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Jan. 12, 2019 - David Icke
01:02:48
The Non-Binary Elephant Podcast Interviews Writer & Filmmaker Mark Millar
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I'm a non-binary elephant.
Podcast.
BOOM!
Hello, welcome to the Non-binary elephant podcast.
I'm Gareth Icke. I'll be presenting along with my brother Jamie.
Today on the show we've got Mark Miller.
Jamie's got a thing going on where he basically wants to read the first line from a Wikipedia entry to sort of introduce you to the guest.
I like it. I think it works.
Well, it worked last week. Mark Miller, MBE, only found that out today.
Yes, I did. Born on Christmas Eve 1969, is a Scottish comic book writer, best known for his work on The Authority, The Ultimate's Marvel Knight's Spider-Man, Ultimate Fantastic Four, Kingsman the Secret Service, Kick-Ass, the latter of which have been turned and adapted into feature films.
His DC comic work includes the seminal Superman Red Son.
At Marvel Comics, he created The Ultimate, selected by Time magazine as the comic book of the decade, and described by screenwriter Zach Penn as his major inspiration for the Avengers movies.
Mark, welcome to the podcast.
Thanks for having me. That's quite a CV, isn't it?
It sounds good, but remember it took 29 years.
I'm still lazy, you know, I still do a 4D week, you know, so.
Well I saw an interview the other day with you where you said one of your ambitions was to never have a proper job and you've done alright so far.
So far so good, so far so good.
I remembered something really random when we were looking, obviously through your CV of what you've done, is Kick-Ass, which was, I believe, one of the first major hits you have, was I went on my first proper adult date to watch that film by on ten years ago, and now we're sat talking to you who wrote it.
It's quite random, really. Did you enjoy it at the time?
Yeah, I did. I did, absolutely.
What about the date? Did you enjoy the date more importantly?
The date went well. We dated for a year, so it can't have gone that bad.
I like to think I was a big part of it.
So what have you got going on at the moment?
I hear you've been here and everywhere, travelling around, working on lots of new projects.
So what have you got going on now? It's mental.
I mean, I'm now 49 and I'm still doing what I was doing when I was 18.
You know, I mean, it's exactly the same thing.
I'm just sitting, making up stories.
And that's all I have a plan to do.
But it just takes new formats all the time.
Back in the old days, I was doing comics.
Now I do comics, films, TV, all that kind of stuff.
So it's gone very diverse.
I think it's, you know, anybody that wants to hear the stories, I'll sell it to them.
You know, it's great. And anybody who says, you know, they don't want a big audience is lying.
I mean, you want your stuff to reach as many people as possible.
I remember I used to always hover about 500 copies above cancellation.
I had about four years of that.
And I was always in the brink of losing everything for the sake of 500 copies.
So see now I've got a big audience.
I'm loving it. It's great. How did you get into comic?
Because for me, comic books are almost like it's an American thing.
So obviously being from Cote Bridge, for anyone who doesn't know, it's a relatively small town in Scotland, isn't it?
Well, it's funny, I don't know if it's the same down south, but Scotland has a real love affair with America.
When I say America, I mean Americana.
You would get country and westerns big in Scotland, which is really weird, and line dancing and all this kind of stuff.
So growing up being into Superman and Batman and the Six Million Dollar Man and all these American TV shows, that was just kind of standard.
All my pals were into it too, so we'd play in the playground at this stuff in the 70s when I was in primary school.
So it just was my ambition, and I actually thought it would be impossible because I live in a rock, a rainy rock, you know, like thousands of miles away from this.
I thought it can never actually happen, but when I was 13, I started sending in submissions, and I got rejection letters, and I saw the rejection letters as affirmation, weirdly.
I sort of thought, well, if these guys are bothering me, write back to me, there must be something good to you, you know?
And I just kept sending stuff in.
By 18, 19, I was working full-time really, you know?
I must admit, because I do a bit of gigs in Scotland, and I always thought that it went the other way.
So a lot of the people in the bars and stuff were listening to country music, but I thought that was maybe because country music was influenced by Celtic music, and therefore it was kind of like a bit of a reciprocal thing.
