This is me, Craig Ferguson. I'm inviting you to come and see my brand new comedy hour. Well it's actually it's about an hour and a half and I don't have an opener because these guys cost money. But what I'm saying is I'll be on stage for a while. Anyway, come and see me live on the Pants on Fire Tour in your region. Tickets are on sale now, and we'll be adding more as the tour continues throughout twenty twenty five and beyond. For a full list of dates, go to the Craig Ferguson show dot com. See you on the road, my DearS. My name is Craig Ferguson. The name of this podcast is joy. I talk to interesting people about what brings them happiness. Now, I know what you're thinking. You're looking behind me here. You're thinking, Craig, are you in an enchanted magical for is that in the wintertime? Are you doing a show from Narnia? Are you going to be talking to mister Tumnus, the man that has horse legs for trousers or something. No, I'm not actually in Narnia, but very close to Narnia. I'm in a place called New Jersey. And in New Jersey, I know if you can hear in the background, you might be able to hear in the background and buy something called a freeway. In New Jersey. They have a couple of freeways in New Jersey. And the reason why I'm talking to you from there today is this last week on the Joy podcast, we did an episode of Tweets and Emails where I answered tweets and emails, and like I used to do in the old late night show. You know, you guys send in some tweets and emails and I answer them and rab it on and bleather about whatever nonsense comes into my head, as you know, stimulated from the conversation or from the email, not really a conversation because it's just me talking. But what I'm saying is this. It was an overwhelmingly positive response, apparently everybody was very happy about it, and I thought, well, you know, it's quite hard to put together a podcast from the road, and I'm on the road doing some shows right now. Hence I'm in New Jersey, which is a much maligned state. By the way, it's actually very nice, much nicer than you we think. In fact, I think that should really be what the state model should be. New Jersey. It's much nicer than you would think. I think that would be a more accurate description of the of the area, because you think it's going to be just all the freeway and newdi bars and car dealerships, and it certainly has that. But doesn't every state doesn't every state of that, well, some some states have that. New Jersey has that. Anyway, Look what I'm saying is it's much nicer than you we'd think New Jersey. It's much nicer than you would think. So I'm in a hotel in New Jersey, and I'm traveling from one show at the show last night, and I'm going to do another show tonight in Pennsylvania, so I stopped at this hotel. The bottom line is we're going to do a second episode of Tweets and Emails on the Joy podcast, where we have received further tweets and emails and questions from everybody, and what we're going to do is answer those as accurately or as irresponsibly as possible, and then we will resume normal Joy podcasting next week, when I'll be talking to someone about something as opposed to me talking to you about your thing. But I have the tweets and emails, and I will begin. This is an email from Pana Slaughter. Pana Slaughter. Now, it's a lovely name, panaslatter. It sounds a little bit like panacotta, which is a delicious thing to eat, panacotta. I think it's clearly Italian. I wonder if Panaslota is Italian or maybe more kind of around that area, maybe eastern east of Italy, in the Adriatic somewhere, I don't know. I don't know, but Panislota, who is not panacotta? And asks who would you never invite on the show. Well, you know, I don't really have rules about that. I'll kind of talk to anybody as long as they'll talk to me. I'm kind of interested. The only people I do avoid and I avoided when I was doing the late night show, there was a bunch of people I avoided, and New Jersey springs to mind, actually, because I would never I loved the TV show The Sopranos, and when I was doing Late Night, the Sopranos was on TV, and I would never invite any of the cast members from The Sopranos. I don't know if they would agree to come on anyway, I didn't invite them, but I would never invite them on because I was what the show, and I loved the show, and I didn't want to meet the actors and have the actors be the actor and kind of destroy the fourth wall thing that I enjoy in TV. Which is an interesting thing then because actually a few years ago I was having a conversation with Kevin Bacon, now Kevin Bacon, as you know, it's very interested man, very very busy actor, and he was telling me that he had done a he had done a TV show. I wouldn't say which one because because he's done so many, but he was doing a TV show and the production company had asked him to tweet as the show was going out about his experience that as doing the show, like you know, oh, you know, this day was raining and I farted or something, and he said, I really he really didn't want to do it for the same reason as I wouldn't invite the sopranos on the show, because his job, as Kevin Bacon is to convince you he's not Kevin Bacon's that's kind of the job. That's what he was saying. Is like, I have to do all this work to convince you I'm not Kevin Bacon. I'm actually somebody else. I'm you know, Joe the astronaut or Bob the guy who works in Starbucks or something, and and he's you know, and it's clearly it's Kevin Bacon, because you can see it's Kevin Bacon. But the art and cleverness of what he does is convince you he's not Kevin Bacon. And if he's tweeting out on his account, you know that he is Kevin Bacon, and he was Kevin Bacon when he was doing it. It's kind of working against himself and I see that anyway. That's why I wouldn't invite anyone from the sopranos on the show. And the other people I wouldn't invite on the show. There's only one other person. And I've talked about this at the time, that I would never invite David Boie on the show. No, I'm not saying that he would ever agreed to have been on the show, but I would never have invited him on the show because I was concerned because of the never meet your heroes thing. I always liked the the mystique and the kind of the kind of slightly from another planet version of David Billy. He sort of was from somewhere else with designs a different color, and I thought, I, if he becomes normal to me, I'll lose something, because people do become normal sort of when you meet them. Like over the years I was doing Late Night and doing this show and doing other shows, you meet people who are very famous or very accomplished in what they do, and of course they're human beings, and when they become human beings, they cease to be demigods to you. And whilst I'm fine with that most of the time, boy was a demigod that I kind of didn't want to give up. Is that weird? I don't know. I mean, I guess I'm just a fanboy. And it's funny because some people who came on the show, you know, we're only I was only kind of a little bit aware of. But as they came on the show, I became much more of a fan of them. So I guess it, and some people are disappointed. I think it would be kind of mean to say that, you know, so I won't say that, But who would never invite on the show is the cast of the Sopranos, which is not TV anymore, or David Boy who is not available anymore to do talk shows anyway, So pretty much everybody else is good, all right. I hope that helped missus or MS or Sir Pana Slaughter. I don't know the correct pronoun for that name, actually Pana. I don't know if Pana, I don't know what is connected. I don't even want to talk about this, all right. So this next one is from Eliza Beson Eliza Vison or Vison or Eliza Veson, I don't know. But Eliza said, what made you want to become a comedian? Well, I don't know that I ever did want to become a comedian. I think I don't even know if it's entirely an accurate I mean, I do it. I do stand up comedy, and I enjoyed doing it, and it is it is a very big part of my life, and I love it. I love doing it. It seems to go okay more. And it went well in Jersey last night, and the night before in Boston it went well. And you know, I'm kind of blowing over Trump to hear a bit and that's going a humble brag. But what I'm saying is I do it, but I don't define myself by it, if that makes any sense. It was kind of the same as being a late night host. I mean, for me late night. There are people, young people I'm aware of now, you see, who like they look for