Mm

... uh, I hadn't read the other books.

I was like, "I, I will get round to them eventually." But I'd heard you refer to them as the m- the Bunny books.

And if you look, the, look at the...

You know, you look at those books, they're about a character called Bunny McGarry.

And I was quite...

So when I read the first one, I was vaguely surprised that Bunny is not the cen- the pr- the, the protagonist.

In a weird way.

Um, probably never will, but I do occasionally spend, like, a half hour on my dog walk thinking it through and thinking, "Oh, could I write that?"

When you're talking about a thriller, like, 'cause presumably you won't be able to stop yourself putting jokes in.

So what, what is the difference between writing a th- a thriller presumably based on some crimes that happen and the Bunny books which are essentially crime novels with jokes in them?

But I don't actually miss doing it myself.

Um, one thing, I don't know if you know this, the, uh, that room, the, your last room, th- uh, the Glasgow Stand, do you know, do you know they've moved now? That room's no longer there.

I was there, I was there on tour to two ye- two years ago doing Magic of Terry Pratchett, and then I was on th- there on tour this week, this year doing my, doing the Britpop Power.

And, uh, it's not as good a room.

It's just not.

We must have talked about it in an interview with you at some point, but between your biography of Terry Pratchett and this Reader's Guide, you've done how many shows so far? I

mean, I've performed probably upwards of 120, 130 at that show.

The show I took to two Edinburgh fringes, an Adelaide fringe, a Prague fringe, and several tours.

It's sold like 15,000 tickets now, which is absurd.

I'm currently resting it.

We're looking at filming it, and I'm trying to find the logistics of that are being worked out.

And when I do that, I'll do a couple of warm-up shows as well, and I'll have to relearn how to do the show again.

yes i'll play some like i don't know harp sound effect when you're

And even said when I was, like not known with doom when i was re-watching the stand-up when i was like watching billy connolly telling the story and then trying to remember it so i could tell it to those girls and i hope they'd like me and all that kind of thing there is a weird thing where you just end up being analyzing these things over and over and over again

Because there's a construction of, I think, that comedians know instinctively.

I think you can always tell a natural comedian, or any kind of writer, I think, because when they tell you an anecdote, they'll put the punchline at the end.

Whether the punchline is a funny punchline or an emotional punchline.

A lot of people, when they tell you a story, they'll lead off with the most important piece of information, and then they'll tell you how they got there.

Whereas a storyteller will do it the other way around.

They'll give the story a climax.

What else is on the list?

And I start, I did my first few gigs then.

Right.

We've got we've jumped ahead quite substantially from what comedy we're around from you as a child.

But that's right.

So we're going to have to walk.

I'm going to have to walk back a little.

Yes.

I think

And I start I did my first few gigs then.

Right.

We've got we've jumped ahead quite substantially from what comedy we're around from you as a child.

But so we're going to have to walk.

I'm going to have to walk back a little.

Yes.

Yes.

I think

yeah i was gonna say i suppose if you if you leave the the the the omnivore position and you go into being a vegan it's probably very difficult and that's i can now understand i always understand why there's all of these things that they call bacon chicken substitute because it's probably very difficult to actually just go do you know what I'm going to just eat nuts and mushrooms all day long and that's probably tricky isn't it? Yeah if you've been raised

eating meat and also like the thing is no one is arguing that this stuff doesn't taste nice this is one of the things that is one of the biggest things if you turn vegan or turn vegetarian is you're turning off food that you've eaten your entire life and that tastes good and that we as a culture are very good at preparing and cooking.

We've got thousands of years of learning how to cook a side of beef and thousands of years of learning how to smoke meat and a 20th century worth of building in foreign culture, food from other cultures and incorporating it with British produce to create delicious things.

and and just going oh i don't want those anymore more you still want them they're still no you never said they don't taste nice um which is why i wasn't the most disingenuous um argument i you hear when people talk about um veganism especially my my brother came up with these um vegan vegan wings they were made of um uh they were made of jackfruit uh which has got a very meaty consistent consistency and he kind of created this he was trying to basically trying to create a fried chicken feel um and by through spices and marinades and crumbs and stuff and he put in a sugar cane stick in the middle that acted like a bone like a chicken wing So you could pick it up.

And Piers Morgan, he had him on Piers Morgan's show.

And Piers Morgan came out with this massive diatribe of why would anyone who's vegan want a fake bone in their food? And why would you want food that looks and feels like meat when you profess to not want to eat meat? And it misses the point entirely.

The point is that you're trying to trick yourself into thinking you're eating meat.

right so i'm going to pull this back in because obviously you you mentioned at the beginning you you've come out of that that vegan brand i hate it it's a label isn't it and it it's one of those it's a weird one that everybody throws out i'm a vegan but you've come out of that was what was the reason in that you you kind of pulled yourself back out of that and went let's be back to being an omnivore uh it was lockdown