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Finding your own audaciousness, the importance of Leo Rosten's Book of Laughter and the pros and cons of learning a script. All of this and more is discussed in this month's episode featuring Rachel Mars.
Told by an Idiot's Artistic Director Paul Hunter in free-flowing conversation with friends and colleagues from the theatre industry, delving into what made them the people they are today.
PAUL: Hello and welcome to Regrets,
I've had a few.
I'm Paul Hunter, Artistic Director of Told
by an Idiot, and this is a podcast where I
talk to friends and colleagues delving
into what made them the
person they are today.
Hello and welcome.
My guest this month is a writer,
performer and provocateur.
She describes her work as
wrestling with female, Jewish and queer
identities and their intersections.
She also has some of the best ever titles.
I particularly like her Margaret Thatcher
inspired show,
'The Lady's Not For Walking Like An
Egyptian', which is one of my
favourite titles of all time.
She's also very funny.
Welcome, Rachel Mars.
RACHEL: Thanks for having me.
PAUL: Not at all.
RACHEL: It's always fun to have your own
words read back at you, isn't it?
PAUL: Well, they're very good.
I like lots of your words.
I'll be quoting a lot
of your words back at you.
And you don't even have to appear
like a slippery politician.
You can embrace and own them.
RACHEL: I can.
I can say, yes,
I meant that and I meant it
PAUL: Now, I have to say,
for the listeners benefit,
there is a connection between you
and Told by an Idiot,
which goes some way back, so far back,
I couldn't quite remember the actual year,
but you brilliantly worked for us
in a kind of administration
producing capacity.
When we had offices
at Battersea Arts Centre I think.
RACHEL: Yes, I was like, on my bicycle yesterday,
not in the rain, trying to figure
out the exact connection.
And I have got there.
So I went to Leeds University
and you came and did, I think, like
a clown workshop or commedia workshop.
And we'd been to see you as a cohort,
as a class, the night before.
See, this is where it gets a little bit
hazy, perhaps in Sheffield
it wasn't in Leeds.
PAUL: I think in that time, we did a lot
of shows at Sheffield Crucible.
It would have been there.
RACHEL: So I think it would have been there.
And the show was very good.
I can't remember what it was.
We can try and work out that together.
And I just thought, this is really good.
I like this.
This is the sort of thing
that I want to be around.
And so then, when I graduated,
I was fortunate because my parents lived
in Acton, still do,
and so I was one of those people
that could do a bit of work for free.
And so I went knocking on,
literally came knocking on the door
at Battersea Arts Centre.
I met Ghislaine, who was producing for you
then, and just said, can I come and figure
out how you're running this company?
And so then that was it, really.
And then Apples and Snakes,
the performance poetry people were next
door and she was like,
they actually could pay.
So I split my week.
I split my week.
PAUL: I'm glad you found people
who treated you properly, Rachel.
RACHEL: Times have changed.
PAUL: Yeah, that is exactly do
you know what year it was.
RACHEL: It must have been
either 2002 or the beginning of 2003.
I think it might even
have been autumn of 2002.
PAUL: Wow.
Yes.
Gosh.
Anyway, let's not dwell on the past.
We will dwell on the past,
your past in particular, shortly.
But I was interested when
that brief description of your
work and what interests you.
And this is kind of connected.
I suppose.
Maybe I don't know
what your thoughts are around this.
Because on holiday I was reading
this book about Mike Nichols.
The American director and improviser.
And of course, he was talking a lot
of the time about being Jewish and what
that meant in relation to his, everything
and humour in particular.
And I was just intrigued by where your
humour comes from or your sense of comedy.
What can you trace that back to?
Or who can you trace it back to?
RACHEL: I can trace it back really
clearly to dinner times.
PAUL: Okay.
RACHEL: Basically, just because,
my partner is coughing in the background,
I'm being heckled in my own house.
PAUL: That's all right.
RACHEL: Have you got something to add?
No, apparently not.
Dinner times because, it was a joke.
It was just a joke.
And a storytelling family, it wasn't like,
there was only four of us,
but it was really
about like my dad had four brothers
and they used to gag tell, I think,
together, and they got up to all sorts.
They live in Blackpool and they were
just naughty and got up to all sorts.
It was constantly retelling of their
stories from childhood,
which had gag punchlines and then it was
just actual jokes, like,
a lot of actual Jewish jokes.
And then I got
by the each peach pair plum people.
