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Coming up today,
what made rising star Andy Millman

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punch a defenceless Down's syndrome child

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and his elderly,
wheelchair-bound mother in the face?

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Denise Robertson will be here to speculate.

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If you've got your anonymity and
you make a fool of yourself in a restaurant,

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people say, "There was a guy in here,
oh, you should have seen it."

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Now they'd go, "God, Andy Millman
off When The Whistle Blows was in here,

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"he made a complete prat of himself."
And that gets into folklore.

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Excuse me, I understand you have a problem
with me bringing my son into a restaurant?

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- If he's like that, yes.
- Andy...

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- What do you mean, like that?
- Well, why should we be burdened?

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I mean, episode 3 is really all about that.

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I hope you have a wonderful evening,

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and that you realise
you're a horrible little man.

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Ooh. No, I didn't realise it.

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The scene that starts it all
with the guy with Down's syndrome,

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and it's sort of an honest mistake,
but because he's famous,

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anything he does now
gets in the paper and exaggerated.

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"Millman had been glugging red wine

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"and let off a tirade of abuse at
the innocent child and his stunned mother,

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"who he claimed was as mad as her son."

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I didn't say that.

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I don't think it was intended
to sort of suggest,

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"Oh, woe is the celebrity
who must struggle through press intrusion."

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It was more the idea again that
it's funnier for Andy now that he's famous

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because, as you say,
people are monitoring him and watching him,

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and things can escalate and spiral
into the most comically absurd ways.

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Annoyingly, they didn't sort of
go with the giving the kid an X-Box angle.

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What did they go with?

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"TV Bully Kicks Dwarf In Face."

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Accurate. But as you say,
there's no such thing as bad publicity.

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-"Pick On Someone Your Own Size, Fatty."
- Oh, maybe there is.

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People often say,
"Oh, your comedy is politically incorrect,"

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and I think we've always felt that it's not,
actually, it's politically correct.

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This is my agent.

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- Darren Lamb. Nice to meet you.
- Hi.

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This is Warwick.

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- Where?
- There.

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Oh! Midget. Hello.

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The reason that those uncomfortable issues,
like disability or race or whatever,

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why they're interesting
in comic terms is because

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people feel uncomfortable
dealing with those areas sometimes,

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if they don't feel relaxed
about those subjects.

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And so, as soon as
there's an anxiety about something,

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there's always comedy in the wings
waiting to burst through.

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- What?
- Jesus, look. Pissed up, over there.

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She's had a few.

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GERVAIS: In series one,

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where I mistakenly think that
the girl with cerebral palsy is drunk.

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- That's my sister.
- Uh?

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She's got cerebral palsy.

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What makes it worse,
her sister's sitting there.

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She goes, "That's my sister.
She's got cerebral palsy."

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And then the backtracking's funny as well.
"No, no. Not her. Not..."

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Whereas he should have gone,
"Sorry, didn't know. Sorry about that."

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But it's... The fun is people digging a hole.

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She was saying the only thing
that keeps her going

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is the thought that one day she'll be
in heaven and everything will be all right.

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And I didn't wanna go,
"No, you're barking up the wrong tree, love.

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"There's no God, there's no heaven,

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"you're not gonna be up there
talking normally and running around on legs

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"and playing volleyball and everything."

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We're not laughing at cerebral palsy
or Down's syndrome.

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We're laughing at the anxiety
of someone confronted with those things

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and dealing with them inappropriately.

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This chair free?

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Yeah.

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An idea that we had from the first series
was Daniel Radcliffe acting like a teenager

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who's trying to impress with his smoking
and then getting caught by his mum.

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I don't know why, that just seemed
amusing to us straightaway.

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- Yeah.
- Because he's so identified

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with this do-gooding wizard schoolboy.

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I think people generally tend to think that,

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from interviews or whatever,
they sort of know you,

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and it would be nice to just completely...

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Not that I am particularly
playing myself in the episode,

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but it would be nice to sort of temporarily
destroy the image they think they have of me.

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We'd have liked him, obviously,
to have been dressed as Harry Potter.

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But I think there was concerns
from various people

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-that it's a very protected brand and...
- We had to be very careful with what we said.

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And various things we couldn't say or do,
but, therefore, we wanted to give him

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a costume that perhaps
implied a magical fantasy film

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without it being clearly Harry Potter.
And a Boy Scout is the obvious example.

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- With a wood-elf.
- With a little magical wood-elf.

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- That says magical film to me straightaway.
- A magical wood-elf?

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- A wood-elf playing a flute.
-It's a magical film. Yeah.

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That to me says magical film.

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I had Ricky's number to call him up.
I was told to call, so I called him up,

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and then we chatted for probably 20 minutes
about the episode,

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and the fact that I was gonna get
to flick a condom onto the head of,

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at that time, an unconfirmed dame.

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And that sold it, really.
That was all I needed to know.

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I think, of the various requests
we've made of various celebrities,

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some of the biggest asks were in this series.

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I mean, Dame Diana Rigg
with a condom on her head.

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Let's just hope it's big enough.

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We were on the bus
and it was a really hot day.

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It was about 98 degrees,
we were all sweating.

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And I remember we had to get through this,
and we only had her for the afternoon,

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and I remember at one point going,

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"Oh, can you dangle the condom
a little bit more over her eye?"

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And someone was doing this
and she's there, just there,

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and I thought, "That's a weird day's work."

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- It's a strange image.
- That's a strange thing to do.

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"What did you do today?"

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"Just asked Dame Diana to pop the condom
a little bit more over her eye."

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Excuse me.
Haven't you forgotten something?

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Oh, thank you, Dame Diana.

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People sometimes ask us why do we think
that the stars are willing to take part

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for no money and everything.

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And I don't know.
I think, hopefully, it's a fun day for them.

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We had three scenes to do,
we got them all done,

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it's a really fast way of working.

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And you don't feel
quite as nervous about laughing.

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Thank you, Dame Diana.

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- Still gonna use that, yeah?
- It'll be fine.

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(LAUGHING)

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There's no pressure on them

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because they straightaway see
that we don't really know what we're doing,

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and I fuck up my lines
and corpse at the slightest things.

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So they think, "Well, if it's okay for him,
there's nothing to beat here."

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- Still gonna use it, then?
- Yeah, it'll be fine.

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- MERCHANT: Okay, one more, one more.
- So close!

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On most things people work on,
if they're doing an eight-hour day,

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probably one hour is acting
and seven is waiting round in a Winnebago.

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And we work very fast, we go,
"Let's do it again, let's do this."

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Ricky doesn't come in till, like,

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10:00, and he wants to make sure
we leave by 3:00. So the hours are fantastic.

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The performance remains fresh
the faster you work.

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Too much rehearsal, too much planning,

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- too much time spent setting everything up...
- I think so.

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...can sort of bring the energy levels down.

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Of course, that's better for the actors
than the crew

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because sometimes I feel
that I'm rushing crew.

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But who's more important, Rick?

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- Well, the actors.
- Well, exactly.

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And also,
the crew are annoyed for seven hours,

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but then they're home at 4:00
and they thank me.