Rob Brydon: Why I Love Making People Laugh | GREAT MOMENTS

0:00Hello everyone, I'm Jamie Lang, and this is Great Moments. Hey everyone, welcome back to Great Moments, really excited for this little episode today, because it's with Rob Briden. Now I'm a huge, huge fan of Rob Briden, always have been from Gavin Stacey to the trip, which was Steve Cougan, it's one of my favourite shows ever. He's so good, and when he came into the studio, it's kind of like over-excited, because being a fan of him, it's kind of strange to interview him, and he talks a lot about how he's always been an entertainer, always wanted to entertain, which kind of I relate to a lot. He does his very famous small man in the box, which I try and replicate. It doesn't go as well as he can do it. I'm not even going to try and do it again, because you've got to wait for the show for that to happen, but it's an amazing episode, and if you like this little great moments, you'll love the full episode. So all you've got to do is click on the show notes, and it'll take you to the full episode, plus there are so many more episodes like this that you will enjoy, so check them all

1:03out. OK, here we go. Enjoy this great moments with Rob Briden. Rob, do you think you were truthfully, do you think you would put on this earth to entertain? I would never make so self-aggrandizing a statement, but it's certainly what I like to do. What do you love about it so much? Does it do to your body, to your mind, to make you feel that's a great question. Don't ever ask me that because just a caveat, just for a second, I want you to, because Rob, I don't find you entertaining, but I know that a people who do, and I just want to understand it, because every single situation, whenever I've met you, whether it's on a TV show or when we go for our dinners that we go for, or rehab or as times we've had to have been to rehab, I'm sorry, I'm saying it because I'm not a rehab person. Where we met in rehab, all those places, but you love to make people laugh in such a beautiful way, and when you do what I like to you, and for lots of people know there

2:07are breaks and certain things like that that you have to reshoot something or do whatever, you even make the audience laugh. You really do. You have this innate ability, firstly to entertain, but so back to my question, do you think you were put on earth to do this? No, I'm not going to say that. You can say it though. Then that's a quote. I was put on this earth, no, but I do, you're absolutely right. I do on that very basic level, yeah, like, sometimes it's almost a dirty word, you know, to say or entertainer, I think it's very noble, and I like that, and yeah, yeah, I do. What do you love so much about it? I suppose how it makes me feel, you know, ultimately I suppose it's a selfish thing because that's how I like to be. I like to have that interaction, although I suppose then when sometimes I think that, you know, we have a group of friends, my wife and I, and they're the parents with three

3:12other couples who are the parents of fundamentally our 13-year-old son, our youngest, and we really hit it off with them, and we have holidays, that we hang out together with barbecues and stuff. And it occurs to me that, yeah, with them, I probably don't, at the now and again, I will train, be funny, but generally I die sort of don't with them. I like just being, you know, that makes total sense, that's interesting. Because then I tell you what I had for a bit, because I did a reality show for so long, which I don't know if you've seen it, we had to, we won a BAFTA, you haven't, but that's fine. And you know what, that's true. Well done, I was like, what can I say, well done, I'm still trying. But I, because it was so much, it was 160 days a year we were filming, right?

4:15It is. 160 days a year. Yeah. 160 days a year we'd film. So, what would happen was, is that I was in this constant like entertainment mode all the time. So then when I was off camera, I would still feel like I needed an entertain. And so that became quite psychologically, I suppose, quite like exhausting in a certain way. And what I realized is that I just didn't feel comfortable that much being in my own skin. So, if I could entertain, that made me feel more comfortable. Here we go, now we're going to continue, now here it comes. So do you think that within yourself, that when you are your true comfortable self, you can sit back and relax, and maybe that you find entertaining easier in a sort of social situation. This is where he doesn't like to go deep. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, it's interesting, um, maybe I, I, uh, well, you know, that's a, that's a big old question, you can't just, you can't just rattle off, and I'm giving

