Stewart Lee's Comedy Vehicle (2009) s02e06 Episode Script
Democracy
Democracy, right, democracy.
Now, in 1913, a horse trampled over a woman in the name of democracy.
98 years later, and still horses can't vote.
Last show of the series, are you going to end on a high? Yeah.
A big joke at the end, a big punch line? Yeah, well, actually, I'm going to end on a song this week.
Oh, for God's sake! Jesus! No, I thought, you know No, I thought, I'm gonna I-I-I'm looking at the Conservative Party this week and the Government, andand I thought, "It's very easy, isn't it, to just have a go at them?" I thought Yes! "What about doing something sympathetic to them?" It's a sort of romantic look atat them, and so I've ended on a song that I hopewill emotionally connect with people.
In the 1980s when I started doing comedy, everyone hated the Tories, right, everyone.
Teachers hated the Tories in the 1980s, miners hated the Tories in the 1980s, and all the comedians hated the Tories, and all the bands hated the Tories, and all theatre people hated the Tories, and all dustmen hated the Tories, and civil servants and social workers.
In the 1980s, everyone hated the Tories.
It's amazing they kept getting re-elected.
It can only be down to thesuperior number of votes they kept receiving.
It was much easier in the 1980s, to do jokes about about the Conservatives, cos they were much more unsympathetic characters.
They were kind of ridiculous, mad, over-the-top characters.
You know, now they're not.
I mean, for example, when, um when, er, David Cameron only just got elected, I felt a bit I felt a bit sorry for him.
Well, I mean, he got elected, but he OK, he got elected, but he was only really able to take power by, er hooking up with Nick Clegg, wasn't he, and I think it's sad because, er, David Cameron, he was bred for power, wasn't he, that's the point of him.
David Cameron, bred for power.
Thousands of years of landed gentry bloodline and then er then Eton and then Oxford, and at Oxford he was in the Bullingdon Club.
Do you know about that, the Bullingdon Club? It's sort of an elitist dining society for, um, like Old Etonian types.
David Cameron was in it and, er, Boris Johnson, the London Mayor, and George Osborne, the Chancellor, and it cost youit cost you £3,000 for the jacket you had to wear, blue velvet jacket, to join in, which was, er, then, was 50% more than an annual grant and now is a third of your debt.
The Bullingdon Club, they used to have all these dinners with weird initiation rituals, drunken rituals.
And there wasthere was, um, a bit in, er, Boris Johnson's biography, where it said the Bullingdon Club guys used to go out and smash up pubs and restaurants, and if anyone complained, they'd just chuck 200 quid cash into their faces.
And, erit doesn't matter, does it? It's just student high jinks.
The kind of student vandalism I can't stand is when it has a political or moral agenda.
APPLAUSE They should throw the book at them! Oh, dear, this audience.
Conforming to the Daily Mail's idea of the BBC Two viewer.
Just Collectively, you've just made it much harder for the licence fee to carry on.
Um No, but the Bullingdon Club, all these multimillionaire teenage boys in it having their secret secret dinners, and all the time networking, making their connections for the future.
Um, there was even a rumour, um, when George Osborne, the Chancellor, was in the Bullingdon Club, that they had a dinner, all these exclusively white, male, multimillionaire teenage boys, where they hired, er, just black strippers from an agency called, um, Dusky Beauties, and, er I suppose there's nothing really wrong with that, but, you know, there must have been a point, if that did happen, during that dinner, when someone went, "Ooh, the power balance here's awkward, isn't it?" You know, historically, it's a bit I don't know.
It probably didn't happen anyway.
Probably didn't happen.
It can't have happened, can it, cos it would be the only recorded example of Conservatives favouring positive discrimination.
You People at home, do you get? In the telly, do you get that joke? Cos I thought more people would laugh at it than they did.
It's quite a clever joke.
I think people think it's racist, or something.
It's not racist, that joke, it's the opposite of racist, OK? It's saying they're all right.
It is! It's the opp If you don't laugh at that joke, you're racist.
So, anyway, yeah, right, David Cameron, so he's bred for power.
Landed gentry bloodline, Eton, Oxford, Bullingdon Club.
And yet, despite being bred for power, he was only able to get power by hooking up with Nick Clegg.
It's sad, isn't it? It's like, er, a foxhound bred to hunt foxes, but only able to catch the fox with the assistance of a small Chihuahua.
It was much easier, like 25 years ago, to do jokes about the Conservatives.
The problem is now they're quite anonymous figures, you can't really I mean, who are they? No-one really knows.
What are they like? No-one I think the election campaign was fought quite deliberately on that What's David Cameron like? No-one really knows.
