Tom Straw

The Craig Ferguson Fancy Rascal Stand Up Tour continues throughout twenty twenty four. For a full list of dates and tickets, go to the Craig Ferguson Show dot com slash tour. See you out there, the Greig Ferguson show dot Com slash Tour. My name is Craig Ferguson. The name of this podcast is Joy. I talked to interest in people about what brings them happiness. Welcome to my conversation with Tom Straw. Now, I'll be honest with you. It's not

With Ed with Ed. I had the great pleasure of working with Ed on a pilot. When I see the nicest guy into a business, it is terribly nice. I'm or Henry Winkler. It was either Ed Bagley, Joel or Henry. We did some stuff with Henry Winkler on the Late Late Show. Yeah, but Ed was in a pilot that I did at Castle Rock when I was there back in the Castle Rook. Yeah, that was the Rob Reiner's company. And yeah, they made a little show called Seinfeld. You may have heard of. Nah, No, I didn't get it.

You of course are you do you don't have any of that sweet sign field money?

No, No, I have a story of somebody who lost a lot of it. But help me. Yeah, I can't mention names, all right, I'll put the names in, Okay. Later. There was a guy I knew very well and he had points. You know how points work, right it?

Points are a percentage of the of the game, the mood, the profits, right right.

He had fifteen points in Seinfeld. He's a writer or a producer. You've got to be at fifteen points. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, And again no names, I'll try to avoid too much context. But he had fifteen percent of the bank vault, right, that's huge. As you may know, Seinfeld was on the bubble when it started. It wasn't it almost yeah, make it. Yeah, that's right. Yeah, And he ran into some financial needs, family loss, and so he went back into the boss at Castle Rock and I said, I'd like to sell

They think about few money though that I've known as I got a little bit of it myself, Bacon.

Yes, it really can. You people don't know that about a few money. It can.

It's like when people win the lottery, you know, and they say and then suddenly within five years there you know, their lives are trashed in there.

You know it's a double It's the worst good news you can get, Isn't it weird?

I mean, because because you think money is going to solve all your problems, it doesn't bring joy. It does not bring joy that you tie the end of the podcast home, Well, I'm going to do that because I you know, yes, and I'm a big fan of this podcast.

I noticed you're sponsored by Bacon. Bacon, Bacon. The ads are great, sponsored by Bacon sponsors, just Bacon. I love bacon. And I said, I've got to see Craig today. Yeah, so here I am, because you're sponsored by Bacon.

No, no Francis Bacon, No, no, just no bacon.

Even Kevin Bacon. There's not even six degrees a separation. It's just bacon. And you're It's all over you. I mean, every break, the yank dank dank dank dunk comes and then there's some guy talking about bacon, wow, and how good it is. You know, I don't eat bacon. I didn't know that, but I don't eat that. Oh really No, I don't need Can I finish yours? Then? Yeah, you could have my bacon.

The giant play of bacon that's in front of so provided by our sponsor, Bacon.

He doesn't eat it, but he's wearing a bacon suit. I do wear bacon. I do wear a lot of bacon. That is true.

Now, listen, you and I worked together. I first became aware of you when somebody said, Tom Straw will come and work on your show. And I'm like, Tom Straw, the writer from of sitcoms, will come and work on the show.

Now. You came and worked on the late night show because you wanted to do it.

Right, I did. You're the only guy. I didn't even want to do it. I just did it because I needed a job that kept me in town. You were the only guy that wanted to be on the old late night show.

I was a huge fan of the show when you took it over, and it was like it was a late night staple for my wife and we would stay so cool and and the phrase that she would always use is, you know that Craig Ferguson's really coming into his own and so that kind of became our code. But I was such a huge fan of the show, and you know, I part of joy for me is doing things I've never done before, to do the scary thing and to never having worked on that kind of format. I know because I knew.

I knew of you because I had worked in sitcom in the nighties, I had worked on the New Carry Show, and you were doing Grace under Fire right.

Yes, I was the aptly.

Named yes, which was with Brett Butler. Brett Butler, Yeah, but yeah, I worked in sitcom for years.

I mean I would. I did Night Court right right? You didn't do the reboot? Did you do the rebook?

No?

