I don't know if it's going to go full Skynet Terminator, but someone's going to get killed by a fucking robot at some point,

right? I don't believe this.

I think this is actually the real scandal with AI will be that none of it actually really does what it says that it does.

And that all of this is hype.

It wouldn't completely shock me if these people had been sort of induced in some way to leak this stuff to the press.

Because it actually drives the stock prices up.

Because investors look at it and they go, wow, they've built the Terminator.

I

really expect it to be when you're young and they're still relatively

young as well.

and I think especially in like this job which is so sort of I mean I think in general the state of the of the economy in the country at this point in history is such that I think adolescence gets sort of prolonged because people can't really afford to become adults and you get that kind of like people can't afford a house and they can't really and so you get this sort of weird limbo stage anyway but I think especially when you work in the arts you have this very kind of like you know, peripatetic, often quite hard up existence.

And so you don't really like, I think, I think like all of these things, I mean, what is it that, that Lenin supposedly said, you know, there are, there are decades where nothing happens and there are weeks where decades happen.

And I think that's the sort of similar thing where like, if you'd have been, if you are in a position when your parents die, I think less about age, but if you've got, if your life is kind of in a, in a, in a relative state of stability, like if you've got like a family of your own or whatever, I think that feels more natural to you.

but I think if you're like, you know, like I was kind of like a single guy, stand up comedian, you know, living with my mom and looking after it, it's kind of like this sort of, there's suddenly this kind of like gulf that you have to fill with whatever.

It's kind of like, um, I'm talking a bit about this in the show.

how did you cope with that? Do you just kind of, well, you just have to, don't you? You just go with this.

Like what things have you sort of implemented or been able to do that you've maybe learned going back to the fringe every year as a comic to make it more affordable or make it possible?

Yeah, I mean, I think like it's... basically when i when i started out in comedy i had like no money and um i would do everything on this kind of like you know i'd be like sleeping on people's sofas like honestly like the fucking the run-ins that i used to have at the edinburgh fringe because i was basically taking the piss like sleeping on people's floors and like you know people's flatmates like fucking screaming at me at one o'clock in the morning like why the fuck are you still here and all this kind of like like i've done my time in the trenches of like what you have to do to make it possible um And I'm grateful now that, you know, it's nice to make more money in the sense that, you know, you have more money, you can do more things or whatever.

But actually, one of the biggest impacts that making more money has had on my life is that my working life is less stressful because I go somewhere and I'm like, I'm going to sleep in a hotel and that's OK.

I can afford to do that.

And I don't have to, like, you know, sleep on the floor of some crack den somewhere.

Yeah.

With someone I vaguely know, you know, and like that is that is like a big impact.

closing question where everyone that comes on the podcast always get them to close on what their advice would be to anyone trying to have a career and what they do so to anyone that maybe wants to be a comic what would your sort of advice to them be

This is why the net zero consensus is falling apart.

[laughs] Well, I don't...

You know, to be fair, I won't, I won't slag off net zero in principle, but I think you've got a lot of people getting on the bandwagon about stuff that, as you say, is, is got nothing to do with the environment and entirely to do with their bottom line profit-wise.

And with, um, with airports like this, it's like, well, you know, it costs, it costs fucking 30 quid to get there on the train.

It costs...

You know, or you can get a bus, which is a nightmare.

It's like they never make it in...

Hmm

And

there's a conspiracy theory that he was picked up by a Chinese submarine because he was like a Chinese spy and that he just lived out the rest of his life in China.

That's a great story.

And there's also, they had another prime minister in the, I think Howard Holt was like the 60s, another prime minister in the 70s called Gough Whitlam.

who actually brought in most of the reforms that make Australia nice.

He's the reason why they have socialised healthcare and all this stuff.

And he was basically deposed by MI6 and the CIA using this incredibly antiquated thing in the Australian constitution that everyone had forgotten about, which is that technically Australia has a thing called a governor general who's appointed by the king or queen of Britain.

People don't believe it because they have created an environment where people don't believe things because they've told everyone that a lot of shit stuff is fake news.

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While supplies last.

Yeah

Mm.

And we're like, "Right, so we're, we're dealing with this in the morning." So we get up in the morning, and we make, we make a coffee, and there, there's an espresso machine.

And they've given us three coffee pods.

Bearing in mind there's two of us, and we're staying for two nights.

I'm like, "What, what a baroque amount of coffee pods to provide."

Okay.

Um, and, uh, and she, and she, she turns up, which I wasn't expecting, and then she's telling us that, you know, we lit the hot tub all wrong, and that's why it didn't get hot.

And like, "Oh, that's very weird about the shower.

[laughs]

But I was crossing this one-way street, and someone was driving in a car, and I'm ashamed to say it was a BMW, the wrong way up the one-way street, and nearly ran me over.

Mm.

And I sort of turned around and went, "Oi, mate, it's a one-way street." And he went, "No, it isn't." And I'm like, "Yes, it is.

It's a one-way street.

There's a sign right there." And he goes, "Well, what would you know? You haven't got a car." And I had to stop myself from rep- from, from replying, "Well, actually, I have got a car.

It's there."

Oh, what does she say?

And she's like... 'Cause obviously I've got all the equipment in my mouth, so you can't really say anything.

You're sort of there like, "Ah." And then, but she tells these stories that, like, beget a response.