Um I think I do know what David Cameron is like because, um, for three weeks in the spring of 1987, I was - or I thought I was, anyway - erfriends with David Cameron, right? Now, er, this wasn't something I could have admitted to on the comedy circuit when I started out in the '80s.
It was a lot more dogmatically left of centre, but I was actually a student, um, in Oxford in the mid-'80s when, um, when David Cameron was there and, er, Boris Johnson and Michael Gove, the Education Secretary, and George Osborne, the Chancellor, was just sort of at the end of when I was there.
And I can honestly say, I've never been as aware of the class system in Britain as I was, um, when I was at Oxford.
Most of the people I knew were were working-class kids who'd worked really hard, or middle-class kids like me who'd, to be honest, been lucky.
Luckier than they will ever be again! LAUGHTER Um, and I didn't tend to meet any of these David Cameron, old Etonian sort of Home Counties elite, and when I did, it was always a bit awkward cos, um, I was from the Midlands and they tended to find that rather exotic.
They'd go, "Yeah, Stew, yeah, the mid lands.
" "Yeah, the mid lands.
Do you know, um ".
.
II went up that way in my year off.
" "Yeah, there was a whole crowd of us, Stew, and "we got aan old VW van and "we drove "Do you know, Stew, we drove way we drove way, way, way "way up, we drove way, way, "way up the M1" ".
.
to, er "a place called Is it, er "Covnatry, or something?" "Coventry, yeah.
Coventry.
"You know that Coventry, I'd say, Stew, "Coventry was fucking amazing because ".
.
the people of Coventry, er ".
.
they had nothing.
" "They had They had nothing and their lives were fucked and ".
.
where they lived was shit and "the food was awful.
"And we spent some time with them, and do you know, the people of Coventry, Stew ".
.
they had a kind of spiritual dignity about them.
They had" "They "They "They accepted that they were fucked and they" "Oh, they were amazing.
Do you know that they've been "The people of Coventry, they've been "They've been an inspiration to me.
Not Ever since Not only to me, "um, but also to my butler, who, er" "He'd come along, you know, to wipe my arse ".
.
help me to dress myself.
" So .
.
in the spring of 1987, I got a letter.
Now, er, for the young people, a letter was, er, before You don't have letters now.
It's all like you send, like, signals, don't you? Invisible signals through space offoff the Internet.
What's that? It doesn't exist, does it? But a letter was, er Older people remember, a letter was like an actual It was a physical thing, wasn't it? It existed.
Yeah? In the '80s.
And back then there were loads of these these things that existed, weren't there? Do you remember? Older people, do you remember things, actual things? And you could touch them, couldn't you? Do you remember? The physical world, I'm talking about.
Do you remember, the older people? All those different things.
There were loads of things, weren't there? There was letters and, er .
.
you know, a stick and there was .
.
clay, there was loads of stuff! And it was all real and it all existed, yeah? Not like now.
It was It was the physical world.
That's what I'm talking about - matter, yeah? The older people remember it, the world of, er, of matter.
Yeah, of actual Remember, actual things.
When I try and do observational comedy, is it that the the the subject, the parameters are too broad, is that it? Anyway, I got a letter, right, and, um, the letter said, "I am organising a £200-a-ticket ball "for Old Etonians who are now students in Oxford "and I would like you to book the pop music.
"Yours, David Cameron, staircase 17, Brasenose College, Oxford University.
" I said, "Who's this David Cameron bloke?" And people said, "Eton, Bullingdon Club," and I thought, "Oh" They went, "No, go and see him.
He's supposed to be all right.
" So I went to staircase 17, Brasenose College.
I went into what appeared to be an ordinary student room at the time, of the mid-'80s, except on the wall, where back then there would normally have been posters of R.
E.
M.
and The Smiths, there were what I assumed at the time were prints of 17th- and 18th-century English landscape paintings, which I suspect, in retrospect, may have been the real thing.
And me, just having seen them, now meant they were tax-deductible.
Yeah, that's a joke about, er what's an allowable expense on the taxation system.
What d'you think of that? Pretty good.
So, er People liked it.
People liked it.
You can't argue with that.
"Do stuff about farts!" No.
So And in the middle of this room, sitting behind a heavy, er, oak Regency desk, um, on aon a black, revolving, leather swivel chair with his back to me and his hands behind his head like that, like a kind of shit Bond villain .
.
was the 19-year-old David Cameron, and he stood up and he shook me very warmly by the hand and he said, er, "I'm David Cameron, thank you for coming to see me," and he did so with awith a genuine warmth and charm that immediately dissolved all my sort of adolescent class prejudices and, er It was an amazing moment.
