Ladies and gentlemen,
please welcome your host for
tonight,
Chris McCausland!
CHEERING AND APPLAUSE
Ladies and gentlemen!
CHEERING
I'm hosting this!
Me!
Live at the Apollo, hosting!
This!
Me!
Hosting!
HE LAUGHS
I've been doing stand
-up
for years and the stand
-up,
I can do this.
I'm all right with this.
Being blind, my problem is
the getting
-on
-the
-stage.
And the getting
-off
-the
-stage.
The being
-here, I'm fine,
it's just the getting
-here and the
getting
-off that's the problem.
So the BBC thought, "Let's make him
do that three times."
I mean, I'm all for
equal opportunities,
but sometimes it goes a little bit
too far, doesn't it?
They'll have me as a judge
on Strictly next.
HE CHUCKLES
"What do you reckon to that dance,
Chris?"
"It was a good song."
It's a very nerve
-racking show
to do this, for a comedian,
stood behind that sign, waiting to
come on, you know.
a lot of comedians,
when they're back there,
what they'll do is they'll
have a few moments,
a little bit of positive thinking,
you know, hopefully kind of
improve their mind
-set,
have a knock
-on effect
on their performance level
when they're on the stage,
little bit of positive thinking
that doesn't really work for me.
What I do, I have a few moments.
I have a little think
about some parallel universes,
that sorts me out
because what I've realised
is it doesn't really matter
how this gig goes, because there's
an infinite number of universes
out there where I f*cking
smash it, so
Takes the pressure off, doesn't it?
Takes the pressure off.
My daughter is
My daughter's called Sophie.
That took us a while, by the way, to
land on that.
We went round and round on the
roulette wheel of baby names
before we got to that.
The difficulty was, I think, there
was two of us trying to pick it.
I think
..picking a name for your kid might
possibly be the only thing
that single mums have got
easier than couples.
It's hard being the single mum,
isn't it? Except for picking a name
because there's one of you,
you pick it, you go,
"That'll do", and you move on.
We went back and forth for months
because you both got your own
personal likes and dislikes.
But that's just the start, isn't it,
because then you've got rules,
like you can't name your kid
after someone you remember
from your past as being
a proper dickhead. Right?
We're reminded of that person every
time you have to talk to your kid,
don't you? "Come on,
it's bath time, Damien."
"Oh, f*cking Damien!"
Ran my Megatron when I was eight.
I hope he's dead.
You can't name your kid
after someone you've got
explicit sexual memories of.
But you don't know each
other's histories, do you?
My wife was like,
"What about Susan?"
It's like, "There's no way"
"There is no way
What, old Two c*ck Susan?
"Is that what you're after?"
She was like, "Two c*ck Susan?!
"Just don't know what you're talking
about, doesn't even make any sense."
"Yeah, suppose you had to be there."
I don't argue with my wife any more.
Me and my wife have been
together for 16 years and
CHEERING AND APPLAUSE
I don't argue with her any more.
I don't argue with her because
..it upsets her
and deep down inside,
I know that she likes being upset.
I just don't want to give
her that little piece of joy.
She loves it, she can't get enough
of it! Oh, if my wife could exist
in a perpetual state of upset,
oh, it would make her so happy.
I walked in the living room.
She just sat there on her own,
inconsolable, sobbing on her own,
crying, andwatching the telly.
I said, "What are you watching?"
HE SNIFFLES
She goes
"Just watching the end
of a film, on Film Four.
"It's really sad."
Oh, sh*t, man, I've walked in at the
wrong time here, haven't I?
Get out of there, leave her to it,
that's best for both of us.
I walk back in, walk back in
an hour later, she's crying again.
I said, "What you watching now?!"
She goes, "Film Four +1."
Just reliving the same
upset over and over!
My wife
caught me on
..Pornhub up the other day.
Because I'm not going to get
any blinder, am I?
APPLAUSE
HE LAUGHS
I was there for research purposes.
Somebody told me something,
I went online to check it out.
It turns out to be true.
I urge you, have a look when you get
home tonight.
This is your excuse to legitimately
get some, some mucky content
in your internet cookies, right?