5:20it some thought. I mean, I don't, I don't honestly don't know how to answer your question, I mean, well, I suppose the question is this asking it again in a different way, okay, asking a different way. You're asking, am I comfortable in my own skin? I don't know, maybe I'm asking something different. As a, okay, when you were a child, yes, were you also, did you realize that if you could make people laugh and entertain people, you could gain popularity and become friends with people? I suppose I was aware of that, but, but it was the other way around. I think it was just who I was, and, and, and the things that you talked about were a benefit of being that person, got you, yeah, yeah, yeah. So I was never particularly judgmental or opinionated about things. I've, I've always been, you're an eccentric, you know, and, and, but equally, swayed by,

6:27you know, I mean, typically I will hear a politician from the left talking, and I'll say, well, that makes sense. And then all your apologies are from the right talking, and I honestly, I mean, and I'm very embarrassed by this. I'll go, well, I mean, that makes sense. Right. I've exactly the same. Yeah. I get swayed very easily. I mean, I watch question time and I go, well, yeah, yes, but yes, but that's always been in me. And, and in fact, the first thing I did that was any good was a show called Marion and Jeff, which was a series of monologues, a taxi driver, like an alter ego for me, and, and he has a line in it, which I think is quite revealing about me because he says, he says, I will always see the other side. He said, if Michael Owen scores a goal, he was a footballer years ago, I'm delighted, but I will spare a thought for the goalkeeper. Now, that's a comic line, but at its root, I can see a lot of me in that.

7:28So I find it quite hard to be especially opinionated about anything, really, because I go, well, there's always the other side, but that's a nice way to be, I think, yes and no. I think it, but even you saying that, Rob is so nice. I sat with Alan DeBotan. Do you know who that is? Yes, I do. He's amazing, right? And he said, I, I, which I'm going to ask you at the end, I said, what should we know when you asked, do you know who that is? Yeah. Is that because you think a light weight robber wouldn't be aware of modern day philosopher Alan DeBotan? Yeah. I, I, I, I thought that I bet you did, didn't you? I did. I bet, no, I bet you did. I bet you otherwise you wouldn't have asked me. Do you know? I was being polite. I was being polite. No, you were being patronizing. No, it's not patronizing. Have you ever heard Jamie of Sigmund Freud? Have you ever heard of sea creeds as soon? Oh, yes.

8:28Yeah. Wonderful haircuts. For me, the reason why I did a reality show, I always loved entertainment more than anything, I loved it. I loved being on stage. I loved making people laugh. I loved always wanted to be in TV, all these different things, and I think there's a part of me that wants to do it because I think probably I thought I'd get the validation from the crowd or the people watching, and that maybe came from a small insecurity within me. And there's that kind of idea that most entertainers have something that they're sort of harboring, I suppose. Talk about it. Yeah, I understand how it works. Am I allowed to pause briefly? Yeah, you can pause. Sorry. All right. Okay. I think there's a lot to be said for introducing the pause into podcasts. There's another one. If yes, subconsciously, not consciously, I, you know, I just liked always liked making

9:34people smile all off by having abilities to do voices, and of course not everybody can. And when you can, you forget, like not everybody can sing, not everybody can make their voice do silly things and sound like somebody else, but I was always able to do that. So wow, how lucky, you know, we can do a thing, you know, I do that stupid thing where I go, I go, I'm there, are you going out there? Great to see you. Oh, I were at our unit, hey, Jamie, one amazing voice. I mean, that's got such reactions from people, but it's just a stupid dumbass trick that I'm able to do, you know, I mean, it's not a talent, you're not really a skill, you can look for nested a bit, but I do that and I quite just, just enjoy it, you know, do that one more time? This is me, Jamie, are you doing today, great to see you, oh my word, look at this voice, it's not even older than it was before, that's really tiny. That's absolutely mad. You ready for me?