You know those moments in life where you seem to connect instantly with someone, there's an instant intimacy, and I used to hang on to this moment in my mind as like a yardstick of what an instant friendship would be like.
I I felt very .
.
attached to I don't any more, cos I've since seen David Cameron on the news, on the election campaign coverage, just going round, just doing that to anyone.
But, er, he was quite funny.
He gestu He said, "Look" He was self-aware, and I liked that about him.
He said, um, "I'm doing this I'm organising "this £200-a-ticket ball for Old Etonians," he said.
"With my connections, I can sort out the, er, the champagne, the string quartets, "but I need you to book the pop music.
" Now I'd been booking bands into student gigs, and I said I'd do it because Right, the way ordinary students got into these events, you could never afford to go to them, but the way you got in was if you worked on them, like you did some admin, or you were a waiter on the night, or something, they'd give you a free ticket, and that's how you got in.
And I think the Old Etonian types liked the fact that ordinary students could get into these events cos there was a chance we might get drunk, they might be able to have sex with us, and that would help to broaden the gene pool.
Um, so I said I'd do it and Iand Iand I used to go in to David Cameron's office every day and I'd take in all tapes and records and things.
Um, for the younger people, a record was, er .
.
a record was like a massive a massive, flat MP3 .
.
and there was almost no information on it at all.
It was very impractical - it could break or warp in the heat and, er, get scratched, um but it was better than your life.
And, er Nearly tipped then, did you hear that? We nearly got applause.
We nearly got applause in the room for the physical world.
Yeah.
People going, "Yeah, things that existed.
Brilliant! Remember them? "Oh, we lovedstuff.
" Remember when there were things? Yeah So I used to go in and see David Cameron with all tapes and records by Oxford bands form the mid-'80s, for him to book.
Er, Razorcuts who were like The Byrds, and Talulah Gosh, who were like the first sort of little indie band, really, and, er, The Jennifers, who were Supergrass when they were really young, and On A Friday, who ended up being Radiohead later.
And when David Cameron went on, um, Desert Island Discs, he chose Radiohead as one of his things, and he won't remember this, right, but the first person to ever play him Radiohead, er, would have been me, er, so in many ways I suppose I'm like an architect of government.
Um You know, I helped shape the political vision of HE LAUGHS So I used to go in there and play him these things and go through contracts and heand I used to sit down and he used to stand behind me, David Cameron, with his arm round me in a kind of encouraging, er, way, you know.
And I know People are sort of tittering.
It does seem It seems funny now, right, but OK, imagine being 18 and never having even imagined that people like that existed, and then meeting them and then being within theircircle.
And it was And it was an amazing thing, to beto have someone like David Cameron's arm round you.
Again, I don't feel like that any more, cos I've since seen David Cameron on the news, when he walks into Number 10 with his arm round Nick Clegg.
And it's not friendly, is it? It's like a bloke who's bred a prize pig.
His arm.
Going, "Aw, look at 'im.
"He doesn't know.
"He thinks he's going on a pig's holiday.
" So I used to sit there and I'd go through contracts and things for booking these bands.
One day, about the second week, there's a knock at the door and these three guys came in in their £3,000 elitist Bullingdon Club dining society blazers.
Er, Boris Johnson was one of them, I remember.
And, um, they said to David Cameron, "We're going for a drink, Dave.
Do you want to come?" And he said, "Oh, I'll just do this.
" And I said, "Oh, I'll come, actually.
" And then there was a kind of pause and David Cameron said, "Oh, no, that won't be appropriate.
" Now, Nick Clegg's life is basically a succession of those moments.
Just over and over again, all day, from the moment "No, we've had that meeting, thank you.
" Um Cos, you know what, the thing about those people, the Old Etonian Tory elite, is they can be very nice - I've actually got a friend that went to Eton and he was at my wedding - but theybut they They might even have our best interests at heart, who knows? Um It's possible! But, um, th-there is a sort of cultural gap, right GLASS SMASHES .
.
and, er Oh, no! That won't look very good, will it, if I'm criticising Hooray Henries to the sound of smashing glass! The good thing about that, right, that's an actual thing that's broken.
SCATTERED APPLAUSE It's created some excitement in the room.
If that was one of your modern virtual glasses that doesn't exist, you know, there'd be no comedy value in it.
The thing about thethe Etonians, Conservatives and such, they can be very nice, but there is there is a sort of cultural gap and you'll never You know, you just can't you can't cross it, there's no two-way traffic, right? Um Anyway, at the end of two weeks, I'd done all thisbooking and stuff, and I thought I'd get my ticket, as promised, and, um .