I did not. I did have a conversation prior to it with our mutual friend John Lara Katt. Oh. Yeah, I love Lara. I haven't seen him in years. Where the hell is he? He's living in southern Washington state, right across the river from Portlan, Oregon. Okay, is he smoking? No, he's he's he's totally clean. Yeah. Yeah, here's an insight into John. I hope he wouldn't mind me telling this story. But he went to a photo expo one day. He showed up at the table reading and he's got like

Yeah, he wanted. I was the same when I was drinking. I wanted all the all the drink, all the drugs. He's a dear man, though, and is a great and whip smart. He's a huge bibliophile. He also likes books. Yeah, well that's good.

Yeah, but that would be like a thing for us, Like we would sometimes meet for lunch at like Musso and Frank and then he would take me to these antiquarian bookstores and introduce me to Bokowski who was dead but these books were was moldering in the.

Corner or was unsure that he was dead? Yeah, he still had wanted all the drinks as well apart. Yes, did you ever meet?

No? No, I'd be afraid to now, Well, he'd be a zombie. No, yeah, I know I'd be afraid to be. Would you Do you ever worry about Zoe Bees?

I don't that much, but I feel like I should bring it up now that we're on the subject.

There are times that I see people and I think undead, classified, undead, I've been.

I think I've been a zombie at that point in my life. So, so you were working in set Calm. Then how did you get into set Calm? So because you worked in radio? Right, I worked in radio? And uh, I worked in radio while I was still in high school. I had Uh where'd you go to high school?

I went to Birmingham High School in Vanus, California, right public school.

I didn't know you were California for some reason. I was you were in the East Coast. I am, you know, I'm I'm by biker. But I had a mentor, Gary Owens. Do you remember Gary Owens from Laughing with the hand over the air? Yeah, he was my radio hero. But I called him up one day.

I just put on my big boy pants and I called him one day at the radio station and I said, mister Owens, wow, you were you were that young? Yeah, you got a little have with a helicopter thing on it. Better put a seatbelt on that way. But I called him up and I said, I want to be in radio and I have my vocation. Teacher said I should talk to somebody in radio. And he said, will Tom come on down to the radio station on Thursday and you can watch me do my show. I mean, what

What's a coffee pot radio station? Tiny little place all right with they have a coffee pot.

Yeah, it's basically like the right so it snakes and small little joint. But it was right on the dial next to Shadow Stevens on CAMMI te Shadows Food on the podcast, And so the kids thought I was on Cammy Tea because they weren't paying attention to the dial because he was a big radio start. But anyway, through my radio career, I had a buddy, Ken Levine. And Ken, I've had a lot of people could do good things

He he he's no, Yeah, that's but anyway, he helped me learn how to write a script and got me my first two jobs.

So what was your first job? And Secom Then it was on after Mash? Oh wow, that that one. Yeah. Yeah, it's kind of like I like to say, you know how Purina has dog chow, but then they have monkey chow and horse chow. Do you know what I like? Do you know how you get pringles? Yeah?

Right, so pringles and there and their little kind of phrases once you pop you can't stop. Yes, well they have no golf springles called prongle, right, prongles, brouncles. Their mud was once you pope. That's great, that's the B team.

Yeah. I love that kind of thing. All right. So you're working on after Mass, after Mash, and then I wrote a freelance script for Benson if you remember that show? Do you remember Benson? Yeah, that was a spin off of Soap right, yeah, And they offered me a staff job on the show based on the script I turned in. Name the Acts of Robert Robert Gillum, Yeah, fabulous actor, very funny man. I called Ken. They said, hey, congratulate me. I got an offer too, and he says, don't take it.

It been for about I think five hundred years in my case, hasn't know how long for you? Twenty eight, twenty eight. She's the best agent in Hollywood. You know, I love that woman. She's the greatest agent in Hollywood. She just hands down the best one there is.

I could go on and on, yeah, but I won't because I'm going to get back to this story about having to stall that's what makes you a professional. So I called my then agent right and said, hey, here's the deal. I laid out the thing. I said, I need to somehow stall Benson so they don't get mad and both shows go away for me, right, And he said, I'll do what I can. The business affairs person who handled Benson right, he was called the Iron Major. He was a very tough ast agent out there. All right.

No?