10:36Hold on, can you do it as well? You ready? Yeah? Okay. Okay, here we go. I think we're on the dice. Hold on, I've got this, come on, Jamie. Mornings, we're on the 9th, we're sitting in a box. How on earth, we're on the 9th, I need a poo, where it does. That's what it feels like. That's what it feels like. It sounds like you're having a poo. So that's your very sort of famous man in the box, I call, I call it small man in a box, you know, just a stupid thing. How did you discover you could do it? I was sitting around at home thinking about ventriloquists, I don't know why, thinking about how they throw their voices and make them sound like they come over somewhere else and I started going, oh shoot, we're good, we're good, we're good, we're good, we're good. And then all of a sudden I was doing that. And I went, oh, and you know the cany part of me, not as cany as you, the sweet factory,

11:36but the cany part of me went, oh, that's a thing. What was the first play you did or show you did as a kid? Well, we actually put on a play, we did a stage production of Star Wars, because Star Wars was the hit film, honest, honest, who's we? Who's the we? I was the ringleader, okay, how old are you at this point? I think I'm, when did Star Wars come out, 77, 78, yeah, yeah, I'm 12 maybe, 13. We write a script, I'm Luke Skywalker, of course. We couldn't make an R2D2, it's a very challenging shape with the thing. So at the time, Dr. Who was on and they had a little dog robot called K9, which was a much more achievable shape. So we made that, we had toy lightsabers, we made a door on the starship out of silver foil, and the stormtroopers were dressed in white skateboard helmets, the plastic storm

12:38trooper mask with the elastic and cricket whites to look like stormtroopers. And they, at the beginning to make their entrance, they burst through the silver foil, it was quite dramatic. It is dramatic. I played Luke, and before we started, I went out the front in front of the curtain, and did jokes from the tourones joke book. So that was probably my first stand up, stand up on stage telling jokes, so we did that and then we, I moved schools and I went to port call comprehensive and I met Ruth Jones there and they had a superb drama department with a young, dynamic drama teacher who put on brilliant musicals every year and that was me, that was my life mapped out. I heard a rumour that you stole money from Catherine C. Jones, yeah, well there's some truth in that, Catherine C. Jones, I mean, every school I went to had a future star, honestly

13:44the first little school I went to Eddie Isard was at, not when I was there, he was there two years before, yeah, yeah. And then Eddie Isard, well of course, I'm believable. Eddie and I have shared photos of the school sports day, Eddie was probably, Eddie's good at everything, and he's probably very good, but I've got me coming last in the, in the Sacrace, then Catherine C. Jones was at this school in Swansea, you know, very young, doing tap dancing and performing and one day as I was arriving at school, her mum had just dropped her off and said, oh, I forgot to give Catherine a dinner money. It was about a quid in change, I think, from memory. Would you give it to her? Yes, I took it, put it in my pocket, forgot all about it and then we would go down to town at lunchtime and have fish and chips or whatever. And I remember coming back and I, we were at a sweet shop, then I go, wow, I'm cash rich. What's going on here? I forgot, and I spent the money. So it wasn't really theft. That is theft. No, it's me forgetting, it's me forgetting even at that age.

14:47And then Ruth, Ruth was then at this other school and that began that sort of lifelong friendship with her. Everybody around me behaved to me as though I was talented and as though I was good. That's all I've ever known, really, in my life, from when I was a little kid. Is people going, oh, he's very good, oh, he's good, oh, that's very good, doesn't he with the voice? Oh, he's good. That's all I've had. So you had that in a confidence? Yeah. I never had to see where I come from, it's just poor toll, but you all, you hear, don't you hear actors say, oh, say, where I come from, there weren't any actors, so, you know, where I come from, where Richard Burton and Anthony Hopkins are from. So you could see, you go, well, yeah, you can, you can become an actor from here and be a Tom Jones, wasn't that far away and Shirley Bassie wasn't that far away, Catherine is younger than me, but Catherine's he to Jones, and it's in the road. Michael Sheen is of, I mean, my God, you can't move, you almost feel like you were failing. You were like, exactly, why didn't you just expect it, of you, isn't it? The people in Wales that don't become famous artists of one type or another, they stand

15:51out more than the ones that do.