.
for the ball, and thenand then David Cameron It turned out he'd given all the ones in his allocation away to, er, people he was at school with and his family and friends and stuff, and, um I don't think he meant anything by that, I just think that I didn't really figure on his radar at the end of the day, you know, and I went, "Oh," like that and he said "I can" This is what he said exactly.
He said, "I can see you're upset, I'll see what I can do.
" I thought, "Great," but then I look back on that, it's an absolutely classic politician's sentence, isn't it? It's like "I can see you're upset "(about not getting the thing you were promised you would have).
"I'll see what I can do and I'll make it sound as if I'm doing you a favour "when I'm actually just doing "what I said I would do in the first place.
" Anyway, it turned out there was one ticket left, but it was in a different allocation.
One of the ways you could get into the ball was by doing jobs on the night from 7pm to 7am the next morning.
You could be a waiter or move chairs, or whatever, half an hour on, half an hour off, you know.
And the one job left was What it was, there was The terms of hire of this medieval garden were that it had to be kept scrupulously clean, right, and theytheythey needed someone to go round andand check for every hour and mop up any, um urine or vomit from thefrom the Old Etonians, and itit was very You have to imagine .
.
what it would be like to be a teenager and I don't really That's what I ended up doing to get my I was happy to be offered that.
I don't understand it now.
And that's what I did to get my ticket to the ball, to see all the bands I'd booked, I spent half the night going round cleaning up the sick and piss of David Cameron's OldOld Etonian friends.
And Therethere was one point, about 3.
00 in the morning and I was in this sort of gents' toilets, like a drain sort of place in the cellar, andI was pouring I was about to pour mybucket of stuff and there was someone in there and there was someone There was a voice and I think it was It was like It sounded like David Cameron, but I can't be sure, cos a lot of those people, they And he said He looked at the bucket and he said to me, "A Buller man would down that in one.
" And I wasI was happy.
I thought it was like the moment where, if I could do that, would I be in? Would I? And I tried, but I couldn't.
I couldn't I couldn't finish it.
And when I looked, whoever had said that was gone.
I wiped my face and I went out and I went back to my work.
Now .
.
that story about David Cameron is not true.
But I feel what it tells us about David Cameron is true.
APPLAUSE HE STRUMS A CHORD Please welcome, on the fiddle, all the way from Brighton, Nick Pynn.
APPLAUSE STEWART STRUMS NOTES Now It would be very easy to do a stand-up routine complaining about how the front bench of the Conservative Party is now loads of people that were in the Bullingdon Club elitist dining society in the mid-'80s, but I don't feel angry with them.
I feel a bit more, sort of sorry for them.
Cos when we were teenagers, we didn't know what was going to happen to us.
That's what being a teenager is about.
It's about finding out.
Whereas all the Bullingdon Club types, they already knew.
Their future was decided, so Rather than deal with them in a scamperous piece of stand-up, I thought I'd deal with the Bullingdon membership of the current government in the form of a romantic ballad.
Tonight, I'll dress in blue And you will dress in blue too I carve the pheasant As I sit across from you And talk about all the wonderful things that we will do You're youthful You're beautiful You're wealthy and you're smart I'm gonna make you Make you The mistress of my heart tonight We all make love In the Bullingdon Club Tonight You all make love by your own apparent free choice To the Bullingdon Club The future Was always theirs And so was much of Oxfordshire Breast, leg, or thigh? Carve up the carcass as you desire Champagne Charlie Ate all the quails' eggs I'd get up to throw up But it's a dismissible offence We're youthful We're beautiful We're wealthy and we're smart And you made us You've all made us the mistresses of your hearts And there aren't any women It doesn't matter Cos we can hire some in Were you partial to the white meats? Were you partial to the dark meat? Boys, were you partial to the white meats? Or were you partial to the dark meat, George? Were you partial to the white meats? Or were you partial to the dark meat, Dave? Were you partial? Were you partial? In your salad days? The future Is ours Nothing was beyond our powers.
MUSIC: "No Surprises" by Radiohead A heart that's full up Like a landfill A job that slowly kills you Bruises that won't heal You look so tired and unhappy Bring down the government They don't They don't speak for us I'll take a quiet life A handshake of carbon monoxide No alarms and no surprises No alarms and no surprises No alarms and no surprises Silent Silent.
Well done.
Second series is, as they say, on the memory stick in Mark Thompson's office.
How do you feel? Feels The thought that you could work for the best part of a year on something and it could end up just on a stick in some guy's office.
