):
I love hearing you talk about Hugh Lori, Emma Thompson,
these you know stars, these comedic heavyweights that we know
now but for you, they're like just friends. You must
look back at that time and think, I back look
on the memories fondly, but the fact that you've all
had such big careers, that would you ever predict that
for the three of you?
Speaker 1 (02:21):
Well, with Emma Thompson, no question. From the very very first.
The first time I saw her go on stage was
the production of Tom Stopard's Travesties, and it was like Athena,
the goddess who was born fully armed from the head
of Zeus. She seemed to have been born fully armed
with monstrous talent, poise just I mean, the other students
(02:44):
were in the production were good, they were very good,
and one or two of them are professional actors to
this day. But she just had a quality that was
beyond anything. And Hugh was the funniest person I'd ever met,
and ridiculously talented, and so in a sense not surprised
that they've done well. It's because I've always just thought
(03:04):
how lucky I was ever to have met them. Yeah,
and I look gap then for them to say, somewhere
across the world as they now are, and how lucky
we are to have met.
Speaker 2 (03:14):
You met him? Yes, of course, when I interviewed them.
Speaker 3 (03:17):
Eventually, I'll play it back and then we'll get a
full circle, you know, I'll do that for you.
Speaker 2 (03:21):
You and Hugh.
Speaker 3 (03:22):
Your your career together, I mean, you know, is incredible
and it's a memoth and it has paved the way
for so many of the comedies we watch and know today.
Speaker 2 (03:29):
Were you ever did you ever get pitted against each other?
Speaker 3 (03:31):
Like did you whether it be from you, you know,
young in the entertainment in theater. I mean I came
from that background, and I know that I definitely was
pitted against other boys when we had similar roles going
for the same sort of gigs.
Speaker 2 (03:42):
Was there any ever, ever, any of that for you
to not?
Speaker 1 (03:46):
Really? I think we were fortunate in that from the
moment we met, we realized we were like the sort
of two fingers that interlock, or the four fingers that interlock.
Hang on, how many don's look at my hand? Five?
There you go, fingers that interlock on the hand. It's
at four really because the thumbs don't. And come on
to even get to the point, is that what I
(04:06):
was what I was terrible at. He was brilliant at
music and athleticism and throwing himself around he is beyond genius.
And I had this kind of verbal thing that words
were magical to me, and I played with them in
the way that he played with music and so on.
(04:27):
Not that he was verbally inept, but that it was
my thing, if you like. So when we wrote together,
we would provide different aspects, and when we performed together.
A producer came to us in nineteen eighty must be
in nineteen eighty eight, I suppose, and said that he
had acquired the rights for pg Woodhouses Jeeves and Worcester
stories and would we like to play the parts? And
(04:49):
we chatted to him enthusiastically, saying what a mother's idea,
And then after about fifty minutes of this, she said,
you haven't actually said which parts you'd like us to play.
And the guy said, well, isn't it obvious? I mean
you'd be Bertie Wester and Stephen would be Jeeves. And
(05:12):
you went, oh, yes, all we could do it the
other way around if you liked. And I said to
him afterwards, you serious, and he said, no, no, it
was perfectly obvious. I just feel like funny we didn't.
He was basically reacting against the idea that we were
so obviously typecast, and yet we were he plays I
(05:34):
think he felt more that he always played the idiot,
that's like blue eyed, dopey idiot. Though he showed him
house that he can play quite the opposite. And if
you watch that SI, I.
Speaker 2 (05:44):
Loved him in House. I loved him in House and
loved him in Yeah, he's brilliant, sensational. You know. You
touch on that and how language was your thing as
a kid.
Speaker 3 (05:55):
I was listening to an interview of yours and you
were saying that musically, not really, you weren't gifted in
that sense, but words, even as a young child, you
were drawn to.
Speaker 2 (06:06):
How does a kid a young kid?
Speaker 3 (06:07):
Because my god sons are drawn to their iPad, they
love their cocoa mail, and I'm like, got love. If
my god sons were drawn to words and language? How
where did that come from?