But if you go on to Pornhub now,
they have got a range of
audio
-described porn videos.
Specifically for blind people,
it describes the action
as it unfolds.
Oh, it's a game changer.
"She takes out his huge p*nis
and puts it in her mouth."
HE MIMES GAGGING
"She's got an expression
on her face that says
"she's made some wrong
decisions in life."
HE MIMES GAGGING
"You can see it in her eyes.
"She wished she'd tried
harder at school."
HE MIMES GAGGING SORROWFULLY
"You can see it in his eyes,
"he's glad he didn't try
harder at school."
So, you mightn't be able to tell
this to look at me,
by the way, but you are looking
at a recent EuroMillions winner.
WHOOPING
Yeah.
£2.80.
It's a cheek, it's a disgrace,
it's a scandal.
£2.80 on the EuroMillions!
30p
- more than what it costs me to
play the game in the first place.
I play the EuroMillions online
because I'm rubbish with bits
of paper, right? Does anyone else
play the EuroMillions online?
CHEERING
Yeah, you'll know.
You will know.
It doesn't matter
how little you win.
They've only got one email.
They send the same email
to everyone regardless.
They haven't got the decency.
They haven't got the good grace
to just tell you in the email,
"Just to let you know,
you've won £2.80, you loser."
No, they like to build up the hope.
"You're a winne
-e
-e
-er!"
"Log in now!" They tell you,
"Log in now, we can't possibly
"tell you what the news is in the
email.
"If this information should fall
into the wrong hands,
"your life might very well
be in danger."
"Log in now, we've got investment
experts standing by
"who can advise you on what to do
with your £2.80
"You can have it in one
lump sum payment
"or you could choose to have it
in instalments of 14p a year
"over 20 years."
And I get it,
but it's data protection,
I get they can't put the thing in
the email.
Just have two emails,
that's all I'm saying.
Have a second email
for people like me.
"You're a winne
-e
-e
-r!
"But don't build your hopes up."
"Don't be picking any houses,
but do decide what your
favourite flavour of crisps is.
SINGSONGY: "Cos somebody's getting
a multi
-pack, somebody's"
This is why I hate it,
because every time I have to log in
to find out the pittance that
I've won,
I think added security
on the National Lottery website.
Username, password, Mac Keychain,
bing, that goes in, not a problem.
But then every time it's like I've
never visited it before,
every time I have to do the robot
thing with the road signs,
it's often on the
I can't do the thing, can I?
I have to click
the button underneath.
Give me an audio challenge.
"Type the words into the box that
you hear in the following sentence."
HE SPEAKS GIBBERISH
Let's give them road signs a go.
I'll take my chances.
HE SPEAKS SAME GIBBERISH
It's like they've hired stroke
victims to read foreign words.
Think about what we're doing.
Can you imagine Imagine going
back in time.
Imagine going back in time to,
like, the mid '80s,
35 years for the sake of argument.
You go back in time to the
mid '80s and you tell somebody
that you are from the future and you
can prove it and
- poof
-
their mind will be blown, like,
"Oh, my God, that's amazing.
"You're from the future.
"Tell me everything, I want to know
everything.
"What's it like 35 years
from now in the future?
"Is there anything that you have to
do in the future
"that we don't have to do now?"
"Uh, yeah, you have to prove
you're not a robot."
"You have to WHAT?!"
35 years from now, you have
to prove you're not a robot?
"That's incredible!
How often do you have to prove
"you're not a robot in the future?
Is it like an annual thing
"you go through, like a medical or
something?"
"Oh, no, it's several times a day,
depending on what you're doing."
"How do you prove you're not a robot
in the future? Do you have to take
"a knife and cut into your own arm
and peel back the skin
"to prove that you're not
mechanical underneath?"
"Oh, no, you just have to look at
some photographs."
"Road signs, traffic lights,
that sort of thing,
"because, believe it or not,
"but 35 years from now, in the
future, robots and humans,
"you can't tell us apart unless
one's looking at a road sign."
You're like,
"That's a f*cking robot!"
"See it in his eyes."