It just feels like a a fucking waste of time.
Now, in 1913, a horse trampled over a woman in the name of democracy.
98 years later, and still horses can't vote.
Last show of the series, are you going to end on a high? Yeah.
A big joke at the end, a big punch line? Yeah, well, actually, I'm going to end on a song this week.
Oh, for God's sake! Jesus! No, I thought, you know No, I thought, I'm gonna I-I-I'm looking at the Conservative Party this week and the Government, andand I thought, "It's very easy, isn't it, to just have a go at them?" I thought Yes! "What about doing something sympathetic to them?" It's a sort of romantic look atat them, and so I've ended on a song that I hopewill emotionally connect with people.
In the 1980s when I started doing comedy, everyone hated the Tories, right, everyone.
Teachers hated the Tories in the 1980s, miners hated the Tories in the 1980s, and all the comedians hated the Tories, and all the bands hated the Tories, and all theatre people hated the Tories, and all dustmen hated the Tories, and civil servants and social workers.
In the 1980s, everyone hated the Tories.
It's amazing they kept getting re-elected.
It can only be down to thesuperior number of votes they kept receiving.
It was much easier in the 1980s, to do jokes about about the Conservatives, cos they were much more unsympathetic characters.
They were kind of ridiculous, mad, over-the-top characters.
You know, now they're not.
I mean, for example, when, um when, er, David Cameron only just got elected, I felt a bit I felt a bit sorry for him.
Well, I mean, he got elected, but he OK, he got elected, but he was only really able to take power by, er hooking up with Nick Clegg, wasn't he, and I think it's sad because, er, David Cameron, he was bred for power, wasn't he, that's the point of him.
David Cameron, bred for power.
Thousands of years of landed gentry bloodline and then er then Eton and then Oxford, and at Oxford he was in the Bullingdon Club.
Do you know about that, the Bullingdon Club? It's sort of an elitist dining society for, um, like Old Etonian types.
David Cameron was in it and, er, Boris Johnson, the London Mayor, and George Osborne, the Chancellor, and it cost youit cost you £3,000 for the jacket you had to wear, blue velvet jacket, to join in, which was, er, then, was 50% more than an annual grant and now is a third of your debt.
The Bullingdon Club, they used to have all these dinners with weird initiation rituals, drunken rituals.
And there wasthere was, um, a bit in, er, Boris Johnson's biography, where it said the Bullingdon Club guys used to go out and smash up pubs and restaurants, and if anyone complained, they'd just chuck 200 quid cash into their faces.
And, erit doesn't matter, does it? It's just student high jinks.
The kind of student vandalism I can't stand is when it has a political or moral agenda.
APPLAUSE They should throw the book at them! Oh, dear, this audience.
Conforming to the Daily Mail's idea of the BBC Two viewer.
Just Collectively, you've just made it much harder for the licence fee to carry on.
Um No, but the Bullingdon Club, all these multimillionaire teenage boys in it having their secret secret dinners, and all the time networking, making their connections for the future.
Um, there was even a rumour, um, when George Osborne, the Chancellor, was in the Bullingdon Club, that they had a dinner, all these exclusively white, male, multimillionaire teenage boys, where they hired, er, just black strippers from an agency called, um, Dusky Beauties, and, er I suppose there's nothing really wrong with that, but, you know, there must have been a point, if that did happen, during that dinner, when someone went, "Ooh, the power balance here's awkward, isn't it?" You know, historically, it's a bit I don't know.
It probably didn't happen anyway.
Probably didn't happen.
It can't have happened, can it, cos it would be the only recorded example of Conservatives favouring positive discrimination.
You People at home, do you get? In the telly, do you get that joke? Cos I thought more people would laugh at it than they did.
It's quite a clever joke.
I think people think it's racist, or something.
It's not racist, that joke, it's the opposite of racist, OK? It's saying they're all right.
It is! It's the opp If you don't laugh at that joke, you're racist.
So, anyway, yeah, right, David Cameron, so he's bred for power.
Landed gentry bloodline, Eton, Oxford, Bullingdon Club.
And yet, despite being bred for power, he was only able to get power by hooking up with Nick Clegg.
It's sad, isn't it? It's like, er, a foxhound bred to hunt foxes, but only able to catch the fox with the assistance of a small Chihuahua.
It was much easier, like 25 years ago, to do jokes about the Conservatives.
The problem is now they're quite anonymous figures, you can't really I mean, who are they? No-one really knows.
What are they like? No-one I think the election campaign was fought quite deliberately on that What's David Cameron like? No-one really knows.
