John, where do you keep all your Emmys? You're no stranger to this show, and you win seemingly every year.

Well, uh, we, we're very lucky to have won a lot of them.

I, I don't have them at home because we have little children, and they are a serviceable weapon.

Anything is a weapon to a child, but that thing is heavy and pointy.

You could impale an eight-year-old, which is what the 10-year-old would do.

So I don't have them at home.

They're in boxes.

[laughs]Who are you rooting for tonight, John?

What, what did you want them to learn from this beautiful moment, that magic?

It is amazing watching kids go through it for the first time, right? 'Cause you realize this will become like, uh, a...

It'll be something every four years now for the re- hopefully for the rest of their lives that they can enjoy and look back on and start to build those memories.

So it's a different memory for me.

I, it's not...

Like, I, I think I can remember my dad screaming at a TV.

Now I'm on the other end of that.

What would you tell them that they've got in store if they stick with this for the months and the years to come?

The anticipation before the slightly disappointing reality of nil-nil draws kicks in.

Smell of a wall chart, Andy.

Just unfold it, Blu-Tack the corners.

Ah, it's a dance as old as time, isn't it?

Great read

... very good read.

Very good read.

The Dutch really were incredible, Andy.

[laughs] Oh my God.

I mean, that good trouble, necessary trouble thing is the reason why that resonates so much is, one, it is good to make powerful people feel uncomfortable.

[upbeat music]

Mm-hmm.

Uh, in terms of how I personally cope, I guess I'm very grateful to have the resource of the show so that we can find ways to put things into some kind of context, even if it is just for ourselves, right? Even in really difficult weeks, there is a point to us turning up to work, even if it's-

Yeah.

You know, when, when I was told I was gonna be seated farthest away from you, I assumed it was alphabetical, and then I went, F-O...

[laughs]

Well, Jimmy, [laughs] Jimmy, until the deal goes through, if I could just do a counter there, Paramount+ might have-

The fourth estate was supposed to be boring, but so was policy.

So the majority, the vast majority of the time, we are aggregating the work of good journalism... to then build something different.

To try and put a whole bunch of stuff into one place and then write jokes on top of it.

But in doing that, you might be interested in this.

We want to put the writers in a position where it is possible to write jokes.

And we got better at that.

Like the first few years, occasionally we were giving writers just...

As far as stand-up goes, are you still doing stand-up?

And so if you want to come kill a turkey with me, especially as my son got older, then you're going to come out there and help me scout, and you're going to help me mow, and you're going to help me fill up feeders, all the things that we're going to do, all the prep that it takes so that you get to do the fun thing and hear that gobble and watch him come in or watch that target buck make his way down the path that you've been setting up cameras and doing all the hard work for.

Well, and I think if you talk to guys too, like, so if I think back to playing in college and in high school, I miss the hard stuff.

I miss practicing.

I miss doing all those things in the locker room.

And you talk to guys that have been hunting for their whole life and grew up doing exactly what you're talking about with their dad going out and doing the hard stuff.

That's where discipleship happens is during the hard stuff.

That's where you're learning about your family and you're learning about what your dad values and you're teaching your son what you value is during the hard stuff.

And he will be a better dad and husband and those things, husbands and wives just got to talk that out.

Well, yeah.

A throwback to a simpler time when we Europeans first swept down on this continent, plundering your gold, leaving you humiliated, bitter, and dying of smallpox.

You didn't even watch?

No, of course not.

There was some quality counter-programming up against you.

While ABC aired the Oscars, ABC Family was showing The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants.

members.[booing]

Donald Trump ventured out from his Bedminster Golf Club just to get booed at today's FIFA Club World Cup final in New Jersey.

Trump is basically a guy going downhill on a bobsled screaming-

Ah, ah! Holy [beep].

You know, it just feels so important to me.

Yeah.

There's a bl- I guess the, one of the things you learn in...

I, I remember there was a stand-up in England years ago that said to me something on the way to a gig [laughs] when I was starting off.

He said, "Once you've bombed 100 times on stage-

Mm-hmm.

I think that's, it, it gives you this weird false bravado because you just can't...

I've lost my dignity on stage so many times [laughs] that there's either nothing left, or there's nothing left to take.