There's a wee element of that, you know, but I think the big thing is it was always the land across the water and it seemed very romantic, you know, and see my dad's generation, I mean, it's funny, those guys, they just loved, growing up in the 40s and everything, those guys loved American movies and everything, you know, so like, it just seemed like where he wanted to be, it just seemed so glamorous, you didn't realise it was a totalitarian state at that point.
No, well, yeah, absolutely.
You were sending off your manuscripts.
Are they called manuscripts? Yeah, just scripts.
But you did go to uni as well and probably, against your will maybe, pursue what you call a normal career.
Well, I tried different things.
I did chemistry, physics, maths, English and all this kind of stuff at school.
I thought I wanted to be a doctor.
I thought I wanted to do history and economics.
I wanted to try all these different things.
I had no interest in anything, really.
In all honesty, I was just sitting...
Like, drawn Spiderman. You know, that's all I ever wanted to do.
And then I found guys who would actually pay me for it.
And then that meant I could pay my rent, which was amazing, you know?
So, like, it didn't take that long in hindsight.
And if my kids tried it, I'd be furious.
But I had, like, nothing to lose.
I had no money at all. So the idea of being a writer didn't seem much of a risk.
I think it would have been different if I'd come from some privileged background or something, you know?
But because I had nothing, I had nothing to lose.
So I just thought, why not, you know?
Because you've mentioned drawing Spider-Man there.
I did see something which amused me about you drawing Spider-Man on your face.
That's right, yeah. What was that about?
Well, it's only just come off now.
I did it when I was about seven. My first little communion, the photographs from it, you can actually see Spider-Man's face, like the webs across my face.
Because about a week before it, I got like a black inky and I was out playing with my pals and somebody was playing the hull somewhere Batman's face because I didn't have a costume, you know?
And my mum was going to kill me, you know, because I came in and she said, that's never coming out, you know?
So even a week later, it was still there for Molly Queen.
I bet the priest didn't see the funny side of it.
No, everybody loved it, actually.
Oh, really? Oh, excellent. Everybody likes Spider-Man.
I was reading, actually, one of the earliest things you wrote about was a Russian superhero.
Yeah. And I saw an interview you did about that, saying that you thought that...
America was very over-represented in the superhero department.
You wanted to balance it out. Well, it was funny.
It was just today, actually.
I know this will get a wee bit later.
But today it was announced they're making an animated film.
Warner Brothers are doing an animated film of that very story you're talking about.
And it's a Russian Superman idea.
So, I mean, I just heard about this today.
Nobody told me. But the idea was, imagine Superman's rocket, instead of landing in America, lands in a communist country.
You know, it lands in the USSR back in the days of Stalin.
And he grows up believing in international socialism instead of believing in truth and justice in the American way.
So that was the kind of idea.
It was called Superman Red Sun.
And, you know, I came up with the idea when I was about six.
I sent it in as a proposal when I was done.
That was crazy. I mean, I used to sit and do all these wee comics.
After school, I'd come in and just sit and draw.
And I sent it off when I was 13 as a proposal.
And then when I was 26, it got accepted.
And then when I was 33, it was published because the guy took a long time to draw it, the guy who was drawing it, you know.
So I'm glad it went down well because it took a long time.
If you were thinking like that, I was picking my nose at six.
I don't know what I did at six. What age did you start walking?
Three weeks. I was about 90.
That's incredible. Yeah, that is amazing.
What I love about it for me is that, you know, I've been through millions of things.
I want to be this. I want to be a fireman.
Tomorrow I want to be a footballer.
The next day I want to be a hockey player.
The next day I want to be a fireman again.
Like most people kind of just go through different things.
How many of those have you done? None.
Yeah, okay. Cheers, mate.
Cheers. Yeah, but you never keep at anything for long enough.
This proves the point. You never keep at anything long enough to probably achieve it because something's always, as a kid, your attention's drawn away real quick.
But for you to be six doing that and then at 13 doing that and then getting accepted at 26 and now here you are.
I mean, you don't look a day over, what, 30?
And you're still doing it.
It's amazing to do something for that.
It shows you clearly got a massive passion for what you do.
It's just what I'm into, you know?
And you know what's really funny? See, when I talk to guys that sort of do unusual things, it's all I've ever wanted to do.