Speaker 2 (06:16):
Parents?
Speaker 1 (06:16):
Or well? As I say, partly because I was so
inept at everything else. I've said it before earlier, and
that shows a very very poor grasp of English. Another one,
but I I was and I there was a music
lesson and the teacher wrote on the board orchestra because
(06:37):
that we were going to learn about the different sections
of the orchestra, that the brass and so on, and
I immediately shouted out cart horse, and the teacher loged
me had said what. I'm used to the fact that
I was a disruptive influence already at the age of
seven or eight, whatever it was, And I had seen
the word cart horse come out of the word orchestra,
(06:58):
in other words, that they were anagrams. It just struck
me instantly as a thing that was obvious, and I
was surprised that she hadn't, and that none of the
rest of the class had, and I got an odd look.
But it set me off on a path of playing
with words more. I would write words out and rejiggle
them and but you know, do all kinds of things.
And then I enjoyed I know this sounds really terrible,
(07:20):
but I enjoyed Latin and French and an ancient Greek
and just the sheer fun of letters making words, and
words making sentences and sentences making paragraphs, and then thinking
about the difference between speech and written word, and how
absurd to think of them as the same, because you
can't speak in sentences. You just speak and you pause,
(07:44):
and it's up to writing to try and find a
way of registering the way we speak, not up to speaking,
living up to writing. But you're taught all the time, no,
that's spelt this way or it's written that way. Well,
writing is just an attempt to reify, to instantiate, if
you like, what we speak, and what we speak is
(08:07):
a liquid bubble of thought and of sounds and of
the tongue hitting the back of the teeth and these
beautiful and remarkable things that only we can do as
human beings and that we so take for granted. And
that's the thing. I just love it if your nephew
was or your child who you know, if they realized
(08:27):
this gift they had inside their head, that it can
be funny and witty and beguiling and seductive and charming
and ridiculous and do all the things that words and
language can do and delight. And it's a musical instrument
in our heads that we don't have polish or keep tuned.
Speaker 3 (08:46):
Yeah, and I agree with you, you poor thing though
being in Australia, I mean, we as a country we
shorten everything and we are disgusting Steven the swear words
that come out of our mouths. We don't care well
I'm on commercial radio and I can say, Stephen Fred,
don't give a shit, know, isn't there that is brilliant?
Speaker 2 (09:02):
And you know I love.
Speaker 3 (09:03):
British radio and I love entertainment in the UK, but
your radio rules of very different holes.
Speaker 2 (09:08):
Over here I can say and you can say whatever
you want.
Speaker 1 (09:11):
Really, yeah, no, it's true. I don't know why we're
so strict. America even stricter. Of course they have the
federal government over the air waves. Yes, I don't knock
Australian language use idiolect, don't knock it. It's brilliant. I
mean they reached its zenith for me and for the
(09:33):
British generally when we were told what language could do
by the young Barry Humphreys when he arrived in the sixties.
And then you know with his epithets, you know that
have now become so part of the language. People don't
even realize he invented them, like point Percy at the
porcelain and things like that for having a.
Speaker 3 (09:51):
P And.
Speaker 2 (09:53):
It was incredible, wasn't he, Barry? Oh my god, what
a what a what a comedic like strength.
Speaker 1 (09:58):
One Les Patterson talking about. I'm sure she'd enjoyed riding
the pigskin bus?
Speaker 2 (10:08):
Where does that come from?
Speaker 1 (10:10):
It's joyous, isn't it? It's just it is because it's
it's it's it's using a kind of poetic mastery of
language over the most gutter reality.
Speaker 2 (10:21):
What is an argument with Stephen Fry like? Do you can?
Speaker 3 (10:24):
You do?
Speaker 2 (10:24):
You get? You know common talk? You do you give
us the F word and you know the no never?