There's like a starter joke book that I
constantly give to my friends kids now,
which I will remember shortly.
And it's the kind of classic joke,
it's a skinny one.
And I just got obsessed
with jokes from that point.
And then kind of every year we'd get one
of those, like, 1001 jokes for kids,
5001 jokes for kids, 10,000 until they
get, like, sort of Yellow Pages.
I was absolutely obsessed with them.
And then the sort of major joke book,
which I still love,
is a Leo Rosten joke book.
So he's dead now, but he's known for this
book called 'The Joys of Yiddish'
PAUL: American or British?
RACHEL: American.
Yeah. Jewish, American,
kind of Yiddish storytelling guy.
But he just had a book called 'Leo
Rosten's Book of Laughter',
and it was like an encyclopaedia.
I sort of memorised it and then would
sometimes look at the punchline
first and try and work back.
So it became this kind of analytical...
PAUL: Is this you as
a child deconstructing this?
RACHEL: This is me, to early teens, I think.
Trying to figure out
why it was funny and really got obsessed
with the minutiae, the number of beats,
because I get so annoyed because my mum
can't tell jokes
at all, and I get so annoyed with her -
she, I was like you
can't have the words of the punchline
in the setup that's ruining it.
You've put one too many syllables in that,
so it's not going to pay
off in the same way.
So, yeah, just became completely obsessed
with the kind of mechanical
structures of gags.
PAUL: Can you get hold of this
book you just mentioned?
RACHEL: Yeah, you can.
And it starts with this preface,
which is itself hilarious, called, like, I
don't know, '37 Ways Not to Tell a Joke'.
PAUL: Okay.
RACHEL: It's Talmudic.
That's the other thing,
because it really goes in hard on kind
of so and so, he says like this,
and so and so says you should do this,
but I say, so it's always like,
Judaism has this constant analysis
and discussion of things and no answer is
ever right until someone declares that
they're the ones with the right answer.
PAUL: So it's that approach
to the jokes, to the gags?
RACHEL: Yeah, I think so.
He's always like, never say when you're
starting a joke, never say,
this man went to the door.
Because then we'll say, what man?
You either have to say a man or Shlomo.
So it's at this molecular level.
PAUL: I think I'm going to enjoy that very much.
So thank you for that recommendation.
What about as a family?
Was there a tradition of going to see
performance when you were young?
RACHEL: I was really lucky,
and I've actually thanked my parents
for this recently, because they,
I'm trying to think if they as children,
because they were like working class
people, one in Blackpool,
one in Nottingham, and I think they might
have gone to Panto, like, every year.
My dad, maybe because he was Blackpool,
might have gone to more
sort of Pier entertainment.
In fact, I think he did.
And I remember him saying that he took
himself off to see Billy Connolly when he
was a folk performer, before
he was doing comedy.
And I don't know where that comes from,
actually, in his family, but I was
given that opportunity by them.
So we would go and also because
we're in London, so I was lucky.
So we'd go to Panto
and we'd go to yeah, we go to theatre.
I got taken out of quite a few things
because I found them so upsetting!
PAUL: What sort of things were you seeing?
I'm intrigued.
RACHEL: Blood letting for Children.
Now, what was that?
Peter Pan.
I remember being taken out
of Peter Pan at the Barbican.
PAUL: What did you find upsetting about that?
RACHEL: I think anything to do
with grief and loss.
PAUL: Okay.
RACHEL: Anything to do with separation,
Holocaust, family.
PAUL: Of course,
RACHEL: We can trace that back quite quickly.
Yeah, I just couldn't cope with that.
PAUL: You weren't offended by any
of the delivery of the jokes?
RACHEL: A four year old 'I'm out!'
PAUL: You can't possibly have that in your joke.
RACHEL: I was really lucky.
And at that point, well
we had a Tory government,
but they were still letting people
go to the theatre in schools.
PAUL: Could you, you don't have to identify
this, but was there a point when you
started to think, oh, I'd like to perform?
RACHEL: Yeah, I think,
I'm laughing because I was at a school
where they had, like,
Head Girls and things like that,
and I was a Deputy Head Girl and I wasn't
allowed to be a Head Girl because I was
deemed to be a loose cannon,
which was correct.
PAUL: That much we know.
RACHEL: And I think with that came, like,
doing assemblies or something.
And I remember we had to do an assembly
for Harvest Festival and
we wrote, we pretended that we'd found this
sort of story about
a bit like 'Wind In The Willows',
a story about shrews frolicking.