I ended up going with Kennon David onto Mary Tied. It was called Mary on CBS. It was the first sitcom for Katie sigal right. It had they also a great woman. Oh she's terrific. Yeah, amazing John Ashton, Yeah, I was just thinking it was.

A John Aston shown Aston showing Aston Johnston Joson Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

And and uh, I don't know anyway, I won't go through all the whole cast. But it was a great thing. It was and it was a wonderful experience. The show only went thirteen weeks.

That's no unhaired of my first sick call in America went thirteen weeks. But I quit after ten I think, or maybe no, I quit after thirteen, but they get picked up for another nine.

But White, yeah, yeah, it was. It was.

I loved doing I loved working with Betty and Betty and I, as you know, stayed friends for the rest of her life. But making the show, it was my first sitcom in America, and I was like eighth Banana and I did.

Not enjoy it. And you had a movie you were making too. You didn't that really make shaving Grace, wasn't that? No? That was later. That's when I was doing the Drew Kerry Show.

That's when when I was more comfortable being eighth Banana because I had figured out how to film my day right, Because I think, what people if you don't work in as an actor, and most people don't eat, most actors don't work as an actor.

If you don't work.

As a night, you don't realize how much just sitting on your ass doing nothing there is all day long.

I can't do that. I can't do it.

So I started writing sc when I got the job on the Drew Kry Show. I had written my own stand up for years, and I thought, well, and I was reading screenplays as you do, you know, as people used to write screenplays before I read them, so I can steal from them. Well, that was my plan. But as I read them, I went, these are garbage. And these were movies that were getting made garbage, And I thought, I can't I don't know if I can write any better than this, but there's no way in hell I

Also a certain thing here about being underutilized. I mean, when you know, when you have higher aspirations and also the chops to deliver those aspirations. Yeah, you see yourself sitting in a trailer, waiting and waiting, and you come out and you do lines and then not those lines. Well, no, no, By then I stopped doing those kind of lines. But I think it's interesting to trace your path to all the polymath that you are, all the things that you the same though, I mean you're the same.

And it's like because the reason why I'm kind of steering you this way is that I find and this is definitely what you've done that when soup comes to nuts and you know, and the great wheel of time.

Moves you know, Fortuna's whale.

And the you know, the and when the dog of history lady does a poop on the side of the road. Oh yes, It's always about the right, It's always about the writing is the freedom. I just to think the stand up was the freedom, but the stand up is not. I thought it was, but it's not. For that is freedom of performance, but actual full blown artistic, mental, emotional,

Right, yeah, and you know that that was thank you for mentioning that. But you know, for me, the joy of writing in many forms is for instance, when I did the late light show right at the conference table ten in the morning for us to talk out our day and all that stuff. And we'd go off into our sketches and you know, we'd pretend to be working right, and and we do the show, skeleton, robot, all that stuff. Yeah, six o'clock, we're done. There's no post production, that's true.

Yeah, because you were you were eleven. You and your wife Arelevin in the East Coast, and you used to commute to come and work.

Yeah, once a month, I would fly to la and spend a month there, and then I'd fly back and spend a week of our hatus. That's a that's a lot of pressure on the it is and it was, but you know we're strong and we're still you know, happy, and yeah. Well, I'll do a little sidebar here and talk about the number of occasions that you would come to me right before the show and say, Hey, Tom, I have a plane leaving Van Eyed Airport for the

Yeah, And I would go that, Craig, but it was great. Yeah, after the time almost crashed. Yeah, there was that time that was in white Plans.

Yeah, that was when people started vrolfing. That was not a lot of fun. I still think about that sometimes. Oh that was that was the most harrowing flight I've ever had in my life. Yeah, it was pretty hary.

The Craike Ferguson Fancy Rascal stand up to He continues throughout the United States in twenty twenty four. For a full list of dates and tickets, go to the Craig fergusonshow dot com slash tour.

See you have there. But anyway, what I would do then so I would go back to the oak Wood and uh, you know, call my wife, you know, before she went to bed because she was on East Coast time. Yeah, and then I would write my Castle book. I'd start about nine pm.

That's right, of course, because you were writing the Castle Books at the same time, right, So do you know take credit for the Castle books.