Speaker 1 (10:32):
Yes, I do all the time. I love swearing. I
think it's an incredibly important part of language. It's it's
a reinforcers. There's a you can bleep me out from
this one. But a friend of mine, I mean, he
was a comic writer. Died in his nineties, but he
remembers in the nineteen thirties being taught but this rather
(10:53):
excellent English teacher who tried to impress upon them the
value of intense in English, extremely very rather all the
differences between these words. And he gave us an example.
He said, there were a couple of workmen digging a
road and one points to the other where there's a
poster that says one man, one vote, And he says,
(11:17):
what's that mean? And his friend says, what it means?
Speaker 3 (11:20):
You know?
Speaker 1 (11:20):
One man, one vote, because I don't get it. One man,
one vote, So no, I do understand one fucking man,
one fucking vote.
Speaker 2 (11:32):
Oh it clicked, Yeah, it clicked. Clicks. That's brilliant. All right.
Speaker 3 (11:40):
So you're here in Australia. If you like to see
Stephen Fry, you can an evening with Stephen Fry. You
do it everyone, you're an Adelaid Perth, Brisbane, Canberra, Melbourne, Sydney.
You can get tickets at Bohm Presents dot com. What
is an evening with Stephen Fry? And I'm talking about
the show, you know, let's not get them too naughty here.
But what's what's the stage?
Speaker 1 (11:57):
Well, it's a mixture. It's conversation rather one sided in
as much as I'll be doing the talking, thank you
very much, indeed, mister and missus Eckler, But there are
there will be. I will then talk about whatever the
audience wants me to talk about. We've got QR codes
in the lobby and at the interval, so that I'll
be busy at the interval while everyone is guzzling their
(12:19):
drinks and nibbling their olives. Because I have a sophisticated
audience there, I will be triaging the questions and people
can ask me about anything. They can ask me about sex, blood, iron, steel, history, hate, hope.
Whatever you know needs to be talked about, and I
(12:42):
will I will do that.
Speaker 3 (12:44):
If I hadn't known, I could have asked you about sex,
this would have been a very different interview. Staven.
Speaker 1 (12:48):
It's an awful business. Have you ever tried it? It's
absolutely dreadful.
Speaker 2 (12:52):
Not yet, but in the new year.
Speaker 3 (12:54):
My fingers are crossed. Even I'm really hoping my news
resolutions kind.
Speaker 1 (12:58):
When you think about it, what kind of creator, whether
one would ensure that the very areas that are the
prime targets for sexual exploration and investigation are the same
areas out of which we push the poisoned remains of
our food. I mean, that is so bizarre. Those horrible, damp,
(13:22):
tufted areas of the human body that see the passage
of so much excrement and an unpleasantness are also Yeah,
I mean, it's like a sort of Nazi tormentor So
there's your sandwich, Major Donaldson inside the sewage tank. Help yourself.
Speaker 3 (13:43):
I know it's sick and twisted, and for me, you know,
the kind of sex that I'm having to put to
put that button up there and to make that, you know,
the arousal zone seems who came.
Speaker 2 (13:52):
Up with that?
Speaker 1 (13:54):
Do you know that? You remind me of this very
extraordinary story called the Pemberton Billings case. In the First
World War, there was a man called Pemberton Billings who
was like the modern version of a conspiracy theorist, and
because the war was going badly, he started publishing in
his very right wing magazine, which was called The Sentinel
or The Vigial or something like that, these extraordinary inflammatory
(14:19):
defamations of the Prime Minister Asquith's wife, Margot Asquith, saying
that she was a lesbian who worshiped the Cult of
the Clitarists and accused Churchill of having gay relationship. He
thought they were all gave wow. Anyway, they eventually decided
to sue and when it got to the court, this is,
of course during the First World War, so it's nineteen
(14:40):
sixteen or seventeen maybe, the judge said, so why is
this cult of the Clitarists considered defamatory and said, well,
it's very diffamatory. Well I better ask then, what exactly
is a clitarist? And there was a big pause and
the the jury. He looked over to the jury, who
(15:01):
will shook their heads? They were all men, of course.