And we hadn't and we'd written it,
but we pretended that it was like a
PAUL: A lost text
RACHEL: and I think that's when I thought.
This is great, this is really fun.
And the kind of listening
to the audience that you have to do.
I guess it was like the translation of
the molecular study of jokes on paper
and delivery, but then actually having
an audience and going, oh, hang on,
if I put an extra pause in here, it
doesn't work, but if I cut it, it does.
So I think I was probably about 16, maybe.
PAUL: And also, it's interesting because
it wasn't just a performative thing.
You obviously wrote something.
Was that with someone else?
With your friends?
RACHEL: Yeah, that was with two other
Head Girl people who were also I mean,
none of us should have
been in those positions.
PAUL: Did you ever come clean about
this not being a lost text?
RACHEL: No
PAUL: Now it's out there.
People might feel cheated
that they believed in this.
RACHEL: but then I didn't write
sort of through university.
PAUL: Where did you go to university?
RACHEL: At Leeds
PAUL: What were you doing? Theatre?
RACHEL: So I was doing English and Theatre.
It's like a joint thing.
But a lot of amazing theatre makers
have come out of that course.
So Chris Thorpe is out
of that, a performer called Lucy Ellinson
Dan, lots of extraordinary people.
But it was really quite an academic focus.
It wasn't a training.
The most practical things we did were
things like when you came
and did workshops,
but it was not really a training.
So you did a bit of performance through
it, but it was mainly kind of like,
I don't know, study,
which I liked because I quite like
that approach to performance.
PAUL: And what were you seeing that was
inspiring you when you were at Leeds?
RACHEL: Yeah. So it was that sort of period of you,
Peepolykus, yes, Ridiculusmus -
only things that end with 'us'
was that period.
I'm trying to think it's kind of devised,
quite physical, comedic stuff, was
the stuff that I was going, oh, hello.
A company called Theatre O.
PAUL: O yes, I remember theatre O.
RACHEL: That sort of thing.
So it was that world.
And that was sort of funny,
but also doing stuff with form.
Yeah, those sort of things
were really inspiring.
PAUL: When you were there, were you?
Because I'm interested in,
I'll come to this in a second, but
the times that you create alone
and the times when you collaborate,
was that a time of collaboration?
RACHEL: Yeah, it was collaborative and I mean,
we did this sort of leaving projects
that were already collaborative and that's
when I was like, oh,
this is a really interesting - it kind
of gave me permission to write because I
didn't feel like I could write
on my own at that point.
But if you were kind of devising
together and ending up with the text.
Then it felt like it's...
PAUL: It's interesting, isn't it?
I mean, we've had this
debate internally and externally
for 29 years about what is writing.
And I can totally relate to what you're
saying that somehow
I always get slight imposter syndrome
around being a writer because I didn't
write a play and often I was writing
through physical action or on the floor.
And this challenged with the Mike Nichols
thing I read as well,
and he was doing all his improvising, but
somehow it's not writing in the same way.
And it took a long time for me to own
that and say, no, this is writing.
It's just a different form of writing.
So I can totally relate to that.
I always thought,
I can't call myself a writer.
I've got to be part of something
else that isn't quite that.
RACHEL: And that
feels like a kind of horrible British fall out of Shakespeare.
Like the kind of male auteur thing.
And actually, I wrote
haha a play in lockdown.
It was like the first time I'd sat down
on my own and been quiet and tried
to write a play with characters.
I'd never done that before.
Well and I just thought,
this is appalling.
This shouldn't be allowed.
This is dictatorial.
It's like a world view that I don't like
the process of it, creates this worldview
that I abhor of, like one person creating
the world and pretending
that they've made loads of people.
No, you haven't.
They'll just from your head.
I was like, oh, yeah,
this is like of course,
in lockdown there were different ways
of making but I did suddenly go, no,
there's a reason that we will be making
collaboratively and it's because it's
socialist, healthy and feminist
and all those things.
PAUL: And democratic.
RACHEL: Yes, I agree.
PAUL: And I think I've always been suspicious
of the notion of a singular
imagination as well.
I think certainly at the Idiots we've
always embraced and thrived off the notion
of a very eclectic mix of imaginations
that might be shaped in particular ways
by particular people,
but the voices are all there.
And that eclectic thing brings me
to the notion of your influences because
even though our work is very different,
you make very different work that we do.