I am able to take. I'm able to. I wrote the first seven of the Nikky Heats, right, and I paid my lawyers to find out if I could do this. Yes, I can now take off the mask and say it was me as long as I you know, the first there's those those ones I did. But I would write from nine pm till about three am, right, and then go to bed. Okay, get up at six and hit the internet so I can have topicals, you know, topical things to pitch at the table, sleep in three hours

I mean you used to work all the time, and you were part of the team that come up with Jeff Peters in the rule Boat, you come up with Secretariat, the Dance and horse and all that, all of the classic bets from our show.

You were in part of all of that. Thank you. I remember something you said, and it's one of those little tapes I play in my head. Is that that Tommy's always on the clock.

You know.

That's one of the things he was saying. But it's you know, you do the work, yes, like what you the way you started this thread. I take my pleasure in the work, Yes, And I can be and this can be recent in the past year. I can be writing, like working on a manuscript for a book, and I'll get an email or a phone call with bad news, right and damn, oh oh show business, cruel and biscuits. Yeah, I'll go back and I'll hang up the phone. I'll take five minutes to kind of cleanse, and then I

It's it's certainly the place where you can escape most of all. The first time I ever wrote anything away from vulgar vaudevillian stuff. Yes, that I've written was a book called Between the Bridge and the River, which is a novel.

I love it.

I wrote thank you, And that book was in reactions because I just made a movie that had steffed and I was so frustrated with it because I'd written this movie. I started in this movie, I directed this movie. I was a producer in this movie. I didn't like it.

So it was like, oh, man, but I have to say to you, because this this is before you and I met. Yeah, I read your novel and I thought to myself, that's the same guy who does that. Yeah, and it was just like the Snake Handlers and spring Style. I mean, I can remember it very vividly because it was so very it really caught hold of me. It was a great book. Thanks.

It's an interesting thing about writing because when I read the first book of yours I read, I didn't read the Castle books. The first book of yours I read was The Trigger Episode. Oh yes, Trigger Episode is a great book. It's a detective.

Genre.

Let's say, it's not strictly speaking of detective, but it kind of is. And it follows those rules a little bit. And you and I are both fans of Larry Block right, Lawrence Blog fans, great crime writer or one of America's grand friend and friend. Yeah, and I'm fascinated by that genre. But I wouldn't go near it. I'm entertained by it. You you walk right into it. You're quite comfortable in it. Why because it has it has rules.

Maybe it has rules and it's and it's a great stage upon which to play out morality. Yes, for sure, because you've really just basically got sort of uh, you know, a kind of clastic hero or anti hero who is great meeting great resistance with the establishment or somebody who's trying to screw him over, or somebody else. And you know, for me, it goes back to even Jim Rockford. You know, I just I'm crazy. I loved files when James Gardner used to punch someone in a fight and then even.

Go because he has had that's somebody on that say it knows what it's like to be in a fight.

You know, I love that. But but my approach to this genre, they say, is and it's really why the Castle books. Let me tell you a little how linkage here. The publisher of my Trigger episode, right themovie stiffed, Well, how about my whole publishing house closed? No, Yeah, so he went to Hyperion, which was owned by ABC Disney. He takes me to lunch one day and he says, well,

And yeah, that's what I mean. I'll say that when I'm woising stuff with Megan as well. If you was in the first episode of something, we'll say you in and I'm like, oh, maybe.

But people are always looking like they're holding a grappling hook and they're looking for the place to throw it, yeah, and get it. Get And I think that that particularly.

I wish i'd known that as a young performer, that people want you to succeed. The audience does not anyone else in show business. Everyone else in show business wants you to fail, but the audience wants you to succeed. And I sometimes feel like when I was early on performing, I kind of held back a little or tried to appear more less genuinely enthusiastic about being there.

And then do you remember that time?

Do I tell you this story when I was working with Mick Jagger when we were writing that screenplay when You Went Ball, So, when I was working with Mic Jagger and the first time I saw him performer, I was talking to him afterwards and I said, that was that was a hell of a performance you gave last night, because it was and I didn't what else to say, and he said, I said you do that every night and he said, oh yeah. I said, now, I never paid money to see someone who was shy.

Oh man, that's great. I wish the audience could have seen you do your Mick Jaggery. Yeah, no, it was. No. You told the story and it was such a great one. About how you were in Istanbul and you went into the room and there.