Do you know what the scary thing is,
though?
All them pictures that we're all
clicking,
all them pictures of
traffic lights and everything,
millions of people a day clicking
these photographs,
all verified by Google.
We're all clicking them to
prove that we're not a robot.
And Google are using every
one of those clicks
to train their robots.
That's how they're training
their self
-driving cars
and the AI visual recognition
systems to recognise traffic lights,
road signs, cars, buses, trucks.
We are training robots to one day
prove that they're not robots.
How are we going to prove
that we're not robots?!
It's literally all we've got.
Three years from now, if you want to
log onto a website,
you're going to have to do something
that a robot just can't do.
You're going to have to,
like, express emotion
and just cry into your webcam.
Or break one of the three laws
of robotics
and k*ll another human
in front of your computer,
just so you can log
on and go, "Oh, £2.80?"
Sorry, Nan.
Ladies and gentlemen, listen
You guys have been lovely,
you've been amazing,
so don't let it go to your heads,
though, yeah?
Now, believe me, there's an infinite
number of universes out there
where you're acting like arseholes.
So, ladies and gentlemen,
are you ready
for your first act of the evening?
CHEERING
You are going to love her.
Please welcome to the stage,
the fabulous Sophie Duker.
CHEERING AND APPLAUSE
SHE CHEERS
Whoo
-o
-o!
Hello, everyone!
Hi!
I'm Sophie.
I'm an openly
..black comedian.
I am so proud of you.
Not just you, sir.
I am so proud of you,
I am so proud of you,
I am so proud of you,
I am so proud of us all
because look around, guys.
We did it!
We are out
..on a week night
..watching comedy
..in the middle
of a global panna cotta.
And none of us has got it.
We hope.
But I should reassure you that to do
this, I have been rigorously tested
all week and I have
everything apart from Covid.
I want to tell you some facts
about my character,
so you get a little bit of sense
of what I've been through.
I identify as a
triple threat minority.
Triple threat minority because I
make white people uncomfortable
when I sing, act or dance.
And I know some people
don't like it
when you talk about identities,
they don't like it
when g*y comedians talk about
g*y stuff or women comics talk about
girls stuff or Croatian comedians
bang on about Croatia.
But if I don't talk about my pain
on stage, how else will I make my
therapy tax deductible?
How else will I make strange men
on the internet "angwy"?
I get a lot of hate from men
on the internet,
men with usernames
like at @BrexitBoy69.
And @LaurenceFox.
I think it's because
I'm a person of colour.
Sir, what sort of colour
would you say I am?
NERVOUS LAUGHTER
OK, I'm going to let you off the
hook because you're very poorly lit,
but even so, when I said, "Sir, what
sort of colour would you say I am?",
you visibly shat yourself.
I am black or brown,
I will answer to both.
The reason I ask is because some
people of the Caucasian persuasion
find it very hard
to name difference.
I asked an elderly gentleman
in Camberley pre
-Panasonic.
I was like, "Sir
"..what sort of colour
would you say I am?"
And he sort of went, "Uhh
-h
-h
SHE CROAKS
"Beautiful?"
I am black! I'm super duper black.
I'm B
-L
-A
-C
-K, black.
I'm B
-A
-M
-E, black
..and minority ethnic.
Everybody say, "Black."
ALL: Black!
Yes! You've got to get used
to saying, "black"
because there are so many great
black things.
You got black tea,
you've got black jack,
you've got blackbirds like me.
You want a black coffee?
Just call it a black coffee
..not an African americano.
CHEERING AND APPLAUSE
And I really stress the point
because I used to be not exactly
ashamed of my blackness, but
I never wanted to do anything
that could be seen
as stereotypically black
and it followed me all my life.
So when I was younger, when I was
at school, if I was ever in PE
and a basketball would come flying
at top speed towards my face,
instead of catching that basketball
in the air, dribbling it towards
the nearest net and slam
-dunking
the thing as I naturally would
..I just let it hit me in the face
and roll away.
When I got older, I made a lot of
friends, mainly white friends,
and we started going to da club.
Are you familiar with da club?
Not "the club", "da club".
At the end of da street.