I think there is a real connection through
the eclectic nature
of what we're influenced by because we're
often drawn to things where we mix
Günter Grass with Bugs Bunny
in the same show.
And looking at your list of influences
from Morecambe and Wise,
Hannah Gadsby, the Gobs Squad,
Bobby Baker, an extraordinary mix.
When you say influence,
do you find you go back to these
people a lot when you're making stuff?
RACHEL: I think I do.
Especially Morecambe and Wise, because,
again, it's kind of back
to the elegance of those rhythms.
Yeah.
Morecambe and Wise and the two Ronnies.
When I was working with Nat Tarrab as
a partnership, we'd often
watch the Two Ronnies.
PAUL: Well also, as you say,
the rhythmic nature of the Two Ronnies is
extraordinary in terms of what you're
saying about beats and the
precision of what that is.
It's true.
And I remember briefly, 20 years ago,
I took over in 'The Play What I Wrote'
in the West End, and I remember,
Hamish, one of the performers,
saying to me, you've got to really
learn this before we start rehearsals.
And I kind of went, yeah.
He said, no, really learn it.
And he was so adamant.
I've never learned anything so well.
And of course, he was absolutely right,
because every nuance and every beat
of that show,
which was basically Morecambe and Wise,
couldn't be in any way slightly vague.
It had to be.
Absolutely.
And of course, there was an immense
freedom in that once I've learned it.
Of course there was.
But I can see why you
return to those things.
RACHEL: Yeah,
there's a discipline,
because I'm definitely one for, like,
sort of know it. That used to get me in trouble with Nat,
because Nat Tarrab, we made
work for so long together.
She's a stickler for learning.
She's a stickler for everything,
which is why I work with her,
because I'm very broad brushstroke.
PAUL: Well, that's good.
You compliment each other.
RACHEL: It was good.
She's very strict.
PAUL: I don't think in any double act
there's room for two sticklers.
RACHEL: There can't be.
PAUL: There can only be one stickler.
RACHEL: Yeah.
And it was her.
And so she learned, like, to the letter,
and I would have a rough estimation,
and she'd be always furious because
it was a kind of classic straight, She was
the sort of straight man in many ways.
Also, she's six foot tall.
She's very tall.
PAUL: So the physical contrast is good.
RACHEL: Great.
But she'd always be slightly furious
that I would get away with it,
that I'd kind of roughly know it and get
out on stage and get away with it.
But I was just loving being live.
PAUL: Yeah. It's an interesting thing.
And I can think of other people
and sometimes it drives other
performers up the wall.
I mean, you mentioned Peepolykus and a man
who's worked with us a lot and is
a genius clown is Javier Marzan.
And Javier has a very tangential
relationship to any kind of structure,
and you have to embrace that.
But when I've heard people say,
we work with Javier and he was
a nightmare, and I thought, well,
you clearly have tried to control him,
and there's no point in - if you're going
to work with him, you've
got to give him free reign.
Otherwise he will drive you mad.
I think that tension it was actually
Javier who said, for me, the best
ever description of what acting is.
Javier said, Acting is giving a f**k
and not giving a f**k at the same time.
Yes.
And I think for all the books you can
read, or the drama school,
I think that is basically it, isn't it?
RACHEL: Yeah, I think it absolutely is.
PAUL: Any type of performance.
RACHEL: Yeah, it has it because you can't
do it if you don't give a f**k.
PAUL: Yeah.
RACHEL: And if you give too much of a f**k, you
can't do it because you're just trapped.
PAUL: So that the tension that we're...
RACHEL: That would save a lot of people
money on drama school.
PAUL: Exactly.
Save them a fortune.
All those expensive MAs.
What about women who've made you laugh?
RACHEL: Yeah, I mean, I was watching
French and Saunders VHS - to age me -
although I've already aged myself
by saying when I graduated, obsessively.
And then the kind of real in person switch
that happened for me was this week
with Stacy Makishi, who was
working with Apples and Snakes.
So she's a Hawaiian, I think she describes
herself as a performance artist.
But Apples and Snakes,
who are this performance poetry
organisation I've been working with and
very inspired by a lot of the performers I
was seeing, but there was this kind
of wing of them who seemed
to cross over into something else.
So sort of she was one of them.
Curious, so Helen Paris and Leslie Hill,
and I was like, what is this?
Because they seem to be working
with props, they're working with music,
they're working with physicality.