He they saw in this throne because he was the guest of honor make us very gracious and intelligent man. So he's sit there and he's he's been very nice and very nice to everyone they brought. That's hot, like he was the king of something.

I can see him. Gunna fuck, no propeller around it.

If there was, it would have left this that was huge and it didn't fit him at all. It wasn't grounded in any way. I think he felt a little uncomfortable with the giant hat one. And had it been the time of cell phones, I would have conquered the internet.

You would have owned the day.

Yeah, yeah, but sadly this was in the the analogue times before the world fucking suck and everything was okay.

There was a comment made by Stephen King about writing also not about writer, a writer and from people I know who know him, a wonderful man. He's awesome. He was he was. Were you there when he was on the late night though I didn't see that one. No, he was, he was. I was there, but I wasn't paying attention.

Well, you was that during your tenure or after. It was after because he was on and he was wonderful. What a cheerful, upbeat, engaged, switched on human being lovely man.

I can only paraphrase what he said, but his quote was that most he didn't say mediocre, but most writing that doesn't succeed, Yeah, generally is born out of fear. That's interesting. In other words, that triggered me when you were saying about, you know, being a little shy on stage and so forth, like that, is that restraint isn't your friend? No, you know, no, in that, not in in the arts. I don't think it is.

I think that in any form of artistic expression, if you're restraining yourself, you're thinking about the audience. And if you're thinking about the audience, you're lost. And it's kind of I never knew that, Like The Greatest Battle. I was talking to my son of it last the other day, because he's in you know, Milo.

Was a creative. He's in the arts.

Yeah, yes, he's got his own animation studio. Now, I mean it's it's nutt. Yeah, you ain't that little anymore.

Yeah, your kids are all big, oh yeah, yeah, it's weird in their thirties.

That's weird anyway, So enough about them. But it does, Yes, I was talking to him about it. I said, the biggest challenge I have when I have an idea to write anything is to not convert the first sentence into the acceptance speech of the award that I'm going to get. So it's like I said, it was a break cold day in April, and I'd like to thank the Academy. You have to stop that thought. Somehow do you get that?

Or am I just a you know, I keep trying to tell myself I've learned this lesson, but I haven't because I keep doing it right. But I used to say to writers in the writer's room on shows I worked on, where do you spend the most time on your script? Answer the beginning? Right? What is the first thing you cut when you need to edit your script? The beginning? But you need to clear your throat, You need to do something to kind of get make friends,

Right, but I think that I think that that's the that's the fun of writing is not the first The first draft is is the is you you airn the draft afterwards by going through the first draft. I think the first draft is hard. The only time that I find the first draft fun is when writing fiction, literary fiction, because you don't know where it's going, so it's like reading it.

You're not constrained to a form, you know, because there is a rigid form to mysteries and thrillers, right exactly, it was a pyramid and all that stuff, and that's valid, but you have to kind of like do a dance to not make it look like it's a recipe and a cookbook, you know. People. Well, I think that might be the skill of it as well.

I mean I read my first Agatha Christie about a month ago and I was like, my god, this is this is genius.

It was and then there were none was the name of the book.

Yes, that is a spectacular piece of work. I mean spectacular. And I don't know why I'd rather written off as a kind of murder she wrote type thing and and I actually I don't know why I would write all that because I don't know about murders she wrote.

You were part of that. Yeah, but the writing and that and P. D.

James as well, These these English women writers, amazing writers.

I'm a very big fan of the brit and Scottish writers. Yes, then another one, yeah, Ian Rankin, Yeah, you know, a woman, but it's still an excellent writer. Yeah. But you know, Mickherron, the Slow Horses and trainsporn remind me Evan well, yah, yeah, I love those books. I love the Brits and uh and the Scots.

Well, there, it's all kind of you know, it's all the same. It's the same language, isn't it.

Yeah, there is. But there's a sort of a sense that and this is kind of like why a lot of the Scandinavian noir came out in popularity, is that that region first of all greatly unexplored in the American sense of Humphrey Bogarten those people like that, right, But there's still kind of a very noir thing going on in those areas.

I mean, most of the year it's like this suddenly comes up for a couple of hours.

