(APPLAUSE)
Thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you.
I'm Stewart Lee, welcome to Stewart Lee's Comedy Vehicle.
The sat nav is off!
Every week, I talk about different things,
that's how it works, you've seen television before.
Tonight, we're going to be talking about books - books.
Now, if you've only ever read one book in your life, I highly recommend
you keep your mouth shut.
The world of books used to be a magical thing, didn't it?
The world of books. But in 1439, when Johann Gutenberg
invented the printing press, could he ever have foreseen the nightmare scenario
where one day, every single person in Britain
would own their own copy of Russell Brand's My Booky Wook?
You can read Russell Brand's autobiography and dismiss it as rubbish if you like,
or you can dismiss it as rubbish without reading it to save time...
if you prefer.
Well, the world of publishing is in crisis.
It's no coincidence that the worst published writer in the world today
is also one of the world's most successful writers...
Dan Brown.
Now, Dan Brown is not a good writer, The Da Vinci Code is not literature.
Dan Brown writes sentences like, "The famous man looked at the red cup."
And it is only to be hoped that Dan Brown never gets a job
where he is required to break bad news.
Doctor, is he going to be all right?
The 75-year-old man died a painful death on the large green table.
It was sad.
But for the past 500 years or so, we've been happy, haven't we,
with the same basic categories of literature -
fiction, history, biography, poetry.
But in the last two years or so in every high street bookshop,
there is now a new category of literature...
celebrity hardbacks. Everywhere you go, celebrity hardbacks.
I've become mildly obsessed with the notion of celebrity hardbacks.
I went on Amazon and I bought six Jeremy Clarkson books,
which you must never do...
because it will change your Amazon customer profile...
...in a way that can take literally thousands of man-hours to correct.
"Other customers who enjoyed The World According To Clarkson
"also purchased Mein Kampf...
"...Women And Their Four Uses...
"...by Jeremy Clarkson,
"Saplings I Have Crushed...
"by Jeremy Clarkson,
"Hotwire Your Hamster...
"by Richard 'T he Hamster' Hammond..."
It's not a real hamster.
But my favourite celebrity hardback is actually this one.
This is the second volume of autobiography
by a Radio 1 discjockey called Chris Moyles.
The first volume of his autobiography is called
The Gospel According To Chris Moyles.
This is the second volume,
and it's called The Difficult Second Book, The Difficult Second Book.
Which is a title that suggests a degree of irony and self-awareness
largely absent from the text itself.
It begins thus, in big letters,
"Welcome, Reader, to the first page of text,"
and you might look at that and think, "That's funny and clever."
But it isn't.
It begins...
"When my friends found out that I was writing a book,
"a few of them asked me what it was about."
"When my friends found out that I was writing a book,
"a few of them asked me what it was about."
Now...
I don't presume to know everyone in this room personally,
but I think it's reasonable to assume
that if any of us said to our friends, "I'm writing a book,"
then pretty much all of them...
...if only out of an involuntary reaction of basic
human curiosity and politeness,
would say, "What's it?" "I'm writing a book."
"Are you, Stew? What's it about?
"You're writing a book? Well done! What's it about?"
"I'm writing a book." "What's it about?"
But when Christopher Moyles said - to the friends, his own friends...
...friends of Chris - he said, "I'm writing a book," they just went...
(PROLONGED LAUGHING)
(LAUGHING CONTINUES THROUGHOUT)
Even the news that one of their number was writing a book
was not enough to stir the friends of Chris Moyles
from their alcohol and porn-induced comas.
He goes on, " When my friends found out that I was writing a book,
"a few of them asked what it was about.
"Well," writes Chris, "The truth is, it's about nothing...
"...just stuff.
"Hopefully funny and interesting stuff, but stuff all the same.
"I like to see it as a great toilet book."
Ahhh, the vaulting ambition of the writer.
Oh, Icarus...
...fly not too near the sun...
...lest thy waxy wings should melt.
"A great toilet book." That was his highest ambition for this text.
That it should be a book you could take into the toilet and defecate to...
...whilst reading a great toilet book. So given that,
given that he just wanted to write a great toilet book,
why has Chris Moyles chosen to put on the front of this would-be great toilet book
an endorsement from his celebrity friend, Davina McCall,
who describes this would-be great toilet book as "Butt-clenchingly honest."
(SCATTERED APPLAUSE)
Therefore defeating the only purpose that he had in mind for this,
when he wrote it. The tragedy of it, the tragedy of the man!
