Here's another special edition of a Red Hot Express edition of some of my favorite bits and pieces and conversations from the last year of the Quizzy Cast.
When we put sort of expectations on ourselves or on each other to sort of behave a certain way, you end up. I mean, I just I just finished watching In one day, I watched Baby rein Deer. Did you see that?
Oh? Yes, I did it.
Just I connected so deeply with his journey of shame, and there were so many moments where I was so infuriated watching this guy have no boundaries with people. And then as you as you grow the story and understand that this shame is sort of that he's carrying, that's this invisible kind.
Of yeah straight jacket.
It just I was like, oh my god, the answer is just like, what if we all just had a little bit less shame about ourselves and learned to.
Just be like it's so interesting. I watched that. Everybody watched that show and I watched it too, and all the headlines after it was about the woman, of course, and she's the least interesting character in the entire thing. And I love that you mentioned him because obviously you know I related to him. Too, And the element that I loved was how he kept on trying to make it to make her feel okay even though he was
being so mistreated. That really spoke to me. I was like, I would do exactly the same thing, because you know, I just want to make everything okay for that person, you.
Know well, which actually is a beautiful, healthy instinct. But because of the shame in his life, he didn't have the healthy boundary to be able to do that in a way that was healthy for both of them. Yeah, So it's like, because I think, like the answer is not to he should have just been like, get the fuck away. Like, no, it's actually a beautiful gesture to be kind to someone.
Yeah, it felt very human to me.
You can do it in a way that you also have healthy.
About him going to her house and looking through the window, I was like, but it's a hard relate. I would do that. So we too curious.
I'm working with a playwright friend of mine. We've been working on a we've written a TV show idea that actually began with that Requiem meeting, okay, and we've just sort of been trying to We just got development funding for it. Who knows what will happen. But we're in the world of like just trying to tell my story basically, and in that same sort of so Baby Randia was
a very like. I just related on so many loving my story is so different to his, but I just related on so many levels to this idea of this poor guy sneaking around.
Now, Ben, yes, it's time, okay, will you please.
Form It would be my pleasure.
Requiem, And I promise you I won't cry that my thing is across to Maybe maybe I will.
Write us this song.
They say, tell us your truth, you've got nothing to hide. Well tell them the truth.
That and exposed what I had locked in, said, I laid it out across the floor and cry.
So we went.
Down like the.
Poet described, and they reached for their children, covered their eyes.
This was not a song for angry men. What I wrote for them.
Was a requier.
Go on and run.
She sighed.
I wish you could see all.
The things that I see. Well here on.
The side, it feels the same was when I was in nineteen.
I should have read up on my.
August thing running for the corner whoeit described, and I stood in the sun, I saw myself died so afraid of angreement. What I wrote for them was a requis, this.
Is something to remember me by. This is something to remember me bye. This is something to remember me bye. This is something to remember me by.
Remember me, remember.
Me.
That is my favorite thing that has ever happened on this podcast. Well, thank you then, Abram's Ben Abram, I can't even speak, Ben Abraham. Thank you so much for joining.
Thank you for having me. This is what an honor.
Now the assembly, Yes, in your own words again, Yes, the assembly is people asking whatever they like. No questions are off limits. Yes, so let's try some Lisa oals. How much money do you have in dollars and cents?
That was a question that God asked of Hamish Blake. Could anyone do it to the sense? I mean, I don't think so.
Also, like it depends on what direct debitts are coming out you. Who knows? Do you have any cash in that bum bag of yours? Not a penny? I haven't had cash for years. Yeah, not at all. It's terrible.
In fact, I didn't even bring anything down to Melbourne other than my phone. I didn't bring any cards at all.
Oh see, I have a little folder in here with all my cards just in it doesn't work. Yeah, when was the last time you had a proper pash?
Oh?
Not that long ago. I don't want to go into too many jais. No, you not go into details. Good good news. Do your toenails look like something that you would find on a hobbit? Yes?
Mine somewhere somewhere between hobbit and acceptable. Not full scale hobbit, but not great.
Are they painted? No? No, you're a disgrace. What is the most shameful thing you've served up and called dinner? Oh? Like packet, fish fingers and just stuff like that. You know what you can do to judge that up in no time because I'm the short cut coen. Yeah, I also love a fish finger, but sometimes I elevate them to the sort of slightly wedge shaped pills. They're fish fingers,
they're just a bit bigger. You cook them exactly the same way, and then you get your tortillas and you chop them up, and then you've got a fish taco. A bell crap does that? She does? Yeap? She is Fansy is such a smug bun. When you imagine yourself at seventy, what is the image that you can conjure.