I know, have you ever been up to the Skandinavia, Yes, you know, I ran a marathon, a midnight sun marathon in Trumso, Norway. What fourth of July. The race started at eight thirty at night and it was sunny. It was incredible. Yeah, when was this? This would have been six months before the towers came down, so this would have been in two thousand and one. Wow, and July, and what a great trip. I loved it up there. The funny part, Craig, is that people assumed that I

You look like a professor of economics of Stockholm University.

Yes, step in here, don't stop in here. We will discover.

I can only do Nazis from movies in the nineteen fifties about you know, or previous war.

Or Romans as Brits. You know accent, that's Caesar, a messenger, Zia. Don't call me Ziah. I'm Caesar Caesar. But people would come up to me in in Norway, both in Oslo and in Trumpso, and they would talk to me like no, no, no, no, no no, and I'm just looking at them like Bill Murray in the in the restaurant when PEPSI Pepsi. You know, I'd just be looking and smiling, you know, yeah, do your do your Scandinavian on the fjord in the ski is down down the slow. It's uh. The interesting people

Stockholm's amazing. They have this museum there. It's a ship that overturned in Stockholm Harbor about five hundred years ago or something like that, and it got preserved in the mud and they've dug it all up and they put it in a museum. It's an old ship, but it's totally freaky. They like the bodies and everything are there too. Like because scandon Evins, they seem to me an eminently practical people.

They're like, oh, this is a dead body. Look children, what can we do with it? Book it for a stick.

It's like, oh my god. And they also have the Abbum Museum. If you need something, Yeah, I would like to go there. And you know I can do Waterloo with them. The greatest hotel perhaps on Earth, I think, is the Diplomat Hotel in Stockholm.

Stay there, I will. It's unbelievable.

It's not it's not huge, and it's it's pretty fancy, but it's amazing right on the waterfront. It's stock If I had my life to live again, i'd probably live there in the Diplomat Hotel.

As a writer, I think I would go there maybe July or August, though maybe get some Yeah, I've never been there way so is that what they're saying in Scotland.

But they have this thing in Stockholm is where I first come across. They call it Higa and they light candles in the morning. I now do it every day. People think I'm a deeply religious Catholic or something, but I when I have a couple of cap even if it's a sunny day, I light a candle in the morning. There's something about bright, bright candle light. Not a light, but bright candlelight. It kind of like sets you up.

Can I make a little confession, Yes, I like candles when I write, even in the daytime. There's something, you know. And I have my feather quill no, I don't do that. But but you know, there's something about the ritual of lighting a candle, of having that controlled flame nearby and to watch it dance a little bit, and then it starts to get a little darker during the religious.

Spiritual right, Okay, So so you believe in God, but you're not prefere to go with any particular flame.

Yeah. I was raised. I was an altar boy. I was raised Catholic. You know, there was a line in French connection to when Jeene Hackman was captured and they asked him if he was Catholic and he says retired. You know. So yeah, it's still in my heart. But the ritual of it, the all of that, it's it's more that it's more personal now to me. It's more like my own you know, having that spiritual depeche mode Catholic yes, Jesus, Yes, I mean I can't play by your rules, which we should make you a prosest.

It's a very interesting thing, I think as because atheism, which I've always been rather a acted too as a kind of like adolescent footstomp of a thing to have is I can't I can't do it, you know, I can't do it.

It's too it becomes its own form of fundamentalism. It is, it is, It's fundamental and it's actual statement. There is no god that could be more fundamental in that statement. And if anybody's listening who has adopted that as a philosophy or religion or anti religion, more power to you. You know, I don't judge. Yeah, but I just never attracted me to feel living in a void. It attracted me.

I was interested in it when I was younger, but I think as you get older, and you know that thing C. S. Lewis said about death said, you know, death is easy to ignore when it's a horseman two valleys away and you can vaguely see it on the hall, But when you can hear the hoof beats.

Gets your attention. Yeah.

And I think that, I mean I'm paraphrasing, because he was far more like.

The image is beautiful. Yeah, Yeah, and.

That that was That was what what kind of drew me back around and too kind of looking at it. Why I ended up doing this podcast. I think it's because I wanted to do what how do you cope?