Um I think I do know what David Cameron is like because, um, for three weeks in the spring of 1987, I was - or I thought I was, anyway - erfriends with David Cameron, right? Now, er, this wasn't something I could have admitted to on the comedy circuit when I started out in the '80s.
It was a lot more dogmatically left of centre, but I was actually a student, um, in Oxford in the mid-'80s when, um, when David Cameron was there and, er, Boris Johnson and Michael Gove, the Education Secretary, and George Osborne, the Chancellor, was just sort of at the end of when I was there.
And I can honestly say, I've never been as aware of the class system in Britain as I was, um, when I was at Oxford.
Most of the people I knew were were working-class kids who'd worked really hard, or middle-class kids like me who'd, to be honest, been lucky.
Luckier than they will ever be again! LAUGHTER Um, and I didn't tend to meet any of these David Cameron, old Etonian sort of Home Counties elite, and when I did, it was always a bit awkward cos, um, I was from the Midlands and they tended to find that rather exotic.
They'd go, "Yeah, Stew, yeah, the mid lands.
" "Yeah, the mid lands.
Do you know, um ".
.
II went up that way in my year off.
" "Yeah, there was a whole crowd of us, Stew, and "we got aan old VW van and "we drove "Do you know, Stew, we drove way we drove way, way, way "way up, we drove way, way, "way up the M1" ".
.
to, er "a place called Is it, er "Covnatry, or something?" "Coventry, yeah.
Coventry.
"You know that Coventry, I'd say, Stew, "Coventry was fucking amazing because ".
.
the people of Coventry, er ".
.
they had nothing.
" "They had They had nothing and their lives were fucked and ".
.
where they lived was shit and "the food was awful.
"And we spent some time with them, and do you know, the people of Coventry, Stew ".
.
they had a kind of spiritual dignity about them.
They had" "They "They "They accepted that they were fucked and they" "Oh, they were amazing.
Do you know that they've been "The people of Coventry, they've been "They've been an inspiration to me.
Not Ever since Not only to me, "um, but also to my butler, who, er" "He'd come along, you know, to wipe my arse ".
.
help me to dress myself.
" So .
.
in the spring of 1987, I got a letter.
Now, er, for the young people, a letter was, er, before You don't have letters now.
It's all like you send, like, signals, don't you? Invisible signals through space offoff the Internet.
What's that? It doesn't exist, does it? But a letter was, er Older people remember, a letter was like an actual It was a physical thing, wasn't it? It existed.
Yeah? In the '80s.
And back then there were loads of these these things that existed, weren't there? Do you remember? Older people, do you remember things, actual things? And you could touch them, couldn't you? Do you remember? The physical world, I'm talking about.
Do you remember, the older people? All those different things.
There were loads of things, weren't there? There was letters and, er .
.
you know, a stick and there was .
.
clay, there was loads of stuff! And it was all real and it all existed, yeah? Not like now.
It was It was the physical world.
That's what I'm talking about - matter, yeah? The older people remember it, the world of, er, of matter.
Yeah, of actual Remember, actual things.
When I try and do observational comedy, is it that the the the subject, the parameters are too broad, is that it? Anyway, I got a letter, right, and, um, the letter said, "I am organising a £200-a-ticket ball "for Old Etonians who are now students in Oxford "and I would like you to book the pop music.
"Yours, David Cameron, staircase 17, Brasenose College, Oxford University.
" I said, "Who's this David Cameron bloke?" And people said, "Eton, Bullingdon Club," and I thought, "Oh" They went, "No, go and see him.
He's supposed to be all right.
" So I went to staircase 17, Brasenose College.
I went into what appeared to be an ordinary student room at the time, of the mid-'80s, except on the wall, where back then there would normally have been posters of R.
E.
M.
and The Smiths, there were what I assumed at the time were prints of 17th- and 18th-century English landscape paintings, which I suspect, in retrospect, may have been the real thing.
And me, just having seen them, now meant they were tax-deductible.
Yeah, that's a joke about, er what's an allowable expense on the taxation system.
What d'you think of that? Pretty good.
So, er People liked it.
People liked it.
You can't argue with that.
"Do stuff about farts!" No.
So And in the middle of this room, sitting behind a heavy, er, oak Regency desk, um, on aon a black, revolving, leather swivel chair with his back to me and his hands behind his head like that, like a kind of shit Bond villain .
.
was the 19-year-old David Cameron, and he stood up and he shook me very warmly by the hand and he said, er, "I'm David Cameron, thank you for coming to see me," and he did so with awith a genuine warmth and charm that immediately dissolved all my sort of adolescent class prejudices and, er It was an amazing moment.