I like to think smiling, having a great time and for me and so I don't judge anyone else having a wrinkly, lived in.
Face and gray hair. That's a good question.
I think at age fifty one, I feel like, yes, you better ask me. At sixty nine, I reckon I might feel differently.
Yeah, I get closer. I just feel like I'm not ready to let it go yet. I love all the you know, Nivia and Dove campaigns, this beautiful gray hair, but I'm just not ready.
I also don't think I'm going to have beautiful gray hair. I think I'm going to have really foul, nondescript color. The frieze is real. I still have to get color put in my hair to make it look like nice gray hair.
Absolutely me too. That blue the purple shampoo. Thank you so much for joining me Lasavana. You've got a plane to catch. It's been so fun. Thank you for having I am thrilled to welcome to the Chrissy Cast. Thanks some mom, Geldolf. I just want to I want to start with I'm so desperate for you to like me.
Yep, and well you deranged to sort of pretend you just got into the left. When I got in, I mean, it's kind of sad.
I've been following you a morning.
Absolutely walking me at the Melbourne.
I have, you know, tried to research as much as I can, and I have found that I've been doing this for over twenty years, and I found the bigger the name, the more bullshit there is written about them, absolutely on the internet. So forgive me if I say something that this is not true. You have said that, well, I hope you have, because you've also intimatu so I think this is true. People think I'm scruffy, Well I am a seven year old boy is not going to
wash his clothes. He's just not. I am that person. And I heard that and I went, oh, maybe I've got this theory that who we are as a child, like we're born the way we are, and life sort of takes us away from that original person, the person that we're supposed to be. What did Bob Geldoff like to do in his heart and soul when he was a little boy.
Well, you are at blank canvas. You've inherited a bunch of genes that will determine some characteristics are either way.
You look.
Some behavior as we now know, but the most of it is cultural or societal and what forms you. So that's Freuden.
We know that.
You know, always a psychiatrist will go to formative things in your experience. What did I like was a function of the conditions of my life, which very early weren't great. I mean, you know, I'm not playing a fiddle here. I didn't really think much about it at the time. Retrospectively, I feel sorry for that little boy, but not at the time. It just was what it was. So as you pointed out, you know, no one was going to do the washing. That was because my mum was dead
and my dad, as I said, went away. No fault of us. Only had no choice. There was no economy in arms. It was the only job you could get. So it was myself and sisters. The oldest sister was seventeen. She was not going to be a certain good mother to a bratish little brother, and she got out quickly.
So what's the age difference between you and your sisters?
Between My eldest one was about eight to ten years. I think my middle one was five or six years. She was the school geek. She stayed in school. The nuns gave her food, and so I'd come back to the house and make my own dinner and stuff like that, and you know, it was it was maybe I.
Remember it was a child cook, but what is a child cook?
That's good whatever was in the cupboard. There was no fridge or TV or telephone, so we didn't have money. So what I remember cooking for myself. What I really liked cooking, not cooking, but really eating was rice with an oxo cube dissolved in the water. I sort of worked this out myself, plus a bit of bacon sliced up and put it put into the water, which gave it a smoky flavor. And then when that was cooked, I'd fried egg and put it on top foot so it was kind of a fried rice.
You know.
Yeah, sort of a love gooring risotto.
Well not without the peanutsy thing. You've got it out
of the stuff. So yeah, I remembered that. And I guess though for lunch there was a scam going on because parents would never allow mothers would never allow their kids to have sugar sandwiches, you know, which is basically uncooked bread and butter pudding, you know, So I would make you know, sugar sandwiches and you know, it's bread, butter, sugar, and knowing that the guys you know wanted this, I'd make six sandwiches for myself every morning before going to school, and.
I twelve pieces of bread.
Yeah, and I'd swap them then far because they all wanted it. So I'd swapped one sugar sandwich was worth one to match or one egg sandwich, so two sandwiches for one one ham and thing. So I was the king of sandwiches in school, you know, stuff like that. So yeah, it was all right. I mean I worked my way. The point is to your point, at that age, because of this, you become very self reliant, very independent,
and very organized, you know. So the adjunct to what you said is that I was always scruffy, Yes, but I had a tidy mind. And that's the mistake people make because this shambling oath wanders into a meeting and he sits there apparently not listening and scratching and looking around and being distracted and doodling NonStop, not looking at anyone. But I'm listening intently, not not, That's what I do unconsciously, and they're going, you know, and in political well, in
political meetings in particular. But I remember getting the Order of the Nile second Class from the President of the Sudan, who is of course inevitably some Copamami general who'd taken over the day before sort of thing. And they were giving me this medal, which is a amazing thing. It's this blaze of gold, silver and ivory and ceramic on
my chest. And I walked in I will not go into these meetings without journalists to make a record, because I don't want to be nailed for being, you know, not saying the right thing or pulling up these leaders on an amnesty report or anything. And so the general walks over to the smartest looking general. Are the smartest looking journalist, says mister Geldoff, You know so and so so some the journalists just pointed at me, and you could see the guy got him.