This is what I like about it, frankly, is first of all the fact that it's got no artifice. I like the fact that it's just a conversation, but also that it is something to reflect on, you know. It's it's like, what is joy? You know? Where is it? What you know? You know? To me, it's kind of a decision oft times. Yeah, it's also you know, and this is my own spirit talking. It's what you give to other people. In other words, I get great joy out of bringing joy, or trying to bring So you

Well, it's connected I think to health, yeah, mental, physical, spiritual health. If you have you know, if you're struggling with health of any description, things get a little more difficult.

I think. Do you meditate? I do.

Actually, I am dismissed it as as an indulgence until I kind of started doing it a little bit, and I get a lot from it. I don't have anything particularly formal to practice it. I just set you know, I've set a timer on my phone.

And yeah, there was a book I read thirty years ago, I guess by John cabot Zin. Have you heard of him? No, A book is called Wherever You Go, There you Are. I've heard that phrase before. Yeah, he wrote a book and it's and it's really how to how to meditate, And it's sort of like as Joseph Campbell was to mythology. This book is about meditation. And I thought to myself, you know it isn't wasted time, No, it's it actually makes me feel better, It makes me more efficient at

I think that's probably why I dismissed it when I was younger, because up until I think, probably round about the pandemic or just before, everything in my life was goal oriented, you know, you know, a result had to be connected in some way to just about every every movement, you know, the like. And I think that that, particularly in career, or you said.

Comes from can I ask you don't mind me interviewing a little bit? Where does that? Where? Where does that come from? In your life? Do you think that? I think you achiever? I think from me.

For me, it comes from uh, it comes from financial difficulty. Even as young come all yeah, I think I think it comes from So I think most things have come from the foundations. If a building's going to top, it comes to the topples from from there, doesn't it.

I mean? And I what about you? Where does it come from from? You? Do? I was? I was your upbringing. It was kind of it was not financially, but it was a very you know, I had a very very unhappy childhood in terms of my father, right, and was he he drunk that old thing. He probably was in hindsight, but abusive, you know, not sexually, but you know a lot of you know, slapping, beating, val rating, Hey, your name is fuck up today? You know that kind of stuff.

I think for me, it was more about the avoidance of discomfort and pain, and maybe even embarrassment. I remember when I was about six or seven years old, haven't gone the dentist. And I remember that having this thought, thinking, if I can somehow get on TV, I won't have to go to the dentist. I found out later that you go to the dentist much more. I spent most of my fucking life the dentist. But it was the

It's funny.

I was talking to Seth Meyers last night. We're talking about how much stuff had changed in late night. When you and I were doing late night television, it was still television. I mean, it was coming to the end of it, but it doesn't really exist in that form anymore. What I see now is the I call it the fear industrial complex. That it is like they are selling and you're selling engagements in the form of clicks, right, right, So what will you click on? You click on what

It's so it's so fear. But I'm not saying it can't happen again.

It might happen again, but it probably won't, right, And that's and it was weird that it happened in the first place. And then if you can't explain the phenomenon, then you invent a conspiracy to explain the phenomenon. And you know, it's like, oh, the sun is going away? What happened right today? This very day we were talking,

Yeah.

And then the other thing, when you talk about government conspiracy and you go, have you met anyone in government.

The thickest pic shit, they're like, I mean, I am shocked.

And you go to Washington and you meet people who are like working in the running of this country, you go, oh my.

God, I wouldn't trust you to walk my fucking dog. That's right, It's unbelievable. That's why John le Carrey said that the government conspiracies are generally a cover up. Sure, because they're because they fucked up. Look what we did. Yeah, yeah, I think that's right.

I mean, but it's it's the whole thing about you know, like people who are flat earthers, like you.

Don't really can you really believe that? Is that a thing?

And I think it's an emotional rejection of some kind. I think it's connected to emotionality. I don't think it's about stupidity or anything.

That's why I think and I'll say it again, That's why this forum that you've created here on this podcast is one that's important now because it explores not just something that's sort of on the positive side of things, but it's on It's this kind of thing that's going to maybe make a stop a minute and say, you know, what's good, what's what is joyful? How can I, uh not create the opposite of joy in people? Where can we connect? And I think that is something you've accomplished with this.