He literally produced a doctor, a blackboard and a piece
of chalk, and the doctor drew on the blackboard. The
judge shook his said I don't think so. Oh no, no,
not on my thank you very much. No, no, no, no,
I don't know, no, surely not really good graciously, you know,
(15:23):
I'm only slightly exaggerated.
Speaker 2 (15:26):
Oh that was so funny.
Speaker 1 (15:28):
That's Pemberton billings case a mystery.
Speaker 2 (15:32):
May as well have had a dartboard and go and
I think it's here.
Speaker 3 (15:34):
I think that's it. I don't know, oh, Steven, that
is why I could. I could honestly talk to you
for hours. I'm a massive fan and a big admirer,
and I am so lucky that you took out the
time to come on the show.
Speaker 2 (15:45):
Thank you for being here.
Speaker 3 (15:45):
I really appreciate it.
Speaker 1 (15:47):
That's your real pleasure, Mitch. All the best,
Here we go.
Speaker 2 (00:02):
Please welcome. Stephen fry is an actor, author, comedian, activist
and former Twitter Stephen, I got a bonus ten minutes
with you.
Speaker 1 (00:09):
Very excited about Steven bo.
Speaker 3 (00:15):
Okay, my next guest. Everyone is it's big for me.
I'm having a bit of a fangirl moment. You'll know
my guest as potentially one half of a bit of
fry and Laurie with Hugh Laurie. Maybe for his work
on Jeeves and Wooster. I remember that is also a
longtime host of the quiz show Qi. He's been in
Wild Vfa Vendetta. Maybe you'll know him from his Emmy
Award winning documentary series black Adder, potentially or being one
(00:37):
of the funniest men in the world that has shaped
the way we look at comedy. Now, the one and
only Stephen Frye is on the show. Hello Steven, Welcome
to Australia.
Speaker 1 (00:45):
Mitch, thank you, and Heallo Australia.
Speaker 2 (00:47):
Oh it's so good to have you here. Are you you?
Speaker 3 (00:49):
We were talking off the air, but this is what
sixth seventh Trip down Under?
Speaker 1 (00:53):
Yes, that's right, first one in nineteen eighty one, as
a just graduated student, we did a show at Edinburgh
that won an award and an Australian impresario I think
it would be the correct word called Michael Edgley came
round and said, do you guys fancy a tour of Australia.
It was me and Hugh Laurie and Emma Thompson. We
(01:15):
were all at university together and we've done this show
and we said yes please, we'd love the idea. So
literally a few months after Edinburgh had stopped, we were
on a plane to Melbourne and then Perth Earth was
interesting then. This was nineteen eighty one.
Speaker 3 (01:33):
It's interesting now, Steven, Yeah, yea.
Speaker 1 (01:35):
Well it was half a nineteen fifties city. There were
still shops that had that sort of yellow cellophane in
the windows, an old sort of combination underwear then. But
half of it was what you might call Bondifide, you know,
Alan Bond had just started to become this big thing
(01:56):
in the America's Cup was going to be won, and
it was a whole turnaround for the city. So it
was very exciting.
Speaker 2 (02:01):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (02:02):
I love hearing you talk about Hugh Lori, Emma Thompson,
these you know stars, these comedic heavyweights that we know
now but for you, they're like just friends. You must
look back at that time and think, I back look
on the memories fondly, but the fact that you've all
had such big careers, that would you ever predict that
for the three of you?
Speaker 1 (02:21):
Well, with Emma Thompson, no question. From the very very first.
The first time I saw her go on stage was
the production of Tom Stopard's Travesties, and it was like Athena,
the goddess who was born fully armed from the head
of Zeus. She seemed to have been born fully armed
with monstrous talent, poise just I mean, the other students
(02:44):
were in the production were good, they were very good,
and one or two of them are professional actors to
this day. But she just had a quality that was
beyond anything. And Hugh was the funniest person I'd ever met,
and ridiculously talented, and so in a sense not surprised
that they've done well. It's because I've always just thought
(03:04):
how lucky I was ever to have met them. Yeah,
and I look gap then for them to say, somewhere
across the world as they now are, and how lucky
we are to have met.