Okay

... "Oh, I think we might be able to have a conversation, then." And that was in my head all the way through two flights, uh, to get to Dharamsala in India, and then a long drive up a mountain, and then you see more and more monks-

Okay.

Yeah, because it was, "Oh, actually, I can just, I can just make fun of you." He is a ri- this is gonna sound very offensive, right? But he is, it is a ridiculous figure, like, to [laughs]...

It, to be on the receiving end of that much worship-

I like this.

Yeah, he was...

And you know what? The last time I saw him, I think I've told this story before, was, uh, he was dying in a, uh, an old people's home, and my- he, he was definitely not gonna be around for long.

And, uh, he...

My dad left to get the car.

He was on the ground floor, and so I just thought I could leave through the door, or I could, like, climb...

There was, like, a little window into a hedge, and I thought, "Or I could just, like, climb out through the window and go through the hedge." And so I thought, "I just, I'll just do the hedge." So [laughing] I lift up the window, climb out, like scratching through into the car park, and the last thing I heard him say to me was, "You're an idiot." [laughing]

Do you get what I'm saying?

It's hard to know how to talk about 'cause we know so little about what's going on in that locker room with those players, these human beings, sorry.How, how have you processed it though?

I mean, it's been very difficult to watch and I do think that it's, uh...

I've been quite surprised by how quickly analysts of Liverpool's struggles moved past the idea there is a central tragedy at the heart of what these guys (laughs) are dealing with.

You don't know what their individual circumstances are, how naturally they are able to get through a loss that was shocking, violent, and I think much more deeply felt to them that may have made sense from the outside.

Now, looking back in the little videos that you would see of them at the training facility, uh, at the coffee bar, you realize, oh, he was there a lot.

(laughs) He's around a lot in key moments, laughing, smiling.

You realize he was a real heartbeat, an emotional core to that group.

Until that comes out, I think it's so unbelievably hard to judge the intangible impact of this, of this loss and trauma.

... how you work through to show time.

So we'll have like, we'll, uh, have, everyone pitches stories to the show, everyone.

Uh, and then if there's something that intrigues us, we'll give it to a researcher.

They'll take that story for a week to check that it's been reported accurately, that whether things have changed that, uh, affect, uh, the story right now.

Um, then if it kind of clears that early test, we'll give it to a footage producer to find out if there's any footage through which we can tell the story.

Then at that point we'll add writers to the process.

Um, by that point, the footage department and the research department will have like packets, hundreds of pages, uh, of material that the writers can distill, and they will write an outline of the story.

Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

But in terms of how I personally cope, I guess I'm very grateful to have the resource of this show so that we can find ways to put things into some kinda context, even if it is just for ourselves, right? Even in really difficult weeks, there is a point to us turning up to work.

Mm-hmm.

... and I'm massively grateful, and I, I hope that it was f-...

I, I've, I find, uh, quite hard to watch our show at all, um, but, uh, those, those episodes I would not run back to watching.

Not because I, I think that they were bad, more that there was, uh...

That was hard.

(laughs)

(laughs)

(laughs)And as for you, Stuart, and-

(laughs)

... your visibly, visibly injured hand.

That's a genuine problem.

That's a genuine problem.

Don't- that's- that's-

The ones that are... How many of the 400 new rules have been written?

Hmm. 38. It's a magic number. Yes, it is. Oh, it's a magic number. It might not be 400 or 150 or 77. But it's 38 and that's a magic number. Let's do this. Red Sox pitcher Curt Schilling, LA Clippers forward Dale Wilkerson, Chronicles tailback Richie Rivers. They're all 38 and it's a magic number. Oh, it's a magic number. What, what.

Why weren't the rules written, John?

Stickley. Lobby, lobby, lobby gets you access here. Lobby, lobby, lobby gets you access here. Lobby, lobby does your... Stop it. Stop it. Stop it. Hold on, I can't do this. Blaming lobbyists is a cop-out, John. Here's what's going down. This whole financial reform thing is a sham. The only way that Congress would pass me was if the details of my rules and regulations were left unspecified, giving K Street lobbyists all the time they would need to water me down post-passage. And you know what? Exactly, boo, exactly.Thank you, boys and girls. Thank you.