a career in comedy or they would like to be a late night host. And whilst I understand it, I mean it's been very good to me and it's it's a lovely job. I never really say how to do that. I wanted to be what everyone else wanted to be when I was a kid, which was there was really three three things I wanted to be when I was a kid. I either wanted to be an astronaut, which in Scottland was limited. There wasn't a huge space program in Scotland in the nineteen sixties when I was born, or indeed now I don't even think they have a particularly big space program. I'm sure there must be a Scottish asterer not somewhere, but anyway, I wasn't cut out for astro noting. And I either wanted to be a sports star. You'll be really good at sports, particularly football, or as we call it in America, soccer, but football in Scotland. I wanted to be a star football player, but I wasn't any good at football, so that gets in the way. It's I mean, you really can't hide in sport. It's one of those things like like in show business, you can be shit and it doesn't matter, you know, if you get a good agent and you're in a good thing and people like you the right way and stuff, you can and even in a band you can kind of hide as long as somebody else kind of covers for you. But in sports it's on you. You better be good or you fuck. But anyway, I wasn't good. I wasn't good enough. I wasn't remotely good. Wasn't I wasn't good enough to be even sort of considered as a someone who could hang around. And the other thing I wanted to be, of course, was a musician. And I think in a very strange way, that's kind of what I am. I mean, I still play I you know, I play the drums and I play the guitar, and I don't play them publicly because that, I think would be a way to to look foolish in a way, which probably I'm not quite ready for. And then the I've sung in my life, I've you know, I've done shows where I've sung songs, and I'm not a great singer, but you know, you kind of don't really have to be a great singer to sing. I mean there's a lot of particularly now with autotune. Good Lord, I mean, he just kind of little. And then they put it through a program and you sound like, you know, Maria Kaos or something. I don't know who's a really good singer anyway. I don't know enough about opera or even when she did, I don't know. I think so, I think I've wandered off track here. What I'm saying is I don't consider myself really a comedian as such. I think of myself more as a kind of I mean, look, I'm right, that's what I do. I express myself right now. I express myself orally in a kind of socratic sense, I suppose in doing stand up comedy. But I don't really tell jokes in that same way. I mean, it's not and I'm not even I don't think so. I don't think I'm one of those kind of Hey, have you ever noticed how some things are like other things or what's the deal with those things? I'm not really like that. My stand up tends to be more anecdotal. I mean, look, it's a lot of it, Let's be honest. It's lies in fabrication of or artistic license. Certainly the current tour is called pants on Fire, just that flat out admitting that a lot of this is made up, but it's based on truth. I always think that when you see when you see a movie and it starts with this is based on a true story, and you go, well, isn't everything based on a true story? The fuck you kidding? Based on a true story? Sure, and it's based on a true story, but then you add you know, aliens and stuff, and you know, or wherever you're at anyway, the up show is. I don't think I did want to be a comedian. I it wasn't something I aspired to. Some people are do and I admire it. I guess it's a skill set which there are some great, but like Billy Connolly, I think who the great Scottish comedian who was? Billy's about twenty years older on me. So when Billy was just coming through and breaking through, he was in his early thirties and I was in my early teens, and he was very profane and comedy. Was done an album with Vinyl albums back then, and we would get his Nyl album and our parents would not allow us to listen to it because he sent swear words and he was dirty and stuff. But it was great. He was so good. But Billy is also a musician, so he would play a little. He actually came through playing in a band called the Humble Bumbs with Jerry Rafferty. He was a folk musician. He's a good banjo player, Billy, and he's a good singer, and so he kind of drifted into comedy from doing playing folk clubs. And so I was very heavily influenced by Billy because he was from the same socioeconomic background as me. He was the first person I ever saw who was famous who sounded like we did, like you know, my family or my friends and stuff. So he was very and he was and he was and is a great comedian. I mean for me, he's like he's like Jackie Robinson almost, if you know what I mean. For me, it was like he had that kind of gives the first guy into the big leagues, and I think that that if anything made me want to be a comedian, it was maybe to emulate Billy. But Billy is a rack on tour. He's a musician, he's a writer, he's an artist, and so whatever past he carved, I think I kind of rather pathetically follow in his way, like a little kind of tribute band. Not the Zen wrong being a tribute band, but that's right. Hello, This is Greig Ferguson, and I want to let you know I have a brand new stand up comedy special out now on YouTube. It's called I'm So Happy, and I would be so happy if you checked it out. To watch the special, just go to my YouTube channel at the Craig Verguson Show and is this right there? Just click it and play it and it's free. I can't look. I'm not going to come around your house and show you how to do it. If you can't do it, then you can't have it. But if you can out, it's yours, all right. This is from Killy dyl Meister, which almost sounds like like you might be related to Lenny kil Meister from Motorhead, but probably not because it's a different name. What music are you currently listening to at the moment, I have for some reason, I'm listening to a lot of Schubert. I know, it's the it's the weirdest thing. I listened to a very eclectic taste of music, as most people do, and I listened to a lot of different things. I like, you know, death metal and Bossanova and everything in between. But I reread a book recently that I had read a long time ago, a book called The Master and Margarita by Michael Bulgakov. It's a great book if you've if you've never read it, give it a go. It's a fabulous book. And in The Master arga Rita there's a reference at one point when I'm not going to do any spoilers for you, but the protagonists imagine a place where everything is all right and they can walk in the park and listen to Schubert. And I thought, I don't know anything Schubert, so I listened to some Schubert. And I gotta be honest. I know this is probably not news to some of you, but pretty fucking good, pretty pretty fucking good. I'm not a huge fan of it. Seems terrible thing to say. I'm not a huge fan of classical music. But I'm kind of kind of no, really, you know, that seems to be a lot of dumb dumb dumb bum bumbody dumb. I'm like, oh, settled down, But he doesn't have a lot of that. He's a It's a very melodic and sweeping and kind of ethereal and gorgeous. So the big news from today's show, I think that is going to rock. It's just going to shake the foundations of the music again. This stee is that I think Schubert is pretty good. All right. This is from its Becked. It backed umm it Becked says, it's a lovely name. It Becked just one name like Sting or Madonna or Flash. I don't know who flashes Flash Gordon, but that that wouldn't be one day, that would be two names. It would be Flash, just Flash. Maybe I'll call myself Flash Flash. Hey it's Flash. Hi everyone, it's me Flash. Anyway. This is from It's Becked. Who is it's just got one name like Flash? He said? Of the many venues you've performed in which one sticks out to you the most? And why? Well? I have performed in a great deal of venues, some of them quite un new usual. I remember I did stand up once on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange. It was weird. It was one of those corporate gigs which everybody in show business does. Like everybody if you think, oh yeah, but my favorite rock band would never do a corporate gig, They've fucking done it. Everybody does it. So I was doing a corporate gig on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange. You know. All they did was they just after the day's trading was over, a bunch of stockbrokers