Speaker 2 (03:14):
You met him? Yes, of course, when I interviewed them.
Speaker 3 (03:17):
Eventually, I'll play it back and then we'll get a
full circle, you know, I'll do that for you.
Speaker 2 (03:21):
You and Hugh.
Speaker 3 (03:22):
Your your career together, I mean, you know, is incredible
and it's a memoth and it has paved the way
for so many of the comedies we watch and know today.
Speaker 2 (03:29):
Were you ever did you ever get pitted against each other?
Speaker 3 (03:31):
Like did you whether it be from you, you know,
young in the entertainment in theater. I mean I came
from that background, and I know that I definitely was
pitted against other boys when we had similar roles going
for the same sort of gigs.
Speaker 2 (03:42):
Was there any ever, ever, any of that for you
to not?
Speaker 1 (03:46):
Really? I think we were fortunate in that from the
moment we met, we realized we were like the sort
of two fingers that interlock, or the four fingers that interlock.
Hang on, how many don's look at my hand? Five?
There you go, fingers that interlock on the hand. It's
at four really because the thumbs don't. And come on
to even get to the point, is that what I
(04:06):
was what I was terrible at. He was brilliant at
music and athleticism and throwing himself around he is beyond genius.
And I had this kind of verbal thing that words
were magical to me, and I played with them in
the way that he played with music and so on.
(04:27):
Not that he was verbally inept, but that it was
my thing, if you like. So when we wrote together,
we would provide different aspects, and when we performed together.
A producer came to us in nineteen eighty must be
in nineteen eighty eight, I suppose, and said that he
had acquired the rights for pg Woodhouses Jeeves and Worcester
stories and would we like to play the parts? And
(04:49):
we chatted to him enthusiastically, saying what a mother's idea,
And then after about fifty minutes of this, she said,
you haven't actually said which parts you'd like us to play.
And the guy said, well, isn't it obvious? I mean
you'd be Bertie Wester and Stephen would be Jeeves. And
(05:12):
you went, oh, yes, all we could do it the
other way around if you liked. And I said to
him afterwards, you serious, and he said, no, no, it
was perfectly obvious. I just feel like funny we didn't.
He was basically reacting against the idea that we were
so obviously typecast, and yet we were he plays I
(05:34):
think he felt more that he always played the idiot,
that's like blue eyed, dopey idiot. Though he showed him
house that he can play quite the opposite. And if
you watch that SI, I.
Speaker 2 (05:44):
Loved him in House. I loved him in House and
loved him in Yeah, he's brilliant, sensational. You know. You
touch on that and how language was your thing as
a kid.
Speaker 3 (05:55):
I was listening to an interview of yours and you
were saying that musically, not really, you weren't gifted in
that sense, but words, even as a young child, you
were drawn to.
Speaker 2 (06:06):
How does a kid a young kid?
Speaker 3 (06:07):
Because my god sons are drawn to their iPad, they
love their cocoa mail, and I'm like, got love. If
my god sons were drawn to words and language? How
where did that come from?
Speaker 2 (06:16):
Parents?
Speaker 1 (06:16):
Or well? As I say, partly because I was so
inept at everything else. I've said it before earlier, and
that shows a very very poor grasp of English. Another one,
but I I was and I there was a music
lesson and the teacher wrote on the board orchestra because
(06:37):
that we were going to learn about the different sections
of the orchestra, that the brass and so on, and
I immediately shouted out cart horse, and the teacher loged
me had said what. I'm used to the fact that
I was a disruptive influence already at the age of
seven or eight, whatever it was, And I had seen
the word cart horse come out of the word orchestra,
(06:58):
in other words, that they were anagrams. It just struck
me instantly as a thing that was obvious, and I
was surprised that she hadn't, and that none of the
rest of the class had, and I got an odd look.
But it set me off on a path of playing
with words more. I would write words out and rejiggle
them and but you know, do all kinds of things.