And so she's going like, "Marty, it's terrible, right? So I got up there the other day, I said, 'Look, this room of yours, yeah, it's a pigsty, right? You're gonna clean this up.

You're gonna clean this up.' Yeah, and he's on the phone.

He's like, 'Yeah, yeah, whatever.'"

[laughs]

So I leave.

Yeah.

And we used to do it, a live stream that was quite late at night one night a week.

And so I'm walking up Brick Lane, and there's a bunch of, uh, people coming out of a bar, and these two girls come out the bar.

They're quite dolled up, and they say goodbye to each other, and they cross, one of them crosses the street, and then they turn to face each other once they're across the street, and then they both turned around and pulled up their dresses and mooned each other.

I'm sticking with the Maiden.

Anyway, yeah, yeah.

But so they, they've put up...

And this guy, I presume it's one man, has put up a, a long, probably about 25 lampposts, he's put up a s- a repeating sequence of flags, where it's Union Jack, George Cross-

That bloke Catman who had tungsten whiskers fitted and stuff.

I went in the Hello Kitty shop when I was in Japan with my girlfriend, and we went in then, and then we were just sort of wandering around, and it was mostly empty, and we were just sort of musing on like, "Like, who buys this stuff? Like, it's mad, isn't it? Like, imagine, like, this being a thing." And then some o- and then some woman who was from New Zealand just wanders over and goes, "Well, if you don't like it, you don't have to come in the store." And I was like, "Wow."

Go on, Frank.

This was, uh, this was actually last week, but I was, um, I was outside a show that I was doing with another couple of comedians.

We were about to go inside.

We're having a cigarette, and, um, a man, a man comes up to us, and he's like, "Can I show you a magic trick?" And we're like, "Yeah, go on." And then he genuinely showed us back to back several very impressive card tricks.

[laughs]

Um, there's a, there's...

I'm doing a parallel podcast for the eagle-eared listener.

I'm just slipping stuff in under the radar, Easter eggs.

Is that, that's a long time to keep a car?

I mean, not, maybe not from new.

I mean, my, my car's probably nine years old now, but I d- I haven't had it nine years.

No, we had to have name tags in our clothes, huh?

I, I didn't at my school, but one of my mates at university, I remember noticing that all of his socks had name tags sewn into each individual sock.

She was, actually.

She'd be making bawdy comments.

Yeah.

I like this.

You had matron, and you were sort of being deloused like a prisoner of war.

[laughing]

[laughing]

Yeah.

Um, Di- Dick Fiddy would be an example of, um...

I, I used to, uh, date this American girl whose mother had been quite a successful management consultant in the US, and she kept a list of every man she'd met in her career who went by Dick and shouldn't have done.

No, not all of them.

He's, he's sort of like the perfect geometric opposite of the Tipton Slashers monkey because, uh, the Tipton [laughing] Slashers monkey was, of course, brutalized by his father, and this is a monkey that's been brutalized by his mother.

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So tell us about the party we weren't invited to.

[laughing] Yeah.

That's greenlight.com/trygreenlight.

[singing] It's Frank Off The Radio, Frank Off The Radio, Frank Off The Radio.

It's the Frank Skinner Podcast, don't you know?

And is it just the Socrates ones, or is it a general?

Uh, it's most commonly associated with Socrates, but I think it, it just refers to the process of elucidating the problems with, of, with what someone thinks by asking them questions.

Did she?

Right to the end, because she was like, "Well, because then you can send a check at the same time as you'd send a bank transfer, but then they take some time to cash it, and so the money's in your account for longer." And I'm like, "But your money's in your current account, which doesn't earn any interest, so why do you care?" But it was like, my mom used to work in a bank, and it was this weird, like, principle thing for her.

I know.

My, my dad once said to me, he was like, "It's a shame you don't like beetroot." And I was like, "Why?" And he goes, " 'Cause it's very nice." And I'm like, "Yeah, but I don't like it, so it's, that's a subjective statement." He's like, "No, but if you liked it, you'd get a lot of enjoyment out of it like I do." [laughs] You know, I sort of...

I then got into this kind of Socratic elenchus with him, but I was like, "Well, that doesn't make any conceptual sense 'cause I can't get any enjoyment out of it 'cause I don't like it." He's like, "No, but it'd be better if you did." [laughs]

Mm

... or anything like that, but, um, so yeah, and they, and we used to get booked.

It was funny 'cause it was like, on one level it was quite, um, you'd get a lot of stuff paid for you, and, like, you'd kind of get invited to cool stuff, but then also so many of your bookings, you would just get random messages on the internet from guys in provincial Russian towns, and every- it was like a gold rush for comedy 'cause there was no stand-up really, and it was all starting up, and there was, like, this massive enthusiasm for it off the TV.

And so guys would just start up a comedy night in, like, a restaurant.

Well, so there's too many countries involved in this kind of thing.

[laughs] And I, I went back there, and then I was like, oh, this is very unlike me to lose my passport, but I think might out of my pocket unzipped, and I'd hung my coat over a chair, like upside down or something.

Anyway, so I go around there in the morning, and I was, "I think I left my passport here." And the lady's like, "Oh, yeah, there was a passport." And then she took the passport out, and she looked at the photo page and, like, checked it was me, and checked quite closely.