got together, and you know, they hired me to come up and tell them stories and jokes and stuff. And I did it and it was okay. I felt a little weird doing it, and I think it was a little bit of a strange experience, but it worked out all right, and that was quite memorable. One of the memorable things about that was there was no dressing There's no dressing rooms in the New York Stock Exchange, so there wasn't a place for me to go and prepare myself for the day, you know, to put on my outfit and make up and stuff. As usually there's a dressing room or something where you can go and like, you know, hang out until it's time to go on on stage or on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange. And they didn't have anywhere for me to sit, so they said, oh, we'll just go into the chairman's office. You can just go to the chairman's office of the New York Stock Age because he's not there. Now I don't know who that is, but I mean it's somewhat super powerful, probably like I don't know, Satan or something, Satan's office at the New York I don't know if say, I don't think it's but somebody, you know, somebody very powerful who runs the New York Stock Exchange. And they had this very fancy office and obviously it was in the evening, so this individual wasn't there. And I went into the office and on the wall was hanging at Jackson Pollock painting. Now I don't know if you know anything about Jackson Pollock, but Jackson Pollock was that he's the scatter man or modern art. And the paintings are the title paintings. They're abstracts, and they're they're kind of their evocative and emotional pieces of art, but they're not figurative. You know, they don't have there's not a picture of a cat or you know, a little boy fishing or Sinorita turning to you or anything like that. So you know, so it's not it's the kind of thing. My wife is more involved than she knows all about that. But I don't really I like paintns of things, you know, like, oh, look a look at that painting. It's a painting of a cat, isn't it really good? But but she understands Rothko and Jackson Pollock and you know, Cy Twombly and all those very clever people. And but it was the first time I'd been in the presence of an actual Jackson Pollock painting, and the first thing that, you know, I'd seen reproductions of his paintings in photographs, as I'm sure all of you have. And we could probably put some up in the web site or something into it. We have a website, we probably do. We have a website, right, so you can put Jackson Pollock up and you go, oh, yeah, I know what you mean. But what was interesting was that being in the presence of the actual painting was a very different experience. It hit me like a freight train. It was amazing because I was like, oh my god, this is and I can't put into words what it did. And I know this sounds fanciful and a bit kind of you know, really Craig, but it was a very emotional response and I couldn't describe it in words. And look, I have no fucking slouch when it comes to describing things. I work with words. I'm fairly decent, you know, describing how I feel or how I see things or right, I like to think I'm fairly air dye. But I couldn't express the emotion that this painting seemed to construct or elicit from me. And I was I'm still kind of impressed by that. I'm kind of amazed by that, and it made me kind of drew me into it. It wasn't all happiness, and it wasn't all sadness. It was it was a very weird kind of thing. The only thing I can kind of equake to is a sort of fairly low impact drug, you know, like maybe shit cannabis, but it kind of it kind of or maybe like week like a weak diazepam or something. It made me feel kind of good and a little bit different and but it was it was a visual experience. That's why I thought was so amazing about it. And so I mean I became kind of a a little more converted to the to the world of abstract expressionism from doing that gig. So in answer to the many of which venue sticks out to you the most, I don't know if that sticks out the most, but what it does do is it certainly changed me. There are venues that I've played, you know, in doing stand up. I think I'm the only person I know that's played the Carnegie Hall in Dunfermline, Scotland, and Carnegie Hall in New York City I've known, and they're very different venues or as we say in New York at Carnegie Hall, but as they say in Dunfermline called Nagie Hall. I think probably there's some more Carnegie Halls. I think that was one in Pittsburgh has got to be one in Pittsburgh. They are very different venues, the Carnegie halland on Fermline and the Carnegie Hall or Carnegie Hall in New York. In when I played the Carnegie Hall and done Fermline, Scotland, it was before I stopped drinking. It was in the early days of stand up, when I was still performing as a character that I called bing Hitler. It was the whole story. And when I was doing a character thing, and I was playing a kind of a kind of buffoon, a kind of idiot who was sort of from Dunfermline, Scotland. Now that's a bit of a problem because I'm not from Dunfermlin in Scotland and from a town called Cumbernauld, which is just outside Glasgow in Scotland, kind of the New Jersey of Let's Go and so I so I was a kind of natural enemy to the audience there anyway, And it was a lot of punk rockers and stuff like that. And it was the upshot of it was that I was drinking. I went on stage. I did not go down well with the audience, and I was still playing a guitar at the time, and they they started throwing things at me, and then they rushed the stage and they stole my guitar and things were getting a little hairy, and I had to get a cab out of there to get back to Edinburgh, to get away from the audience who were at that point had the kind of morph from being an audience said the more of a kind of angry bob. And they chased me out of the venue and I jumped into a taxi and I was driving away in the taxi and somebody through a rock and it it broke the back window of the taxi. I had to pay the taxi driver, but he was like, you'll have to pay for that. I went, fine, just keep going. I mean, it was like and he drove me back to Edinburgh. It was very cold because the window and it was glass, but I had to pay for his weird window to get fixed. This is a long time ago and that was my experience playing the Carnegie Hall in done Fermline. Now years and years later, I played Carnegie Hall in New York City. I actually did it twice in the same day. I had booked a show and it sold out and they said, we do another show, and I mean sure, I said, but we only have a matinee available at half past two in the afternoon. All right, we'll give it a go. So I played Carnegie Hall in New York twice in the same day half past two in the afternoon. And I've got to be honest, it was a little sedate it was a bit of a sedate. It was more like a Schubert concept, to be honest with you. But the evening show was very much the same thing, and nobody beat me up or chased me out of the venue. At Carnegie Hall in New York, nobody stole my guitar. I wasn't playing a guitar at that point, and the audience seemed much happier and with the show than the audience and Nfermline the New York audience. I will say this though. The difference is that by the time I played Carnegie Hall in New York, I had stopped drinking. I had stopped drinking for about probably about fifteen or twenty years at that point, so I imagine the performance was of a different type. I think that's the case, and I rather loved it. I will give you a little piece of information about Carnegie Hall as well, just to say if you're ever playing it, be very careful. There is a very steep rake on the stage. A rake is a kind of gradient on the stage which slants towards the front of the stage so that the audience, when they're looking from the auditorium, get a better view. I think it's really for plays and for orchestras and stuff like that. It gives people a better view, or maybe projects sound better or something. And the Carnegie Hall in New York is a very steep rake and it's made of wood the floor. So all I'm saying is, don't wear your socks when you're playing Carnegie Hall in New York. Wear a pair of grippy shoes, or you could come a cropper. I learned that hardly. This is from Tyler brou who says, Hi, my name is Tyler. I don't know. I have a question about fatherhood. All right, Later this week my second child will be born and I'll become a father of two. Yep, what tips do you have for someone bringing new life into the world. Well, Tyler, as the