Whenever I went to da club and I was
dancing with a group of friends,
I would deliberately
dance less well on purpose
..so that the white people
wouldn't be intimidated.
There'd always be one other black
person in the corner of the room,
arms folded, looking at me, like,
"You're disrespecting yourself."
Meanwhile, I'd be in the middle
of the dance floor,
just moving like Miley Cyrus.
I tried so hard!
I tried so hard to pass as white,
I did all the white things,
I bought pesto
I said, "tiss
-ue".
I got really dangerously into
..Jamie T.
I am talking about the era
of Jamie T, Pete DoherTy,
Jack PenaTe
Jedward.
I spent my late teens,
arguably the sexiest part
of one's teens
..just sort of lusting over these
gurning predators, like
Imagine we're me, we'll be at a
house party with an edgy white boy
and he'd have the
whole edgy boy starter kit.
He'd have the skinny jeans,
rollie f*g, unacceptable BO
He'd be talking always about one of
his two favourite subjects,
which is always either
dubstep or himself.
We're sitting on the windowsill and
finally, you pluck up the courage
to just cut him off mid anecdote,
put your hand on his shoulder,
look him in the eye and be like,
"Mate
"I love you."
Then he'd look at you
and you'd look at him
and he'd lean in for a kiss,
and then he'd just sort of
..thumb MDMA into your mouth.
But that was it, you were like,
"Wow!"
"I think he really likes me."
It feels like we're coming to the
end of the Pan's labyrinth and
..I don't know how anyone's coping,
I don't know how you guys
start your days,
if you wake up, roll out of bed
down a little coffee of colour
and you're good to go.
I wake up, every day,
look at the news
and I get a little shot of rage,
I was so angry during the
pan
-African at everything.
I was angry at the tier system,
I was angry at the new choreography
that we had to learn
-
hands, face, space.
I even got so angry at
Eat Out To Help Out
..a government initiative that
briefly delighted horny women
everywhere
..because we realised it was
actually about Wagamama's.
I guess I'm just angry now,
I'm an angry person.
People don't think I get angry
because I'm adorable, but I do.
I get so angry all the time,
but I can never show it
because I know that if I show it,
I'll get stereotyped as
the worst triple threat of all.
I'll get stereotyped as an angry
WHISPERED: black
woman.
NORMAL VOICE: Think, guys, I don't
want to be stereotyped,
so at the end of the day,
I just hold my anger in
and eat fried chicken
and twerk furiously.
Thank you so much, guys!
I've been Sophie Duker,
you've been so good! Thank you!
CHEERING AND APPLAUSE
Smashed it, smashed it!
Sophie Duker, ladies and gentlemen.
We're going to keep the show just
rolling straight for you, though,
so, please, welcome to the stage,
the amazing, Emmanuel Sonubi!
CHEERING AND APPLAUSE
SCATTERED WHOOPING, LAUGHING
WHOOPING AND CHEERING INTENSIFIES
CHEERING AND APPLAUSE
HE LAUGHS
This is my set.
This is all I do.
Just stand here and go
CHEERING AND APPLAUSE
Oh, good evening, Apollo,
are we having a good time?
CHEERING
Very, very happy to be here.
I actually
I actually nearly didn't make it
here tonight, I was
I was running late and I don't like
to be late. I like to be
I like to be early for stuff because
it's my way of breaking down
racial stereotypes.
I'm starting swimming lessons
next week.
I used to be a bouncer,
in case you wanted to figure
that out.
I wasa bouncer
for a long time.
I wasn't very it wasn't very good at
the start. I couldn't fight.
I don't need to fight
because I look like this.
And when you look like this,
you don't have to fight, right?
Seriously, there's only
two things you need to do
when you're massive and that's
breathe in
..right? And give a dirty look.
That's it.
Like, anyone did anything
to annoy me at a club,
I'd stand at the front like this
I mean, they throw themselves out.
It was
There was actually only one night
that didn't work.
One of the first clubs I worked at,
I got told if you're going to
come and work, make sure you come
tooled up, right? So I took
the only weapon that I had.
Do you remember those
little red Swiss Army knives?