I don't know what this is.
And it turned out that was the kind
of edges of performance art.
And so I did a week's workshop with her
and actually met Nat there, back in Leeds.
I think for so many people,
if you scratch the kind of performance art
weirdos a little bit,
they've all been taught by her at some
point, because she just gives people
the kind of confidence and the skills
to just go and make and not feel
that they need to study and study
and study before they do it.
PAUL: And also that
sense of making and not knowing, I think,
is really important because
we still have a literary culture still
very much in our theatre,
which is deadening.
It's all about knowing.
And I think it's really crucial
that you can find a place to go.
I don't know.
I will do this.
I have no idea.
RACHEL: The idea of going into a rehearsal
room with a script at the beginning.
PAUL: I know, it's weird.
RACHEL: So weird.
I mean, like, I get it.
Sure.
But wow.
You've got three weeks and you
already know the script.
Okay.
That's nice.
PAUL: Reassuring sometimes.
RACHEL: Just a totally different way of working.
Yeah.
So lots of women and then kind of Joan
Rivers and the kind of like those people.
Lily Tomlin a lot of American.
PAUL: Sarah Bernhardt.
Not Sarah Bernhardt, Sandra Bernhard.
Sarah Bernhardt was an Edwardian Activist.
RACHEL: I didn't know her.
She's not on YouTube.
Very much so.
PAUL: I remember seeing Sandra Bernhard
for the first time.
I didn't know who she was.
When she gives that extraordinary
performance in the film 'King of Comedy'.
RACHEL: Yes. Amazing.
PAUL: And I just thought, who is this?
And I didn't know her as
a stand up or anything, really.
That was my first encounter with her.
An extraordinary performer.
I think it felt incredibly
not just charismatic, but very audacious.
Which brings me to my next point.
I was very intrigued about a workshop you
did around discovering your own
audaciousness or something.
RACHEL: Oh, yeah.
PAUL: What is that?
RACHEL: So I have these kind of I'm a bit like
polyamorous in my theatre affection,
so I have these kind of different
sometimes I was saying,
sometimes I work on my own,
sometimes I work in partnership.
And I have a long ongoing partnership
with an artist called Greg Wohead.
And we made a show, which is, to date,
the naughtiest thing I've ever done,
called 'Story Number One',
which we could only be this
naughty because it wasn't funded.
It was just us being like,
let's do this once, where an audience,
it's s two and a bit hours long.
The audience come in.
The first nearly full hour is an entire
episode of 'Come Dine With Me',
which we're just screening.
We're not there.
So this kind of cooking competition,
for people don't know it.
The second bit of it is
that we've written fan fiction.
We do actually finally come on and we've
written sort of fan fiction for each
of the characters in 'Come Dine With Me'.
And then the third part is these series
of emails and letters that we've seemingly
written, or maybe we have,
maybe we haven't, to reach out to these
real people, to ask them
to come on stage with us.
And we tracked them down and we went
to one of the competitors who runs
a children's farm, so we went.
PAUL: And, wow, you actually tracked them down.
RACHEL: So it's this kind of thing about the real
and the not real and inviting people
to spend some time with people on telly
and then have, like,
the kind of areas of consent around
imagination when you're taking people
into kind of graphic porno
fanfiction anyway, and then being like,
oh, by the way, he's coming, he's coming.
He's off stage and he's coming.
And what that does to people inside.
So it's very formally really naughty.
The language we kept using was audacious,
which is interesting that you mentioned.
And so then we did this workshop
with people, which was
what is your version of audaciousness?
Because actually, for me, actually,
maybe writing a play is audacious.
PAUL: That's what I was about to say.
I think audacious, being audacious
is not necessary to shock.
RACHEL: No, not all.
PAUL: Not a shocking thing. So maybe,
like you said,
you writing a play in lockdown
was maybe quite audacious.
We wouldn't expect that.
RACHEL: No, and I wouldn't expect it myself.
And so it was a workshop where we were
on the kind of banks of this loch
in Glasgow with different performers,
and they were really spending time
with what audaciousness meant in society,
what it meant to them in terms
of their back catalogue.
So it was people that made work before
and what would really like they would wake
up the next day and be shocked to find
that they had made this piece of work.
And it's a nice way of working.
PAUL: Yeah, it really struck me, and I was
quite intrigued on your website.
I also, on a side note,
I like the debate that you had about
whether you had alcohol or mobile phones.