father, I have to say, it's pretty obvious you are not the one bringing your life into the world. You're the one witnessing your life being brought in in the world, I suppose. I mean it's semantics. Really, I was there at the birth of both my children, and I have to say it's quite a show, isn't it. Anyone who's been alive human birth? I mean, look for the mothers involved. You know, you know, I can't even imagine. I mean, it's just craziness, but then pain and all that. But as a as a witness to your child being born, my goodness, it's a weird It's again again, It's something that's very difficult to describe. You know, maybe I'm learning on this edition of the podcast. I'm nowhere nearest there you day. As I say, guy, I can't really describe the emotion of what it's like to because you know, when someone is being what a human is being born in a room and like there's a kind of weird like anticipation and then someone news there like, oh my god, so wild. There's a lot of you know, a lot of gory business. I'm not good with any of that. I would have been a terrible doctor. That and the fact that you know, I'm not clever enough to be a doctor. But also I think that you know, to be to feel squeamish is not something you want. And a doctor. You don't want a doctor going oh like that, that's not you want a doctor. Do you have very tips about bringing new life? Tips about father? You know, it's funny, I you know, I spent because I'm playing in Jersey, my oldest kid, who's now nearly twenty four. He's not kid anymore. We were hanging out after the show last night. He lives nearby and and it's an amazing thing. I actually remember it from the movie Lost in Translation, when Bill Murray's character is talking to Scolet Johnson's character about his children and said, you know, as their babies, and when their little children, they're so adorable, and their little children they're funny and cuting all those things. And then when they grow up, and this is at the point of father Rudeima, you know that my youngest boy is fourteen. So he's not a baby. He's not you know, Philly cooked, but he's not a baby. But I mean, it is anyone Philly cooked to. I mean, I'm sixty two. I don't know if I'm fully cooked, but they I've been baked a couple of times somehow. Right. The business of what Bill Murray's character says in that movie is that they become just these very interesting human beings, maybe the most interesting people you know, And they do. My kids are the most interesting people I know. And if you know me, you know, I know it's pretty interesting people. But nobody is interesting as my kids. All right, this is from Elsa g Hernandez Gonzalez. I'm guessing maybe you know. I think I can guess your kind of ethnic background. I think Elsa g Hernandez Gonzalez. I may be wrong, of course you may. That may be a married name, and you've married into the Hernandez Gonzalez is whoever. It is great. You've spoken about your favorite bands and artists and your talks, and I've wondered, would you make a playlist of your favorites to share, like a playlist on Spotify or anything like that. That's a very long It's always interesting to see what others enjoy, especially if it's someone with good music taste. Yeah, I would do that. It's like it's like making a mixtape for someone you don't know. I think that making playlists is kind of interesting from artists that you like. So I guess that's what Eliza's saying. Yeah, yeah, I do that. I think there would be some Suber on it, obviously. Then i'd balance it with some Motorhead, maybe the Ramones. Here's the thing about the Ramones. I want to tell you. It was something I was talking to a British person about this fairly recently, and they were talking about it was an English person, someone from North London, which is kind of a niche market, and they were telling me, as I'm sure many Americans have heard before when talking to English people, that the phrase that begins you see the thing about Americans. You see the thing about Americans is I'm like, well, we Americans would be talking about here. I've never understood that. Well, you see the thing about Americans and then they start talking to you about, you know, some guy they've seen on a British documentary who was you know, survived on his boat in a you know, Hurrican in Florida and he was wearing a hat that said who Hearted. And they say that's America and that's part of America, and God bless them. That's great. I think that's awesome. But the the idea that America is one thing, well, talk to Eliza g Ornandez Gonzales or Craig Ferguson. I mean, America is very as we know, how do you even define that? But what this person says to the thing about America two things. One was that Americans are such loonings like okay, well, I think there are certainly moonies who exist here, but America doesn't have exclusivity on loonings. And the second one is you always say this in British people. British people from the intelligence and bourgeois British people also always say this, think about Americas. They have no sense of irony. They have no sense of irony. And I remember one of the writers on the Late Night Show. I was telling them about this, a guy called Ted Mail Karen, who was one of the head writers on the Late Night Show, and he said, Americans have no sense of irony. I said, that's what they always say. He said, well, that's rich coming from a country that called itself Great Britain. I was like, oh, touchet, it's aus of milk for you. Ted. Anyway, the reason why I bring this up is about the Ramones because the type of America that I wanted to be when I was a kid, it was a very odd mixture of I wanted to be an astronaut because I'd seen astronauts landing on the Moon when I was a little kid than they were American, so I wanted to be one of those. But as I got a bit older, I wanted also to be in the Ramones because I saw them. I wanted to be like the Ramones, and I wanted to be like Iggy Pop, and I wanted to be like people who were in rock bands and people who chewed gum and had teeth. And here's the thing that really got me. When I first visited America in nineteen seventy five, when I was thirteen, I went to a bowling alley for the first time. We did have bowling analogies in Scotland at that time. I went to a bowler I'd never seen a bowling alley before. I was like, this is amazing. And I tasted a beverage and I remember it to this day. It was root beer over crushed ice, and I was like, oh my god, whatever this say is, I have to I have to have more of this as much as possible for the rest of my life. Now, I'll be honest with you. I don't drink a lot of root beer over crushed ice, but every now and again I have one and it brings me back to that. And anyway, what I'm saying is, for some reason I was talking about the Ramones. I want to be a Ramones type I think he pop American but also an astronaut American. I think what I like about being in America is want to be a living It's America. Oh well, he's an email about that, and then probably we'll get done after this. But this is from Tony Gallo, who says, when you first landed in Smithtown, which is the first place that I went to in America, Smithtown, Love Island, on your first trip to America? What hit you heard this? The accents, the aggressive left turns, or the crushing realization that this was it? What was your funniest moment of culture shock? I no, I think I've been, you know, mine in the culture shock thing for a for a long time. Now. I'm kind of like the Scottish jakov Smyrna or something, you know, like in my country. You know, when I first came here, it was the root beer Overcross that is, that was the thing that really got me. I that was the first way in. And also you've got to understand it was nineteen seventy five when I first came here. It was the summer in nineteen seventy five. I was thirteen, I'd never been out of Glasgow and I go to Prestbook Airport in Scotland and I get on an airplane that lands in JFK in nineteen seventy five and I go from Glasgow having never left there. I have never been anywhere to New York City in nineteen seventy five and to this day is to my mind, they still the greatest city in the world, New York City. It's just over the George Washington Bridge, and I'm going to go there in a minute to answer a question that's come in because I moved back to Scotland for a long time and people say to me, you still live in Scotland or I moved back to Scotland for five years and I don't. I don't. I live in New York City. So I'm going to go home. I'll see you guys later. Thank