I had that and I had it in my pocket
and I felt like Superman, right?
And I gave everyone that look and
then one guy turn up to the club,
I said, "Sorry, mate.
"Have you got your ID?"
And he's moved his
jacket out of the way
and he's got a g*n in his belt.
Now, do you know how hard
it is to get the knife
..out of a Swiss Army knife?
Now I'm thinking, "If this goes bad,
"all I can do is open a bottle
of wine for this guy and"
I had to stop being a doorman.
I stopped being a doorman, right,
because I started to feel old
and I'm not even that old,
but I've got to that age where
slang doesn't make
any sense to me any more.
Like, give me a cheer
if you're over 30?
SOME CHEERING
Right, onto 30
-year
-olds in the
room,
have you ever had a conversation
with a 20
-year
-old and,
afterwards, thought,
"What the hell just happened?"
Like, "That's where I'm at?" Right.
And 20
-year
-olds,
they've got too much energy, like,
we had these two young lads outside
the club, in their 20s,
and they were just talking.
And he said to his friend,
"That girl last night,
did you take her home?"
And this kid went,
"We were doing it for hours."
And I thought "Hours?!"
I had to step in, I was like,
"Sorry, um
"Were you doing it right?"
Hours? It takes seven minutes!
Who's got time for hours?
Now, I'll be honest, once a quarter,
and I'm good, that's it.
Any more than that,
I'll turn into the woman.
She'll say, "Let's do that again."
I'm like, "Can't we just talk?"
There's something very, very strange
that goes on in a guy's mind,
like, it's not great, but it's true
and it happens, right?
When we're having sex, right,
in our brains, as guys,
our heads are going,
"This is amazing.
"Oh, my God, I love her so much.
"We could do this over and over
again. I want to do this forever.
"This is the best feeling."
The moment we are done, our brain
goes, "If you go to sleep now,
"you'll get six hours."
LAUGHTER, APPLAUSE
WHISTLING
DO you know what? It was the slang,
though, that made me stop.
I stopped understanding slang and
slang has got weird now, right?
I'll give you an example. This is
what I used have to deal with.
So I don't know if you know this,
but it's no longer called
"going to the gym" any more.
That's what we used to call it.
"I'm going to the gym today,"
but it's not called that
because it was too long a sentence.
So it's been shortened now.
It's not called going to the gym,
it's now called "bang in gym,"
right?
"Bang in gym."
Now
That's absolutely fine
..once it's been explained.
Because the first time I heard that,
I was stood outside my club,
we had a couple of new guys working
with us, younger guys,
and he stood there with his mate,
he went, "So, bruv
"You still bang in gym?"
and I thought
I thought, "How nice it can be this
open in this sort of environment!"
Then they brought me into the
conversation, he went, "Bruv
"..you look like you've
banged gyms."
I was polite about it.
I was like, "Um
"No, that's not my thing, guys,
but it's your life choice.
"You live your life any which way
you want to."
And he's gone, "Nah, mate, you've
"..you've definitely
You've definitely done Jim."
I was like, "All right,
I might've had a dream about it
"when I was younger"
"It's your subconscious, so it
doesn't really count, right?
"And yeah, back in the day, I
clicked on the wrong video
"and I watched it
for 27 minutes. Right?
"If you don't finish it,
it doesn't count."
He goes, "Every doorman I've ever
worked with has banged Jim."
I thought, "That poor guy!"
LAUGHTER, APPLAUSE
Oh, guys, it's been an absolute
pleasure to play
the Apollo for you tonight.
HE SIGHS IN SATISFACTION
So, thank you,
goodnight.
My name's Emmanuel Sonubi.
And have a great weekend. Cheers.
Do you need me to help you out?
THEY CHA
Emmanuel Sonubi,
ladies and gentlemen!
Ladies and gentlemen,
what an evening we have had
at Live at the Apollo!
CHEERING
You have seen Sophie Duker
..Emmanuel Sonubi
Thanks for watching at home,
thanks for coming, guys.
My name is Chris McCausland,
thank you very much. Cheers.
Goodnight. Thank you.
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