RACHEL: On this retreat.
PAUL: Exactly.
I thought that in itself, I mentioned
earlier your brilliant titles.
I'm very, again, probably
a stickler for titles.
I think they're very important
and they're very important to us.
And people often say, oh,
that's a very Idiot title.
But we've often had not arguments,
but we've had debates with producers
and venues around titles.
RACHEL: And the horse...hang on wait, t
ell me this story again.
PAUL: Yeah, that was the one where
we were doing this show about political,
acts of political violence,
and there were an eclectic mix of things
from Bugs Bunny to Günter Grass,
and we stumbled on a joke in different
forms that we really liked, which, in a
way was about someone saying, f**k you.
Well, basically, it was about a cowboy
saying f**k you to The Lone Ranger.
F**k you and the horse you rode in on.
So we thought, that's a brilliant title.
And I sensed immediately our then producer
was uneasy with the title
and I just knew it.
So, again, maybe a bit perverted,
I just thought, cheekily,
I'm going to carry on with it.
And then eventually it came out, they said
I'm not sure we can have a title
that begins with the word 'and'
I literally went 'what?'
no, you can't have a title.
And then these marketing people who were
paid lots of money went, yes,
that's right, you can't have
a title that begins with 'and'.
I said, Where is this written down?
RACHEL: Was the suggestion that people would
feel that they'd missed something?
PAUL: Maybe.
RACHEL: What?
That's such an odd rule.
PAUL: But it was more alarming the amount
of very professional people with high
paid jobs said, no, you can't have that.
It's really weird.
Anyway,
I hope you continue with your audacious
titles, because they're rather brilliant.
RACHEL: I've gone quite singular recently.
I've gone on a single word.
I think it's time to go long again.
PAUL: Yeah, long is good.
We just made a show called
Would You Bet Against Us?
RACHEL: That's a great title.
PAUL: Which was inspired by the greatest ever
achievement of my football team
and the parallel narrative of my foolhardy
attempts to make it from a council house
in Birmingham into the world
of show business.
So the two events coincided,
but we liked Would You Bet against Us?
RACHEL: Yeah, that's a great title.
PAUL: Which was a quote, but erm.
But also, I don't know what it is because
obviously your work is very personal
as well, and often our work is.
But I'm always fascinated
by what an audience accepts.
So we did a show called 'My Perfect Mind'
a few years ago with myself and an old
actor, Edward Petherbridge.
And there is a point towards the beginning
of the show where I say to the audience,
everything you're about
to see is absolutely true.
And the amount of people afterwards
who came up to me in the bar and said,
really enjoyed the show.
So were you really in that bad production
of the American musical with Edward?
I said, yes, I told you it was true.
And it was really interesting because we
stood on stage and I said it,
they immediately weren't sure.
RACHEL: I was just having a conversation
the other day with Greg.
Which is slightly different from what
you do, or maybe not with these ones.
Where you're talking about
this personal experience.
But if you seem to be Rachel Mars or
Paul Hunter or whatever talking on stage
and it seems to have an I voice to it.
People
immediately maybe if you don't say this is
all true, people will immediately
assume that it's 100% true.
And then if they find out that it isn't,
they get very affronted.
And you kind of go, It's theatre.
I think it's the I voice.
PAUL: Yeah, I think you're probably right.
But, I mean, another example from the same
show as Edward,
who was 80 years old and extraordinary
performer, but he injured himself
slightly, so we had to change
the show quite a lot.
And we held the audience outside
at the Young Vic and I went on and made
an announcement at the beginning to say,
sorry for the delay, but one
of the actors has suffered an injury.
There's only two of us in it,
so I didn't say who it was.
We had to change some stuff.
I hope you enjoy the show.
We did the whole show and several people
came up to me in the run and said,
really love the show.
I love the bit where you came
on at the beginning and said -
I tried to say it as neutrally and as
honestly as I could,
but because of what followed
that announcement,
they assumed that's part of the show.
RACHEL: The thing is a bit you can't escape.
I don't think we can escape it.
We question facts
and fiction all the time.
So then it's just a question
of how you play with it, really.
PAUL: Yeah.
And that's the joy of it, isn't it?
I often say, when I'm sort of talking
about our type of shows that we don't
always do them, but those shows that sit
in that place, I have no interest
in everything being true.
It's just a jumping off point.
So in that show, Edward,
we had a scene when he was a child
at a talent competition
and we were going to stage that idea.