This is me, Craig Ferguson. I'm inviting you to come and see my brand new comedy hour. Well it's actually it's about an hour and a half and I don't have an opener because these guys cost money. But what I'm saying is I'll be on stage for a while. Anyway, come and see me live on the Pants on Fire Tour in your region. Tickets are on sale now, and we'll be adding more as the tour continues throughout twenty twenty five and beyond. For a full list of dates, go to the Craig Ferguson show dot com. See you on the road, my DearS. My name is Craig Ferguson. The name of this podcast is joy. I talk to interesting people about what brings them happiness. Now, I know what you're thinking. You're looking behind me here. You're thinking, Craig, are you in an enchanted magical for is that in the wintertime? Are you doing a show from Narnia? Are you going to be talking to mister Tumnus, the man that has horse legs for trousers or something. No, I'm not actually in Narnia, but very close to Narnia. I'm in a place called New Jersey. And in New Jersey, I know if you can hear in the background, you might be able to hear in the background and buy something called a freeway. In New Jersey. They have a couple of freeways in New Jersey. And the reason why I'm talking to you from there today is this last week on the Joy podcast, we did an episode of Tweets and Emails where I answered tweets and emails, and like I used to do in the old late night show. You know, you guys send in some tweets and emails and I answer them and rab it on and bleather about whatever nonsense comes into my head, as you know, stimulated from the conversation or from the email, not really a conversation because it's just me talking. But what I'm saying is this. It was an overwhelmingly positive response, apparently everybody was very happy about it, and I thought, well, you know, it's quite hard to put together a podcast from the road, and I'm on the road doing some shows right now. Hence I'm in New Jersey, which is a much maligned state. By the way, it's actually very nice, much nicer than you we think. In fact, I think that should really be what the state model should be. New Jersey. It's much nicer than you would think. I think that would be a more accurate description of the of the area, because you think it's going to be just all the freeway and newdi bars and car dealerships, and it certainly has that. But doesn't every state doesn't every state of that, well, some some states have that. New Jersey has that. Anyway, Look what I'm saying is it's much nicer than you we'd think New Jersey. It's much nicer than you would think. So I'm in a hotel in New Jersey, and I'm traveling from one show at the show last night, and I'm going to do another show tonight in Pennsylvania, so I stopped at this hotel. The bottom line is we're going to do a second episode of Tweets and Emails on the Joy podcast, where we have received further tweets and emails and questions from everybody, and what we're going to do is answer those as accurately or as irresponsibly as possible, and then we will resume normal Joy podcasting next week, when I'll be talking to someone about something as opposed to me talking to you about your thing. But I have the tweets and emails, and I will begin. This is an email from Pana Slaughter. Pana Slaughter. Now, it's a lovely name, panaslatter. It sounds a little bit like panacotta, which is a delicious thing to eat, panacotta. I think it's clearly Italian. I wonder if Panaslota is Italian or maybe more kind of around that area, maybe eastern east of Italy, in the Adriatic somewhere, I don't know. I don't know, but Panislota, who is not panacotta? And asks who would you never invite on the show. Well, you know, I don't really have rules about that. I'll kind of talk to anybody as long as they'll talk to me. I'm kind of interested. The only people I do avoid and I avoided when I was doing the late night show, there was a bunch of people I avoided, and New Jersey springs to mind, actually, because I would never I loved the TV show The Sopranos, and when I was doing Late Night, the Sopranos was on TV, and I would never invite any of the cast members from The Sopranos. I don't know if they would agree to come on anyway, I didn't invite them, but I would never invite them on because I was what the show, and I loved the show, and I didn't want to meet the actors and have the actors be the actor and kind of destroy the fourth wall thing that I enjoy in TV. Which is an interesting thing then because actually a few years ago I was having a conversation with Kevin Bacon, now Kevin Bacon, as you know, it's very interested man, very very busy actor, and he was telling me that he had done a he had done a TV show. I wouldn't say which one because because he's done so many, but he was doing a TV show and the production company had asked him to tweet as the show was going out about his experience that as doing the show, like you know, oh, you know, this day was raining and I farted or something, and he said, I really he really didn't want to do it for the same reason as I wouldn't invite the sopranos on the show, because his job, as Kevin Bacon is to convince you he's not Kevin Bacon's that's kind of the job. That's what he was saying. Is like, I have to do all this work to convince you I'm not Kevin Bacon. I'm actually somebody else. I'm you know, Joe the astronaut or Bob the guy who works in Starbucks or something, and and he's you know, and it's clearly it's Kevin Bacon, because you can see it's Kevin Bacon. But the art and cleverness of what he does is convince you he's not Kevin Bacon. And if he's tweeting out on his account, you know that he is Kevin Bacon, and he was Kevin Bacon when he was doing it. It's kind of working against himself and I see that anyway. That's why I wouldn't invite anyone from the sopranos on the show. And the other people I wouldn't invite on the show. There's only one other person. And I've talked about this at the time, that I would never invite David Boie on the show. No, I'm not saying that he would ever agreed to have been on the show, but I would never have invited him on the show because I was concerned because of the never meet your heroes thing. I always liked the the mystique and the kind of the kind of slightly from another planet version of David Billy. He sort of was from somewhere else with designs a different color, and I thought, I, if he becomes normal to me, I'll lose something, because people do become normal sort of when you meet them. Like over the years I was doing Late Night and doing this show and doing other shows, you meet people who are very famous or very accomplished in what they do, and of course they're human beings, and when they become human beings, they cease to be demigods to you. And whilst I'm fine with that most of the time, boy was a demigod that I kind of didn't want to give up. Is that weird? I don't know. I mean, I guess I'm just a fanboy. And it's funny because some people who came on the show, you know, we're only I was only kind of a little bit aware of. But as they came on the show, I became much more of a fan of them. So I guess it, and some people are disappointed. I think it would be kind of mean to say that, you know, so I won't say that, But who would never invite on the show is the cast of the Sopranos, which is not TV anymore, or David Boy who is not available anymore to do talk shows anyway, So pretty much everybody else is good, all right. I hope that helped missus or MS or Sir Pana Slaughter. I don't know the correct pronoun for that name, actually Pana. I don't know if Pana, I don't know what is connected. I don't even want to talk about this, all right. So this next one is from Eliza Beson Eliza Vison or Vison or Eliza Veson, I don't know. But Eliza said, what made you want to become a comedian? Well, I don't know that I ever did want to become a comedian. I think I don't even know if it's entirely an accurate I mean, I do it. I do stand up comedy, and I enjoyed doing it, and it is it is a very big part of my life, and I love it. I love doing it. It seems to go okay more. And it went well in Jersey last night, and the night before in Boston it went well. And you know, I'm kind of blowing over Trump to hear a bit and that's going a humble brag. But what I'm saying is I do it, but I don't define myself by it, if that makes any sense. It was kind of the same as being a late night host. I mean, for me late night. There are people, young people I'm aware of now, you see, who like they look for