I think that that's a lovely idea, Tom, and very supportive of you and I And I'm not trying to reject your hypothesis by it, but I completely reject you what no, I mean, it's it sounds loftier then well I have in mind for this, which is conversation. But even as I say that, I think the actual conversation without an agenda is quite a lofty goal.

Because it's dangerous.

I think because the consequences of speaking freely right now about anything you might an opinion you may not have formed. See That's why I understand that, Like I used to feel like I could speak about stuff that I wasn't sure about, Like I'm not sure about this.

Maybe it's this maybe it's that.

But if you say maybe it's this, that's you can cut out that little piece where you say maybe it's this, and then people you're definitely saying that's the thing, and all you were doing was thinking out well, you can't think outlet it anymore.

I remember one time in the writer's room you said something again i'll paraphrase, there was somebody who was in trouble, like the cancel culture kind of thing. Somebody had said something on a hot mic and all that. Yeah, and I really took to heart what you said. You said, you know what, we have the advantage of being recorded, we can edit afterward. That's true.

And you got to give fair play to somebody who is, you know, just free wheeling and oops.

You know. Yeah, Now if the person you know is revealing something truly ugly about what they think or believe things, that's a different story.

But yeah, but I mean the idea of and this is the interesting thing I think about writing as well, because I want to talk to you about the book, which is what I wanted to talk to you about anyway, But of course we've ended up talking about many and other things. There's stuff that I wrote down jokes that I've made, or or or beliefs that I put into books that I wrote, you know, fifteen years ago that I look at it now and going, I don't.

Believe that anymore. Yeah, and good for you. Yeah.

But the thing is, in the world of documentation, you will always believe that. That's quite an interesting thing. It's like I always think about Martin Luther. If he had stopped before he went on the anti Semitic branch, it really would have helped, just like to say, a great deal, like just.

Had me to this, going right to that. If you stopped, there you go, but there you go. No, talk to me about the new book. The new book is called The Accidental Joe. Right, it's about coffee. How did you know? No, joe being the slang term in this in the trade for a spy, spy who's being run by handlers.

And uh so you're going, that's why you mentioned the Lacari You've gone spy.

No, oh, yeah, I've got you know what. Here's the idea that I had and I told I told Nancy, have we talked about the stage? I said to her, I have an idea. It came to me on a run and I kind of remembered it. Yeah, it's an elevator pitch that only takes one floor. And that is what if Anthony Bourdain had been using his show to spy for the c I Ah, okay, and that's the book. That's good. Yeah, so uh that's the setup. And so what we've got is oh my god. And then you

Know, flumbay flombay and now you make a crocomb busch. Wow, a crokum bush.

What's a k oh? It's a street in a tower crocomb busch.

I was thinking it was a mouth, like a crocodile in your mouth.

Hey wait a minute, I think I've got a sequel. Crocodile in your mouth. But the book, Uh, it's sold in a weekend, right. Uh. And I had offers from Hollywood and I have made a deal. Really you sold the rights to you surprised me? Yeah, to sonyh Yeah. There's a fabulous producing team Seth Gordon and Julia Gunn. They have a I love the title of their production studio. It's called Exhibit a nice. Uh. And they do a show on Netflix called The Night Agent. You've seen that.

I'm thinking of The Night Manager. But that's not the same that's not the same thing.

But this is this is about an FBI agent who works in the White House and the conspiracy thing very right. But we we of course everything was on zoom.

Uh.

We had our Zoom meeting and it was like I had such a connection with them. You know. It's the it's the two big words, big money. No, the two big words are shared point of view. Except yeah, shared too. I need to edit. Yeah, yeah, that's your first draft. You get me on a hot mic, you know, and then come out.

This is a great darts commentator in Brettona Sports Commentate or Breton famously said at the end of it, because they watched darts.

I watched it. I was in I was in London not long ago, and watch and they call it sport.

It's like, you know, overweight alcoholic men throwing tiny little arrows. Yes, but he said that there was some guy wanted and he said there's only one word.

For that, magic darts, which great greatly. Yeah, Tom, you are of course a joy. It's great, it's great to talk to you and great to catch up. Let's do it again soon.

I would love to Good luck with the accidental joke, which I will read on purpose almost immediately.

Thank you,