And then I enjoyed I know this sounds really terrible,
(07:20):
but I enjoyed Latin and French and an ancient Greek
and just the sheer fun of letters making words, and
words making sentences and sentences making paragraphs, and then thinking
about the difference between speech and written word, and how
absurd to think of them as the same, because you
can't speak in sentences. You just speak and you pause,
(07:44):
and it's up to writing to try and find a
way of registering the way we speak, not up to speaking,
living up to writing. But you're taught all the time, no,
that's spelt this way or it's written that way. Well,
writing is just an attempt to reify, to instantiate, if
you like, what we speak, and what we speak is
(08:07):
a liquid bubble of thought and of sounds and of
the tongue hitting the back of the teeth and these
beautiful and remarkable things that only we can do as
human beings and that we so take for granted. And
that's the thing. I just love it if your nephew
was or your child who you know, if they realized
(08:27):
this gift they had inside their head, that it can
be funny and witty and beguiling and seductive and charming
and ridiculous and do all the things that words and
language can do and delight. And it's a musical instrument
in our heads that we don't have polish or keep tuned.
Speaker 3 (08:46):
Yeah, and I agree with you, you poor thing though
being in Australia, I mean, we as a country we
shorten everything and we are disgusting Steven the swear words
that come out of our mouths. We don't care well
I'm on commercial radio and I can say, Stephen Fred,
don't give a shit, know, isn't there that is brilliant?
Speaker 2 (09:02):
And you know I love.
Speaker 3 (09:03):
British radio and I love entertainment in the UK, but
your radio rules of very different holes.
Speaker 2 (09:08):
Over here I can say and you can say whatever
you want.
Speaker 1 (09:11):
Really, yeah, no, it's true. I don't know why we're
so strict. America even stricter. Of course they have the
federal government over the air waves. Yes, I don't knock
Australian language use idiolect, don't knock it. It's brilliant. I
mean they reached its zenith for me and for the
(09:33):
British generally when we were told what language could do
by the young Barry Humphreys when he arrived in the sixties.
And then you know with his epithets, you know that
have now become so part of the language. People don't
even realize he invented them, like point Percy at the
porcelain and things like that for having a.
Speaker 3 (09:51):
P And.
Speaker 2 (09:53):
It was incredible, wasn't he, Barry? Oh my god, what
a what a what a comedic like strength.
Speaker 1 (09:58):
One Les Patterson talking about. I'm sure she'd enjoyed riding
the pigskin bus?
Speaker 2 (10:08):
Where does that come from?
Speaker 1 (10:10):
It's joyous, isn't it? It's just it is because it's
it's it's it's using a kind of poetic mastery of
language over the most gutter reality.
Speaker 2 (10:21):
What is an argument with Stephen Fry like? Do you can?
Speaker 3 (10:24):
You do?
Speaker 2 (10:24):
You get? You know common talk? You do you give
us the F word and you know the no never?
Speaker 1 (10:32):
Yes, I do all the time. I love swearing. I
think it's an incredibly important part of language. It's it's
a reinforcers. There's a you can bleep me out from
this one. But a friend of mine, I mean, he
was a comic writer. Died in his nineties, but he
remembers in the nineteen thirties being taught but this rather
(10:53):
excellent English teacher who tried to impress upon them the
value of intense in English, extremely very rather all the
differences between these words. And he gave us an example.
He said, there were a couple of workmen digging a
road and one points to the other where there's a
poster that says one man, one vote, And he says,
(11:17):
what's that mean? And his friend says, what it means?
Speaker 3 (11:20):
You know?
Speaker 1 (11:20):
One man, one vote, because I don't get it. One man,
one vote, So no, I do understand one fucking man,
one fucking vote.
Speaker 2 (11:32):
Oh it clicked, Yeah, it clicked. Clicks. That's brilliant. All right.
Speaker 3 (11:40):
So you're here in Australia. If you like to see
Stephen Fry, you can an evening with Stephen Fry. You
do it everyone, you're an Adelaid Perth, Brisbane, Canberra, Melbourne, Sydney.