a career in comedy or they would like to be a late night host. And whilst I understand it, I mean it's been very good to me and it's it's a lovely job. I never really say how to do that. I wanted to be what everyone else wanted to be when I was a kid, which was there was really three three things I wanted to be when I was a kid. I either wanted to be an astronaut, which in Scottland was limited. There wasn't a huge space program in Scotland in the nineteen sixties when I was born, or indeed now I don't even think they have a particularly big space program. I'm sure there must be a Scottish asterer not somewhere, but anyway, I wasn't cut out for astro noting. And I either wanted to be a sports star. You'll be really good at sports, particularly football, or as we call it in America, soccer, but football in Scotland. I wanted to be a star football player, but I wasn't any good at football, so that gets in the way. It's I mean, you really can't hide in sport. It's one of those things like like in show business, you can be shit and it doesn't matter, you know, if you get a good agent and you're in a good thing and people like you the right way and stuff, you can and even in a band you can kind of hide as long as somebody else kind of covers for you. But in sports it's on you. You better be good or you fuck. But anyway, I wasn't good. I wasn't good enough. I wasn't remotely good. Wasn't I wasn't good enough to be even sort of considered as a someone who could hang around. And the other thing I wanted to be, of course, was a musician. And I think in a very strange way, that's kind of what I am. I mean, I still play I you know, I play the drums and I play the guitar, and I don't play them publicly because that, I think would be a way to to look foolish in a way, which probably I'm not quite ready for. And then the I've sung in my life, I've you know, I've done shows where I've sung songs, and I'm not a great singer, but you know, you kind of don't really have to be a great singer to sing. I mean there's a lot of particularly now with autotune. Good Lord, I mean, he just kind of little. And then they put it through a program and you sound like, you know, Maria Kaos or something. I don't know who's a really good singer anyway. I don't know enough about opera or even when she did, I don't know. I think so, I think I've wandered off track here. What I'm saying is I don't consider myself really a comedian as such. I think of myself more as a kind of I mean, look, I'm right, that's what I do. I express myself right now. I express myself orally in a kind of socratic sense, I suppose in doing stand up comedy. But I don't really tell jokes in that same way. I mean, it's not and I'm not even I don't think so. I don't think I'm one of those kind of Hey, have you ever noticed how some things are like other things or what's the deal with those things? I'm not really like that. My stand up tends to be more anecdotal. I mean, look, it's a lot of it, Let's be honest. It's lies in fabrication of or artistic license. Certainly the current tour is called pants on Fire, just that flat out admitting that a lot of this is made up, but it's based on truth. I always think that when you see when you see a movie and it starts with this is based on a true story, and you go, well, isn't everything based on a true story? The fuck you kidding? Based on a true story? Sure, and it's based on a true story, but then you add you know, aliens and stuff, and you know, or wherever you're at anyway, the up show is. I don't think I did want to be a comedian. I it wasn't something I aspired to. Some people are do and I admire it. I guess it's a skill set which there are some great, but like Billy Connolly, I think who the great Scottish comedian who was? Billy's about twenty years older on me. So when Billy was just coming through and breaking through, he was in his early thirties and I was in my early teens, and he was very profane and comedy. Was done an album with Vinyl albums back then, and we would get his Nyl album and our parents would not allow us to listen to it because he sent swear words and he was dirty and stuff. But it was great. He was so good. But Billy is also a musician, so he would play a little. He actually came through playing in a band called the Humble Bumbs with Jerry Rafferty. He was a folk musician. He's a good banjo player, Billy, and he's a good singer, and so he kind of drifted into comedy from doing playing folk clubs. And so I was very heavily influenced by Billy because he was from the same socioeconomic background as me. He was the first person I ever saw who was famous who sounded like we did, like you know, my family or my friends and stuff. So he was very and he was and he was and is a great comedian. I mean for me, he's like he's like Jackie Robinson almost, if you know what I mean. For me, it was like he had that kind of gives the first guy into the big leagues, and I think that that if anything made me want to be a comedian, it was maybe to emulate Billy. But Billy is a rack on tour. He's a musician, he's a writer, he's an artist, and so whatever past he carved, I think I kind of rather pathetically follow in his way, like a little kind of tribute band. Not the Zen wrong being a tribute band, but that's right. Hello, This is Greig Ferguson, and I want to let you know I have a brand new stand up comedy special out now on YouTube. It's called I'm So Happy, and I would be so happy if you checked it out. To watch the special, just go to my YouTube channel at the Craig Verguson Show and is this right there? Just click it and play it and it's free. I can't look. I'm not going to come around your house and show you how to do it. If you can't do it, then you can't have it. But if you can out, it's yours, all right. This is from Killy dyl Meister, which almost sounds like like you might be related to Lenny kil Meister from Motorhead, but probably not because it's a different name. What music are you currently listening to at the moment, I have for some reason, I'm listening to a lot of Schubert. I know, it's the it's the weirdest thing. I listened to a very eclectic taste of music, as most people do, and I listened to a lot of different things. I like, you know, death metal and Bossanova and everything in between. But I reread a book recently that I had read a long time ago, a book called The Master and Margarita by Michael Bulgakov. It's a great book if you've if you've never read it, give it a go. It's a fabulous book. And in The Master arga Rita there's a reference at one point when I'm not going to do any spoilers for you, but the protagonists imagine a place where everything is all right and they can walk in the park and listen to Schubert. And I thought, I don't know anything Schubert, so I listened to some Schubert. And I gotta be honest. I know this is probably not news to some of you, but pretty fucking good, pretty pretty fucking good. I'm not a huge fan of it. Seems terrible thing to say. I'm not a huge fan of classical music. But I'm kind of kind of no, really, you know, that seems to be a lot of dumb dumb dumb bum bumbody dumb. I'm like, oh, settled down, But he doesn't have a lot of that. He's a It's a very melodic and sweeping and kind of ethereal and gorgeous. So the big news from today's show, I think that is going to rock. It's just going to shake the foundations of the music again. This stee is that I think Schubert is pretty good. All right. This is from its Becked. It backed umm it Becked says, it's a lovely name. It Becked just one name like Sting or Madonna or Flash. I don't know who flashes Flash Gordon, but that that wouldn't be one day, that would be two names. It would be Flash, just Flash. Maybe I'll call myself Flash Flash. Hey it's Flash. Hi everyone, it's me Flash. Anyway. This is from It's Becked. Who is it's just got one name like Flash? He said? Of the many venues you've performed in which one sticks out to you the most? And why? Well? I have performed in a great deal of venues, some of them quite un new usual. I remember I did stand up once on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange. It was weird. It was one of those corporate gigs which everybody in show business does. Like everybody if you think, oh yeah, but my favorite rock band would never do a corporate gig, They've fucking done it. Everybody does it. So I was doing a corporate gig on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange. You know. All they did was they just after the day's trading was over, a bunch of stockbrokers