All he wanted in the goodness of his heart
was to write a book you could take into the toilet and defecate to whilst reading,
but so honest did he make it, so honest was it,
in its nakedly honest depiction of, for example,
the time that Comedy Dave put a pound coin in the pub urinal,
so honest was it that it literally forced the buttocks of the reader together,
preventing them from carrying out the one purpose he had in mind for this book.
There is no point in writing a butt-clenchingly honest toilet book.
Did William Tyndale burn at the stake in 1536
in the cause of vernacular English literature
so that you could read The Gospel According To Chris Moyles?
No, he didn't.
In the early 1500s, William Tyndale was one of a small band of radicals
who defied Pope Clement VII and translated major works into English
so that anyone could read them.
"I know a lot of people think I am
"hanging out with the rich and famous, but I am not.
"Normally, I sit in my local with a few pals and just talk shite
"like everybody else."
Yes, yes, Chris Moyles expresses such noble and improving sentiments.
The common man must have celebrity hardbacks.
For too long, the written word has been the preserve of the elite and...
- (DOOR OPENS) - William Tyndale,
copying The Gospel According To Chris Moyles into English!
"When it comes to lavatory visits, by the way,
"I can usually last a few drinks before going,
"but when you decide to visit the boys' room, that's it - it's all over.
"As Comedy Dave says, 'Once you pop, you just can't stop!" ' Enough!
(YELLING IN PAIN)
Ohhh, Moyles!
Moy-y-yles!
Chris Moyles, of course, one of the few published writers
who can claim to have written more books than he's read.
My second favourite celebrity hardback is this.
This is a book called
My Dangerous Life With So Solid Crew.
Er...
And it's by a man called Asher D, who was in Grange Hill,
and he's one of these rappers they have now, the rap singers.
I don't know if you've seen them.
Yeah, you've seen them about, the rap singers?
You've seen the rap singers, on the...
on the Top Of The Pops they have them, don't they?
They used to come on there, didn't they?
The rappers, the rap singers come on the Top Of The Pops.
You've seen them on there, there'd be a young woman singing,
and then one of the rappers would come on and they'd talk,
and do a little dance. You've seen them, the rappers, the rap singers
on the Top Of The Pops now.
They're on the...
on a lot of the adverts now.
They might have a rap singer on one of the adverts.
It might be a sausage, or some wool or something, and there'll be...
a rap about it, about how good the sausage is.
You've seen them on the...
You've seen them on the Top Of The Pops and on the adverts.
You've seen the rap singers, you've seen them...
Yeah, you know what I'm talking about, the rap singers,
and on the films they have them now.
You might see a film in the pictures and James Bond or someone,
he might go in one of these nightclubs
and there'll be a rapper in there doing a rap.
You've seen them... Yeah, on the Top of the Pops and in the...
in the adverts.
In the films they might have them. And, um...
In the shopping centre you see them as well, don't you, the rappers?
They run along the, um...
You know, there's like a hand rail - a banister along the steps there.
They run along... They run along the hand rail, don't they?
And they get to the end and they go, "Oooh", like that,
in a shopping centre, by the... Where the multistorey is.
They run along the... The rap singers, they run along the banister,
don't they? The hand rail,
where the steps go down, and they jump off there onto the, er...
the disabled access ramp. They might jump down on there,
where the wheelchairs go. Not when there's one there,
they just jump down, and they go like that,
the rappers - so, you've seen them on the Top Of The Pops and on the hand rail,
they run along the hand rails, don't they? By the shop...
By where the multistorey is and where the Corn Exchange is -
by the Corn Exchange, you see? And then they're on the ramp, aren't they,
on the disabled ramp, and they jump up off there onto...
it's like a little wall,
about that high, but it's not made out of concrete...
it'll be like logs that have been sawn in half and put up,
and they jump up on there, where there's flowers in,
flowerbed, they jump up on there.
Yeah? The rappers, the rap singers, you've seen them...
By where the Corn Exchange is, by the...
by the multistorey, yeah, they run along the banister
of the steps and they go like that, and then they jump down
on the...
It's not just for wheelchairs - prams, as well, can go on it.
Then they jump up on the little wall thing and then they flip off there, don't they?
And they run along, the rappers, to where there's...
You know where the shopping trolleys come out from Sainsbury's
and there's like a Perspex kind of cover over it,
they jump up on there, don't they? Then they go, "Ooh", like that,
where the Corn Exchange is, round the back of the multistorey.
Your rap singers, singing...
Now, this book's not really aimed at me.
(LAUGHING AND APPLAUSE)
Because it was different, wasn't it, when we were young,
the rap, the rap singing?