You can get tickets at Bohm Presents dot com. What
is an evening with Stephen Fry? And I'm talking about
the show, you know, let's not get them too naughty here.
But what's what's the stage?
Speaker 1 (11:57):
Well, it's a mixture. It's conversation rather one sided in
as much as I'll be doing the talking, thank you
very much, indeed, mister and missus Eckler, But there are
there will be. I will then talk about whatever the
audience wants me to talk about. We've got QR codes
in the lobby and at the interval, so that I'll
be busy at the interval while everyone is guzzling their
(12:19):
drinks and nibbling their olives. Because I have a sophisticated
audience there, I will be triaging the questions and people
can ask me about anything. They can ask me about sex, blood, iron, steel, history, hate, hope.
Whatever you know needs to be talked about, and I
(12:42):
will I will do that.
Speaker 3 (12:44):
If I hadn't known, I could have asked you about sex,
this would have been a very different interview. Staven.
Speaker 1 (12:48):
It's an awful business. Have you ever tried it? It's
absolutely dreadful.
Speaker 2 (12:52):
Not yet, but in the new year.
Speaker 3 (12:54):
My fingers are crossed. Even I'm really hoping my news
resolutions kind.
Speaker 1 (12:58):
When you think about it, what kind of creator, whether
one would ensure that the very areas that are the
prime targets for sexual exploration and investigation are the same
areas out of which we push the poisoned remains of
our food. I mean, that is so bizarre. Those horrible, damp,
(13:22):
tufted areas of the human body that see the passage
of so much excrement and an unpleasantness are also Yeah,
I mean, it's like a sort of Nazi tormentor So
there's your sandwich, Major Donaldson inside the sewage tank. Help yourself.
Speaker 3 (13:43):
I know it's sick and twisted, and for me, you know,
the kind of sex that I'm having to put to
put that button up there and to make that, you know,
the arousal zone seems who came.
Speaker 2 (13:52):
Up with that?
Speaker 1 (13:54):
Do you know that? You remind me of this very
extraordinary story called the Pemberton Billings case. In the First
World War, there was a man called Pemberton Billings who
was like the modern version of a conspiracy theorist, and
because the war was going badly, he started publishing in
his very right wing magazine, which was called The Sentinel
or The Vigial or something like that, these extraordinary inflammatory
(14:19):
defamations of the Prime Minister Asquith's wife, Margot Asquith, saying
that she was a lesbian who worshiped the Cult of
the Clitarists and accused Churchill of having gay relationship. He
thought they were all gave wow. Anyway, they eventually decided
to sue and when it got to the court, this is,
of course during the First World War, so it's nineteen
(14:40):
sixteen or seventeen maybe, the judge said, so why is
this cult of the Clitarists considered defamatory and said, well,
it's very diffamatory. Well I better ask then, what exactly
is a clitarist? And there was a big pause and
the the jury. He looked over to the jury, who
(15:01):
will shook their heads? They were all men, of course.
He literally produced a doctor, a blackboard and a piece
of chalk, and the doctor drew on the blackboard. The
judge shook his said I don't think so. Oh no, no,
not on my thank you very much. No, no, no, no,
I don't know, no, surely not really good graciously, you know,
(15:23):
I'm only slightly exaggerated.
Speaker 2 (15:26):
Oh that was so funny.
Speaker 1 (15:28):
That's Pemberton billings case a mystery.
Speaker 2 (15:32):
May as well have had a dartboard and go and
I think it's here.
Speaker 3 (15:34):
I think that's it. I don't know, oh, Steven, that
is why I could. I could honestly talk to you
for hours. I'm a massive fan and a big admirer,
and I am so lucky that you took out the
time to come on the show.
Speaker 2 (15:45):
Thank you for being here.
Speaker 3 (15:45):
I really appreciate it.
Speaker 1 (15:47):
That's your real pleasure, Mitch. All the best,
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