And I was the compare. And
in real life, he didn't win.
And myself and Kathryn Hunter,
the director said, well,
you've got to win in our show.
There's no way you can come third
behind the girl playing the violin.
But the great thing was, the audience,
of course, loved it when Edward won,
but Edward really didn't like the fact
that we, so over the applause you
could hear him going, It's not true.
I didn't.
RACHEL: Like he's British, right?
PAUL: Yes, very English.
RACHEL: Can you imagine in America people being
like, just so you know, I didn't win.
PAUL: Exactly.
It's such an English thing, isn't it?
RACHEL: I don't want to claim
a win that isn't mine.
PAUL: Exactly.
I'm not comfortable with that.
I wanted to come back,
if I may, to the comedy thing.
And I suppose the Jewish thing
comes back to Mike Nichols.
And I was just looking at this quote.
He was doing an interview again and he
said he was talking about how he wished
sometimes that Jewish people could poke
themselves a bit more in the ribs.
And he went on to say,
'you know what the problem is?
Among many other things?
Correctness.
Correctness was such a blight
on humour and the truth.
One of the joys of The Producers was
that every possible correct position was
exploded and you just sat
there howling and grateful.
It was the death of correctness,
in a way'.
RACHEL: Interesting.
I would disagree with him.
PAUL: No, that's why I wanted
to get your view on that.
RACHEL: Yeah.
I mean, I don't disagree
with him about The Producers.
He's bang on, that's what it's doing.
I would say right now,
all the Jews I know are busy whacking
themselves super hard in the guts.
I don't know.
I was going to say have ever been.
So I'm interested that he thinks that sort
of we, whatever that means
monolythic Jews, don't.
Because I think the Jewish joke is
always that the Jew is the schmuck.
PAUL: That's the feeling I get when I look
at that tradition going right back,
RACHEL: Always.
And like my favourite - I
always do the whole thing.
PAUL: No, no, go on.
RACHEL: One of my favourite gags is a Holocaust
theory gag about a guy who's Jewish,
old man who's digging the road
for punishment,
and a gorgeous huge Volkswagen pulls up
and Hitler and his guards get out
and Hitler comes over with the guards,
and the guards point the gun at this old
guy and point to a cow pat
and says, 'Jew, eat the cow pat.
And so otherwise we'll shoot you'.
So he has to.
And then later that night,
he goes home and his wife says,
'how was your day?' And he says,
'you'll never guess who I had lunch with.'
Maybe that's not poking
yourself in the gut.
Maybe that is making you the victor
of the terrible situation.
It's an interesting line, isn't it?
Between
poking yourself in the gut and what's
making you the
victor of something terrible?
PAUL: It is a brilliant gag and a perfect place
to draw this all too brief
conversation to an end.
Rachel, it's been such a pleasure.
Before we go, I want to ask you
seven quick fire questions.
RACHEL: Okay.
PAUL: You don't need to think about it.
Your first response.
If you don't understand anything still,
your first response is fine.
You'll understand all of this.
New York or LA?
RACHEL: New York a hundred times.
PAUL: Morcambe and Wise or Tommy Cooper?
RACHEL: Morcambe and Wise.
PAUL: Red wine or a mobile phone?
RACHEL: Sadly, a mobile phone
and I hate what that
make reveals about me.
PAUL: Mastermind or University Challenge?
RACHEL: Mastermind.
PAUL: Going back to 90s comedy.
Green Room or Smack The Pony?
RACHEL: Smack the Pony.
PAUL: Frida Carlo or Paula Rego?
RACHEL: Paula Rego.
PAUL: Pool or darts?
RACHEL: Pool.
PAUL: Writing or performing?
RACHEL: I hate that one.
Can that be my response?!
PAUL: You can say both.
RACHEL: No, I can't say both.
Writing or performing.
At the moment?
Writing.
Because of the pandemic.
If you asked me three years ago not that.
PAUL: And it will change again.
Rachel, it's been so lovely talking to you
and brilliantly insightful
and entertaining as ever.
That joke has made my day.
I will look up the, what's the name
of the book I need to get?
RACHEL: You need to read 'Leo
Rosten's Book of Laughter'.
R-O-S-T-E-N.
PAUL: Leo Rosten.
Okay, brilliant.
Thanks, Rachel.
Have a good day.
RACHEL: Thanks for having me, ta-ra.
PAUL: Take care.
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