got together, and you know, they hired me to come up and tell them stories and jokes and stuff. And I did it and it was okay. I felt a little weird doing it, and I think it was a little bit of a strange experience, but it worked out all right, and that was quite memorable. One of the memorable things about that was there was no dressing There's no dressing rooms in the New York Stock Exchange, so there wasn't a place for me to go and prepare myself for the day, you know, to put on my outfit and make up and stuff. As usually there's a dressing room or something where you can go and like, you know, hang out until it's time to go on on stage or on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange. And they didn't have anywhere for me to sit, so they said, oh, we'll just go into the chairman's office. You can just go to the chairman's office of the New York Stock Age because he's not there. Now I don't know who that is, but I mean it's somewhat super powerful, probably like I don't know, Satan or something, Satan's office at the New York I don't know if say, I don't think it's but somebody, you know, somebody very powerful who runs the New York Stock Exchange. And they had this very fancy office and obviously it was in the evening, so this individual wasn't there. And I went into the office and on the wall was hanging at Jackson Pollock painting. Now I don't know if you know anything about Jackson Pollock, but Jackson Pollock was that he's the scatter man or modern art. And the paintings are the title paintings. They're abstracts, and they're they're kind of their evocative and emotional pieces of art, but they're not figurative. You know, they don't have there's not a picture of a cat or you know, a little boy fishing or Sinorita turning to you or anything like that. So you know, so it's not it's the kind of thing. My wife is more involved than she knows all about that. But I don't really I like paintns of things, you know, like, oh, look a look at that painting. It's a painting of a cat, isn't it really good? But but she understands Rothko and Jackson Pollock and you know, Cy Twombly and all those very clever people. And but it was the first time I'd been in the presence of an actual Jackson Pollock painting, and the first thing that, you know, I'd seen reproductions of his paintings in photographs, as I'm sure all of you have. And we could probably put some up in the web site or something into it. We have a website, we probably do. We have a website, right, so you can put Jackson Pollock up and you go, oh, yeah, I know what you mean. But what was interesting was that being in the presence of the actual painting was a very different experience. It hit me like a freight train. It was amazing because I was like, oh my god, this is and I can't put into words what it did. And I know this sounds fanciful and a bit kind of you know, really Craig, but it was a very emotional response and I couldn't describe it in words. And look, I have no fucking slouch when it comes to describing things. I work with words. I'm fairly decent, you know, describing how I feel or how I see things or right, I like to think I'm fairly air dye. But I couldn't express the emotion that this painting seemed to construct or elicit from me. And I was I'm still kind of impressed by that. I'm kind of amazed by that, and it made me kind of drew me into it. It wasn't all happiness, and it wasn't all sadness. It was it was a very weird kind of thing. The only thing I can kind of equake to is a sort of fairly low impact drug, you know, like maybe shit cannabis, but it kind of it kind of or maybe like week like a weak diazepam or something. It made me feel kind of good and a little bit different and but it was it was a visual experience. That's why I thought was so amazing about it. And so I mean I became kind of a a little more converted to the to the world of abstract expressionism from doing that gig. So in answer to the many of which venue sticks out to you the most, I don't know if that sticks out the most, but what it does do is it certainly changed me. There are venues that I've played, you know, in doing stand up. I think I'm the only person I know that's played the Carnegie Hall in Dunfermline, Scotland, and Carnegie Hall in New York City I've known, and they're very different venues or as we say in New York at Carnegie Hall, but as they say in Dunfermline called Nagie Hall. I think probably there's some more Carnegie Halls. I think that was one in Pittsburgh has got to be one in Pittsburgh. They are very different venues, the Carnegie halland on Fermline and the Carnegie Hall or Carnegie Hall in New York. In when I played the Carnegie Hall and done Fermline, Scotland, it was before I stopped drinking. It was in the early days of stand up, when I was still performing as a character that I called bing Hitler. It was the whole story. And when I was doing a character thing, and I was playing a kind of a kind of buffoon, a kind of idiot who was sort of from Dunfermline, Scotland. Now that's a bit of a problem because I'm not from Dunfermlin in Scotland and from a town called Cumbernauld, which is just outside Glasgow in Scotland, kind of the New Jersey of Let's Go and so I so I was a kind of natural enemy to the audience there anyway, And it was a lot of punk rockers and stuff like that. And it was the upshot of it was that I was drinking. I went on stage. I did not go down well with the audience, and I was still playing a guitar at the time, and they they started throwing things at me, and then they rushed the stage and they stole my guitar and things were getting a little hairy, and I had to get a cab out of there to get back to Edinburgh, to get away from the audience who were at that point had the kind of morph from being an audience said the more of a kind of angry bob. And they chased me out of the venue and I jumped into a taxi and I was driving away in the taxi and somebody through a rock and it it broke the back window of the taxi. I had to pay the taxi driver, but he was like, you'll have to pay for that. I went, fine, just keep going. I mean, it was like and he drove me back to Edinburgh. It was very cold because the window and it was glass, but I had to pay for his weird window to get fixed. This is a long time ago and that was my experience playing the Carnegie Hall in done Fermline. Now years and years later, I played Carnegie Hall in New York City. I actually did it twice in the same day. I had booked a show and it sold out and they said, we do another show, and I mean sure, I said, but we only have a matinee available at half past two in the afternoon. All right, we'll give it a go. So I played Carnegie Hall in New York twice in the same day half past two in the afternoon. And I've got to be honest, it was a little sedate it was a bit of a sedate. It was more like a Schubert concept, to be honest with you. But the evening show was very much the same thing, and nobody beat me up or chased me out of the venue. At Carnegie Hall in New York, nobody stole my guitar. I wasn't playing a guitar at that point, and the audience seemed much happier and with the show than the audience and Nfermline the New York audience. I will say this though. The difference is that by the time I played Carnegie Hall in New York, I had stopped drinking. I had stopped drinking for about probably about fifteen or twenty years at that point, so I imagine the performance was of a different type. I think that's the case, and I rather loved it. I will give you a little piece of information about Carnegie Hall as well, just to say if you're ever playing it, be very careful. There is a very steep rake on the stage. A rake is a kind of gradient on the stage which slants towards the front of the stage so that the audience, when they're looking from the auditorium, get a better view. I think it's really for plays and for orchestras and stuff like that. It gives people a better view, or maybe projects sound better or something. And the Carnegie Hall in New York is a very steep rake and it's made of wood the floor. So all I'm saying is, don't wear your socks when you're playing Carnegie Hall in New York. Wear a pair of grippy shoes, or you could come a cropper. I learned that hardly. This is from Tyler brou who says, Hi, my name is Tyler. I don't know. I have a question about fatherhood. All right, Later this week my second child will be born and I'll become a father of two. Yep, what tips do you have for someone bringing new life into the world. Well, Tyler, as the