It was Public Enemy and Ice T and NWA and it was all, you know,
social comment and all political and about the police and stuff like that.
Now it's just a bloke standing on a bin, isn't it? Going like that.
Recycling bin, yeah? With all... Ioads of jumpers piled up by it.
You can't put jumpers in it, it's for plastic.
So as I say, this book's not really aimed at me, but...
I actually found out about it because I was listening to the Today programme
on Radio 4 one day, as everyone should, and John Humphrys
was interviewing D, Asher D, about this book.
And it was obviously an attempt by Radio 4 to broaden its pop cultural horizons
and cover some aspects of modern life, which I am thoroughly against.
I don't think Radio 4 should do.
I don't think Radio 4 should even know what the rapping is.
In fact, I think any time that anyone
at Radio 4 spent researching popular culture is time wasted,
which would have been better spent making a documentary about moss,
or another Radio 4 comedy programme...
(PITCH RISING)... in which all the comedians' voices
go up at the start of a sentence...
(PITCH FALLING) ...and then down at the end.
You're listening to a... Radio 4 comedy programme
where everyone's going up like that...
and then along at the same level while more news-based jokes are delivered...
and then down at the end, when it's finished.
You're listening to Radio 4... everything's gone up like that...
and then down and the joke's over.
It's a Radio 4 comedy programme... where pitch and rhythm
are considered acceptable substitutes... for content and wit.
(SCATTERED APPLAUSE)
(PITCH RISING) What on earth is he talking about?
(PITCH HIGH AND LEVEL) I don't know.
Seems to me like a rather unreasonable generalisation, although to be fair,
I have been talking like this since I left Cambridge in 1986.
(PITCH LOWERING) And so have I.
Does anyone fancy going to the Yorkshire Grey for a few swift halves,
a packet of pork scratchings...
(ALL AT LOW PITCH)... and some nuts.
But nevertheless, I was very grateful to Radio 4
for alerting me to this book because I read it and I enjoyed it.
I enjoyed D's philosophy of life
which is that it doesn't do to over-perfect things.
And I also like this book because when I read a book,
I don't like there to be too many words in it.
What I prefer is for it to be mainly pictures of the same man,
over and over again, in a variety of different hats.
My favourite bit of this book is page 97.
There's D there, again, look,
one big picture of him, and there's two similar but smaller ones
in case you imagined what he would look like in the distance.
There he is. He's near to you, there...
and over here, he's gone far away.
"Bye-bye, I'm going now."
Go, " Bye, Asher D, bye!
"See you soon! All right. Bye."
The best bit of this, right, he writes,
"It's the same thing with me going to jail. In a way, it's a Jesus thing.
"They say Jesus died for us, and in the same way,
"I'm going through what I'm going through, so that other people,
"the young people coming up, don't have to."
Now...
...is it just me, or did Asher D,
from the So Solid Crew, and Grange Hill he was in when he was young,
did he just suggest without any degree of irony
that he is the new Jesus?
And if that's the case, why wasn't that used
as a more visible marketing thrust for this book?
They should have put on the back,
"I got the gun because I feared for my life,
"my family's life and the life of my friends.
"I felt that if I had a gun,
"I would be equal to anyone who comes to me to kill me.
"I would have as much chance of killing them, of defending myself.
"Also, I am the new Jesus."
It's fun doing that joke here, but of course the danger is,
it's been broadcast now and maybe Asher D or a member of the So Solid Crew
has seen that, and if you are Asher D or a member of the So Solid Crew
watching tonight, then yes, I am disrespecting you.
I am disrespecting you to the max.
Maximum disrespect.
(RAP MUSIC BOOMING)
(# SO SOLID CREW: 21 Seconds)
# 21 seconds before I got to go
# 21 seconds, te, te, te
# 21 seconds, te, te, te... #
(GRANGE HILL THEME PLAYING)
The world of publishing is in crisis.
Publishers sell hot titles at massive discounts to supermarkets,
driving independent publishers out of business.
I remember when the last Harry Potter title came out,
I think it was Harry Potter And The Crock Of Shit.
Harry Potter And The Crock Of...
Or Harry Potter And The Mitten Of Wool, it may have been that.
Or Harry Potter And The Stick of Wood,
or Harry Potter And The Forest Of Embarrassment.
Or Harry Potter And The Na, Na, Na, Na...
Bluh, Uh...
Anyway, I was in Tesco's and they were literally delivering the new Harry Potters
on forklift trucks, on palettes, into the supermarket.
"Get your books, pile up the books, get a multi-pack of books.