You know that I was there.
My sneakers and jeans had hadn't been washed, and hair all over the place. I'd just come out of the desert, so like, you know, I was a mess, and he kind of just slapped it on my chest and said, off you go. That sort of thing happens. So it's a useful device when it comes to those sorts of things.
Do you think sometimes a ruffed childhood or discomfort in childhood is a good thing.
No, I'm not convinced by that. It messes you up. I mean I'm not. You know, there's deep anger in me, and my animus is rage. My response to something that I think is unfair is rage. I temper it because I'm old. But when I was when the band started, the Rats, that howl of anger, that is our early music, which powered us up the charts because that's what people felt. They were disenfranchised. Brittain had twenty seven percent inflation when
we arrived in England. Twenty seven percent. I mean what you know, everything you buy is twenty seven percent more expensive there for your wages twenty seven percent less. That's not possible to live and.
A lot of people couldn't afford it when it was twenty seven percent less at that time as well.
They couldn't, So you know, where's the future. What's the future for the young. Ireland had a zero economy viz my father, you know, and so when we came of age there was nothing for us. A form of treason by a government when they cannot give their younger future. And you know New York was bankrupt. New York, the great City, had declared bankruptcy. So it's not a mistake that out of New York you get the Ramones. Out
of Orange, you get the boomtown rats. Out of the UK, you get the class and the sex pistols, and we all meet at this full crumb of anger and demand change. That's the purpose of rock and roll in my time. And you know all of us had the same thing. You know, this is crap.
You know.
The first thing you heard Johnny Rotten say was I'm the Antichrist. I'm an anarchist. There is no future in England's dreaming. That's brilliant. Joe Strummer of the Clash, I want to riot on my own, you know. Bob Geldoff, the first thing you heard him say was the world owes me a living I don't want to be like you. I'm going to be like me, you know. And so this blast, you know, so it found itself at the right moment, at the right time, expressed through this really
good band, and I was lucky, you know. But it's still the thing. And where I will agree with you if you've had bad luck when you were a kid in your upbringing. Then I think you recognize you're very alert to it happening around you. You're very alert to people on the street, You're very alert to what the news is telling you, because pathetically, you associate your own conditions with that, and that would be conditions of it's not right, it's unjust injustice, and you know, we had
no money and it's crap. Poverty is crap, greed is not good, greed is stupid, and so all of those things that you imbibe, but you're not aware they're informing you. You just get on with your life the best possible way you can. I just got into a rock and roll band at a period when rock and roll was
the lingua franca of the planet. The common language wasn't English, it was pop music, and everyone could understand pop music, and so it seemed logical to me to talk to the world in this common language through the you know, through this new medium of satellites about a common problem of thirty two million people dined unnecessarily of hunger.
Do you believe that the timing of the Boomtown Rats was perfect because you learned to express your anger, be the voice of a whole generation of it.
It's luck, timing and talent, I mean, but rock and roll and technology go hand in hand. You can't get Elvis and little Richard unless you have the transistor. And the transistor was the means to the glue of the Pax Americana. American troops were all over the world. How did they stick together through the transistor? This new thing?
And what was the music that first utilized that? And little Richard, who you know, weren't allowed into the American dream because they were on the wrong side of the tracks. But you know, Elvis young, beautiful, force of nature, you know, brilliant understanding of you know, his times. Little Richard, young, black, gay, beautiful, he was never going to get on Telly, But here they come. The Beatles were the function of television. Britain gets TV for the first time and hear these working
class boys who don't even understand the word deferent. So when they meet monarchies and prime ministers, they're just laughing. You know, they don't understand that your hair has to be this way. We want it this way, you know, And they laughed the whole time. Are the Rolling Stones contemptuous insolence? They will sort of wander on stage picking their noses. No concession to show business at all, you know.
And and so you go forward, and you know, you get the punk thing with SATELLITESNSE and stuff like that, and then you guess the death of rock and roll with the Introders and the web.
Bob Guild of Webbing wrapped up. But I could talk to you for ever. Thank you so much for your time today, because haven't we had a lovely time. I'll see you back here next week for a few more highlights that you might not have heard. Have a great week, Remember your water, get a good night sleep.