father, I have to say, it's pretty obvious you are not the one bringing your life into the world. You're the one witnessing your life being brought in in the world, I suppose. I mean it's semantics. Really, I was there at the birth of both my children, and I have to say it's quite a show, isn't it. Anyone who's been alive human birth? I mean, look for the mothers involved. You know, you know, I can't even imagine. I mean, it's just craziness, but then pain and all that. But as a as a witness to your child being born, my goodness, it's a weird It's again again, It's something that's very difficult to describe. You know, maybe I'm learning on this edition of the podcast. I'm nowhere nearest there you day. As I say, guy, I can't really describe the emotion of what it's like to because you know, when someone is being what a human is being born in a room and like there's a kind of weird like anticipation and then someone news there like, oh my god, so wild. There's a lot of you know, a lot of gory business. I'm not good with any of that. I would have been a terrible doctor. That and the fact that you know, I'm not clever enough to be a doctor. But also I think that you know, to be to feel squeamish is not something you want. And a doctor. You don't want a doctor going oh like that, that's not you want a doctor. Do you have very tips about bringing new life? Tips about father? You know, it's funny, I you know, I spent because I'm playing in Jersey, my oldest kid, who's now nearly twenty four. He's not kid anymore. We were hanging out after the show last night. He lives nearby and and it's an amazing thing. I actually remember it from the movie Lost in Translation, when Bill Murray's character is talking to Scolet Johnson's character about his children and said, you know, as their babies, and when their little children, they're so adorable, and their little children they're funny and cuting all those things. And then when they grow up, and this is at the point of father Rudeima, you know that my youngest boy is fourteen. So he's not a baby. He's not you know, Philly cooked, but he's not a baby. But I mean, it is anyone Philly cooked to. I mean, I'm sixty two. I don't know if I'm fully cooked, but they I've been baked a couple of times somehow. Right. The business of what Bill Murray's character says in that movie is that they become just these very interesting human beings, maybe the most interesting people you know, And they do. My kids are the most interesting people I know. And if you know me, you know, I know it's pretty interesting people. But nobody is interesting as my kids. All right, this is from Elsa g Hernandez Gonzalez. I'm guessing maybe you know. I think I can guess your kind of ethnic background. I think Elsa g Hernandez Gonzalez. I may be wrong, of course you may. That may be a married name, and you've married into the Hernandez Gonzalez is whoever. It is great. You've spoken about your favorite bands and artists and your talks, and I've wondered, would you make a playlist of your favorites to share, like a playlist on Spotify or anything like that. That's a very long It's always interesting to see what others enjoy, especially if it's someone with good music taste. Yeah, I would do that. It's like it's like making a mixtape for someone you don't know. I think that making playlists is kind of interesting from artists that you like. So I guess that's what Eliza's saying. Yeah, yeah, I do that. I think there would be some Suber on it, obviously. Then i'd balance it with some Motorhead, maybe the Ramones. Here's the thing about the Ramones. I want to tell you. It was something I was talking to a British person about this fairly recently, and they were talking about it was an English person, someone from North London, which is kind of a niche market, and they were telling me, as I'm sure many Americans have heard before when talking to English people, that the phrase that begins you see the thing about Americans. You see the thing about Americans is I'm like, well, we Americans would be talking about here. I've never understood that. Well, you see the thing about Americans and then they start talking to you about, you know, some guy they've seen on a British documentary who was you know, survived on his boat in a you know, Hurrican in Florida and he was wearing a hat that said who Hearted. And they say that's America and that's part of America, and God bless them. That's great. I think that's awesome. But the the idea that America is one thing, well, talk to Eliza g Ornandez Gonzales or Craig Ferguson. I mean, America is very as we know, how do you even define that? But what this person says to the thing about America two things. One was that Americans are such loonings like okay, well, I think there are certainly moonies who exist here, but America doesn't have exclusivity on loonings. And the second one is you always say this in British people. British people from the intelligence and bourgeois British people also always say this, think about Americas. They have no sense of irony. They have no sense of irony. And I remember one of the writers on the Late Night Show. I was telling them about this, a guy called Ted Mail Karen, who was one of the head writers on the Late Night Show, and he said, Americans have no sense of irony. I said, that's what they always say. He said, well, that's rich coming from a country that called itself Great Britain. I was like, oh, touchet, it's aus of milk for you. Ted. Anyway, the reason why I bring this up is about the Ramones because the type of America that I wanted to be when I was a kid, it was a very odd mixture of I wanted to be an astronaut because I'd seen astronauts landing on the Moon when I was a little kid than they were American, so I wanted to be one of those. But as I got a bit older, I wanted also to be in the Ramones because I saw them. I wanted to be like the Ramones, and I wanted to be like Iggy Pop, and I wanted to be like people who were in rock bands and people who chewed gum and had teeth. And here's the thing that really got me. When I first visited America in nineteen seventy five, when I was thirteen, I went to a bowling alley for the first time. We did have bowling analogies in Scotland at that time. I went to a bowler I'd never seen a bowling alley before. I was like, this is amazing. And I tasted a beverage and I remember it to this day. It was root beer over crushed ice, and I was like, oh my god, whatever this say is, I have to I have to have more of this as much as possible for the rest of my life. Now, I'll be honest with you. I don't drink a lot of root beer over crushed ice, but every now and again I have one and it brings me back to that. And anyway, what I'm saying is, for some reason I was talking about the Ramones. I want to be a Ramones type I think he pop American but also an astronaut American. I think what I like about being in America is want to be a living It's America. Oh well, he's an email about that, and then probably we'll get done after this. But this is from Tony Gallo, who says, when you first landed in Smithtown, which is the first place that I went to in America, Smithtown, Love Island, on your first trip to America? What hit you heard this? The accents, the aggressive left turns, or the crushing realization that this was it? What was your funniest moment of culture shock? I no, I think I've been, you know, mine in the culture shock thing for a for a long time. Now. I'm kind of like the Scottish jakov Smyrna or something, you know, like in my country. You know, when I first came here, it was the root beer Overcross that is, that was the thing that really got me. I that was the first way in. And also you've got to understand it was nineteen seventy five when I first came here. It was the summer in nineteen seventy five. I was thirteen, I'd never been out of Glasgow and I go to Prestbook Airport in Scotland and I get on an airplane that lands in JFK in nineteen seventy five and I go from Glasgow having never left there. I have never been anywhere to New York City in nineteen seventy five and to this day is to my mind, they still the greatest city in the world, New York City. It's just over the George Washington Bridge, and I'm going to go there in a minute to answer a question that's come in because I moved back to Scotland for a long time and people say to me, you still live in Scotland or I moved back to Scotland for five years and I don't. I don't. I live in New York City. So I'm going to go home. I'll see you guys later. Thank