"Why not take an extra book home? Put it in the freezer."
You know those Harry Potter books? You know they're for children, don't you?
They're aimed at children.
They're children's books. People say, "Have you read the new Harry Potter?"
No, I haven't read it, because I'm a 40-year-old man.
"You should read it, Stew - it's about a wizard in a school."
I'm not reading it, I'm a grown adult.
"Have you read Harry Potter, Stew, And The Tree Of Nothing?"
No, I haven't.
I haven't read it...
but I have read the complete works of the romantic poet and visionary,
William Blake, so fuck off!
(APPLAUSE)
Tragic lives is another new genre of literature, tragic lives.
You go in the supermarkets, piled up, tragic lives.
Books like Angela's Ashes by Frank McCourt,
A Boy Called It by Dave Pelzer,
and The Little Prisoner by Jane Elliott, tragic lives.
It's a very difficult genre to master, the tragic lives genre,
because the tragic lives writer has to be able to convey accurately
all the suffering and abuse they endured as a child,
but most of these books are so badly written, they read as if
Dan Brown got a job doing case notes for the Child Protection Agency.
"The bad man's cruel hand hit my nice face."
(APPLAUSE)
But the supermarkets are piled high with tragic lives.
But above all, it was Irish writers that first initiated
and then developed the genre.
And of course, the book that inspired them all,
The Teats That Wept Tears by Paddy McGinty's goat.
Patrick McGinty, an Irishman of naught,
had come into a sum of money and bought himself a goat.
I saw him across the lane
through the bars of my stall at the Killaloe County Agricultural Fair.
He staggered toward the pen,
slathering and drunk, and his eyes fell upon me...
red and round with hot lust.
I heard him mutter under his breath. Says he...
Sure, of goats' milk I'm going to have me fill!
Which puzzled me, as I, the goat he will come to know as "McGinty's Goat"
was a male goat!
That's a terrible story, Paddy McGinty's Goat.
It's all true.
I know. I never said it wasn't.
Good, cos it is.
"Then McGinty took me away with him,
"trussed up on the back of his old bicycle..."
And every furrow in the Killaloe road made the ropes bite deeper into me flesh.
And when McGinty got me home and spun me over on the sticky parlour floor,
intending to suck the milk direct from me dugs,
he realised I was not the goat he had imagined.
"Never mind, little boy goat," he hissed. "You'll do.
"Oh, yes, you'll do, all right."
"And, of course, knowing no better, I just shut my eyes and submitted."
I know that you get hundreds of letters a week of people asking for advice
who find themselves in similar situations to yours.
What sort of thing do you say to them?
I don't bother reading them, to be honest with you.
I just leave them there. I can't be arsed.
After I'd been with McGinty a few weeks,
a man approached me in the road.
"Are you McGinty's goat?" He asked. I nodded.
"I've heard all about you,"he said.
"Everyone has."
Realising there might be a book deal in it at some stage,
I opened me mouth...
Well, if you want to hear any more about my suffering,
you'll have to read the book. £12.99 in all good bookstores.
But the problem is now, you see, what to write about next.
You don't fancy taking me outside and beating the shit out of me
with a poker or something, do you?
What does it tell us about our civilisation that the notion of the book
is held in such low esteem
that it is possible to append the word "book"
to the word "toilet"
and make the compound word, "toilet book"?
Toilet book. No!
Library book, yes!
Children's book, yes.
Poetry book, yes.
Toilet book, no!
Toilet paper, yes.
Toilet brush, yes.
Toilet duck. You can have toilet duck.
Toilet book, no.
Apparently, the 18th-century polymath Thomas Young was the last person
to have read all the books published in his lifetime. That means he'd have read
all the Shakespeare and all the Greek and Roman classics,
and all the theology and all the philosophy and all the science.
But the same man today, a man who had read all the books published today,
would have had to have read all Dan Brown's novels,
two volumes of Chris Moyles' autobiography,
The World According To Clarkson,
by Jeremy Clarkson, The World According To Clarkson Two, by Jeremy Clarkson,
The World According To Clarkson Three, by Jeremy Clarkson.
His mind would be awash with bad metaphors
and unsustainable reactionary opinion.
One long anecdote about the time that Comedy Dave put pound coins
in the urinal.
In short, the man who had read everything published today
would be more stupid than a man who had read nothing.
That's not a good state of affairs.
Toilet paper -
toilet book.
No.
You would not wish this on the red arse of your worst enemy.
Thank you very much. Good night.
(APPLAUSE AND CHEERING)