You know those moments in life where you seem to connect instantly with someone, there's an instant intimacy, and I used to hang on to this moment in my mind as like a yardstick of what an instant friendship would be like.
I I felt very .
.
attached to I don't any more, cos I've since seen David Cameron on the news, on the election campaign coverage, just going round, just doing that to anyone.
But, er, he was quite funny.
He gestu He said, "Look" He was self-aware, and I liked that about him.
He said, um, "I'm doing this I'm organising "this £200-a-ticket ball for Old Etonians," he said.
"With my connections, I can sort out the, er, the champagne, the string quartets, "but I need you to book the pop music.
" Now I'd been booking bands into student gigs, and I said I'd do it because Right, the way ordinary students got into these events, you could never afford to go to them, but the way you got in was if you worked on them, like you did some admin, or you were a waiter on the night, or something, they'd give you a free ticket, and that's how you got in.
And I think the Old Etonian types liked the fact that ordinary students could get into these events cos there was a chance we might get drunk, they might be able to have sex with us, and that would help to broaden the gene pool.
Um, so I said I'd do it and Iand Iand I used to go in to David Cameron's office every day and I'd take in all tapes and records and things.
Um, for the younger people, a record was, er .
.
a record was like a massive a massive, flat MP3 .
.
and there was almost no information on it at all.
It was very impractical - it could break or warp in the heat and, er, get scratched, um but it was better than your life.
And, er Nearly tipped then, did you hear that? We nearly got applause.
We nearly got applause in the room for the physical world.
Yeah.
People going, "Yeah, things that existed.
Brilliant! Remember them? "Oh, we lovedstuff.
" Remember when there were things? Yeah So I used to go in and see David Cameron with all tapes and records by Oxford bands form the mid-'80s, for him to book.
Er, Razorcuts who were like The Byrds, and Talulah Gosh, who were like the first sort of little indie band, really, and, er, The Jennifers, who were Supergrass when they were really young, and On A Friday, who ended up being Radiohead later.
And when David Cameron went on, um, Desert Island Discs, he chose Radiohead as one of his things, and he won't remember this, right, but the first person to ever play him Radiohead, er, would have been me, er, so in many ways I suppose I'm like an architect of government.
Um You know, I helped shape the political vision of HE LAUGHS So I used to go in there and play him these things and go through contracts and heand I used to sit down and he used to stand behind me, David Cameron, with his arm round me in a kind of encouraging, er, way, you know.
And I know People are sort of tittering.
It does seem It seems funny now, right, but OK, imagine being 18 and never having even imagined that people like that existed, and then meeting them and then being within theircircle.
And it was And it was an amazing thing, to beto have someone like David Cameron's arm round you.
Again, I don't feel like that any more, cos I've since seen David Cameron on the news, when he walks into Number 10 with his arm round Nick Clegg.
And it's not friendly, is it? It's like a bloke who's bred a prize pig.
His arm.
Going, "Aw, look at 'im.
"He doesn't know.
"He thinks he's going on a pig's holiday.
" So I used to sit there and I'd go through contracts and things for booking these bands.
One day, about the second week, there's a knock at the door and these three guys came in in their £3,000 elitist Bullingdon Club dining society blazers.
Er, Boris Johnson was one of them, I remember.
And, um, they said to David Cameron, "We're going for a drink, Dave.
Do you want to come?" And he said, "Oh, I'll just do this.
" And I said, "Oh, I'll come, actually.
" And then there was a kind of pause and David Cameron said, "Oh, no, that won't be appropriate.
" Now, Nick Clegg's life is basically a succession of those moments.
Just over and over again, all day, from the moment "No, we've had that meeting, thank you.
" Um Cos, you know what, the thing about those people, the Old Etonian Tory elite, is they can be very nice - I've actually got a friend that went to Eton and he was at my wedding - but theybut they They might even have our best interests at heart, who knows? Um It's possible! But, um, th-there is a sort of cultural gap, right GLASS SMASHES .
.
and, er Oh, no! That won't look very good, will it, if I'm criticising Hooray Henries to the sound of smashing glass! The good thing about that, right, that's an actual thing that's broken.
SCATTERED APPLAUSE It's created some excitement in the room.
If that was one of your modern virtual glasses that doesn't exist, you know, there'd be no comedy value in it.
The thing about thethe Etonians, Conservatives and such, they can be very nice, but there is there is a sort of cultural gap and you'll never You know, you just can't you can't cross it, there's no two-way traffic, right? Um Anyway, at the end of two weeks, I'd done all thisbooking and stuff, and I thought I'd get my ticket, as promised, and, um .
.
for the ball, and thenand then David Cameron It turned out he'd given all the ones in his allocation away to, er, people he was at school with and his family and friends and stuff, and, um I don't think he meant anything by that, I just think that I didn't really figure on his radar at the end of the day, you know, and I went, "Oh," like that and he said "I can" This is what he said exactly.
He said, "I can see you're upset, I'll see what I can do.
" I thought, "Great," but then I look back on that, it's an absolutely classic politician's sentence, isn't it? It's like "I can see you're upset "(about not getting the thing you were promised you would have).
"I'll see what I can do and I'll make it sound as if I'm doing you a favour "when I'm actually just doing "what I said I would do in the first place.
" Anyway, it turned out there was one ticket left, but it was in a different allocation.
One of the ways you could get into the ball was by doing jobs on the night from 7pm to 7am the next morning.
You could be a waiter or move chairs, or whatever, half an hour on, half an hour off, you know.
And the one job left was What it was, there was The terms of hire of this medieval garden were that it had to be kept scrupulously clean, right, and theytheythey needed someone to go round andand check for every hour and mop up any, um urine or vomit from thefrom the Old Etonians, and itit was very You have to imagine .
.
what it would be like to be a teenager and I don't really That's what I ended up doing to get my I was happy to be offered that.
I don't understand it now.
And that's what I did to get my ticket to the ball, to see all the bands I'd booked, I spent half the night going round cleaning up the sick and piss of David Cameron's OldOld Etonian friends.
And Therethere was one point, about 3.
00 in the morning and I was in this sort of gents' toilets, like a drain sort of place in the cellar, andI was pouring I was about to pour mybucket of stuff and there was someone in there and there was someone There was a voice and I think it was It was like It sounded like David Cameron, but I can't be sure, cos a lot of those people, they And he said He looked at the bucket and he said to me, "A Buller man would down that in one.
" And I wasI was happy.
I thought it was like the moment where, if I could do that, would I be in? Would I? And I tried, but I couldn't.
I couldn't I couldn't finish it.
And when I looked, whoever had said that was gone.
I wiped my face and I went out and I went back to my work.
Now .
.
that story about David Cameron is not true.
But I feel what it tells us about David Cameron is true.
APPLAUSE HE STRUMS A CHORD Please welcome, on the fiddle, all the way from Brighton, Nick Pynn.
APPLAUSE STEWART STRUMS NOTES Now It would be very easy to do a stand-up routine complaining about how the front bench of the Conservative Party is now loads of people that were in the Bullingdon Club elitist dining society in the mid-'80s, but I don't feel angry with them.
I feel a bit more, sort of sorry for them.
Cos when we were teenagers, we didn't know what was going to happen to us.
That's what being a teenager is about.
It's about finding out.
Whereas all the Bullingdon Club types, they already knew.
Their future was decided, so Rather than deal with them in a scamperous piece of stand-up, I thought I'd deal with the Bullingdon membership of the current government in the form of a romantic ballad.
Tonight, I'll dress in blue And you will dress in blue too I carve the pheasant As I sit across from you And talk about all the wonderful things that we will do You're youthful You're beautiful You're wealthy and you're smart I'm gonna make you Make you The mistress of my heart tonight We all make love In the Bullingdon Club Tonight You all make love by your own apparent free choice To the Bullingdon Club The future Was always theirs And so was much of Oxfordshire Breast, leg, or thigh? Carve up the carcass as you desire Champagne Charlie Ate all the quails' eggs I'd get up to throw up But it's a dismissible offence We're youthful We're beautiful We're wealthy and we're smart And you made us You've all made us the mistresses of your hearts And there aren't any women It doesn't matter Cos we can hire some in Were you partial to the white meats? Were you partial to the dark meat? Boys, were you partial to the white meats? Or were you partial to the dark meat, George? Were you partial to the white meats? Or were you partial to the dark meat, Dave? Were you partial? Were you partial? In your salad days? The future Is ours Nothing was beyond our powers.
MUSIC: "No Surprises" by Radiohead A heart that's full up Like a landfill A job that slowly kills you Bruises that won't heal You look so tired and unhappy Bring down the government They don't They don't speak for us I'll take a quiet life A handshake of carbon monoxide No alarms and no surprises No alarms and no surprises No alarms and no surprises Silent Silent.
Well done.
Second series is, as they say, on the memory stick in Mark Thompson's office.
How do you feel? Feels The thought that you could work for the best part of a year on something and it could end up just on a stick in some guy's office.
It just feels like a a fucking waste of time.