Like, I was watching an interview with Jerry Seinfeld the other night, and Seinfeld was talking about, and he just mentioned it really casually, he said that he went backstage when he was eight to go and meet Mel Brooks and Carol Reiner.
And I was like, and it was only, it took me a second to sort of think, hang on, he was eight?
And he was going backstage to find out about stand-up comedy.
I mean, who even knows what stand-up comedy is when you're eight, you know?
So I think it's the same. Like, David Beckham was kicking a football probably from the minute he could stand up, you know?
And I think it's just, it's in you, it's not in you, you know?
I think that's incredible, the fact that you've managed to not just do it because you love it, but you've managed to make a massive career and massive name for yourself and do some incredible work as a result of doing something you love.
That's something most people would be very, very...
That's the dream, really, isn't it?
It is the absolute dream. And the fact that you've worked for such big companies as well, but you've still managed...
To then go on your own and still be the master of your own destiny when I think a lot of people, so obviously you've been at DC and you've been at Marvel as well.
Most people I think that get into big studios or big companies almost get engulfed by it, don't they?
And it almost swallows them.
I've seen it happen in the past.
Yeah, I mean, I was quite aware of that.
Like, see the industry itself?
It's got a terrible history, you know, and you look back and the guys who created Superman were ripped off.
The artist who co-created a lot of the Marvel characters, he didn't see any money.
It was a massive legal suit for a very long time for his family.
Way after his death, I mean, a decade and a half after his death, his family got to pay out.
And there's a real history of the big companies not looking after the creators.
So I did go in quite open-eyed, you know, and I just thought...
These guys have no loyalty to the writers and the artists and everything from these big companies.
They just want you while you're hot.
So my plan was always to quit when things were going at their best.
It sounds mental, right?
But my plan was, as soon as they start really getting behind my stuff, jump and go and do something else.
While you're stopped high.
Yeah, exactly. You know, then jump onto something else.
And just try and always keep that sense of being your own boss.
You know, just to kind of go and do what you want to do.
And it's very tempting not to, like...
I mean, when I was at Marvel, I think they were paying me by the end of my time at Marvel.
I did about nine years there. They were paying me 11 times what I was getting paid when I started, right?
So they were paying me really well.
And I quit.
I remember I had a mental tax bill at the time as well, and I thought, is this wise?
And I was the sort of guy who never put any money away for tax and things, you know?
But I just, I knew the thing I had to do was create my own characters.
I'd spoken to Stan Lee, the guy who created Marvel, and he said to me, like, you're nuts.
He says, I think you'd be really good at this.
He said, you should go and create your own stuff.
So I did, and I went full-time just doing my own stuff.
I'd had Wanted, Kick-Ass was picked up as a movie, and I was thinking, right, hang on, there's a little pattern here.
You know, the first two get picked up and they're getting made into movies.
I'm just going to go full-time with this.
So I get no wages for 18 months because I went completely self-employed away doing my own thing.
And that was a real risk, but it actually worked out nice, so it was good.
Sorry, I was going to say, looking back, it's terrifying.
And I don't know how... I took that risk, you know, but I'm glad I did.
He who dares wins, though, isn't it?
To paraphrase Del Boy.
And the rewards worked out, right?
In fairness. That ties in well to what you set up as your business model of Middle World, where you do 50% split down the middle with the writer or the contributor for anyone that brings you stuff.
That's a fair way of running business, which is polar opposite to where you've described the big boys.
Well, what usually happens is you get chewed up and spat out.
And it's not that these guys are bad, it's just the way corporations work.
You know, like if you work at McDonald's, there's a day when you can't stand up and do what you're doing, then they move you on and bring someone else in.
And it's the same with Marvel or DC or any of these companies.
So I knew that ownership was really important, that I wanted to own what I was creating.
And the guys I brought in as artists, every one of them I gave them a 50-50 split.
And I ran that company right up until we sold it.
And all the artists got a lovely payday.
And half of them have actually buggered off almost out of the industry now.
They got a great payday when we sold to Netflix.
And one's been on a permanent holiday since and they said he's no intention of ever picking up a pencil.
But I only took a week off.
Like, Lucy and I took the kids away to Mallorca or something.
It was Mallorca. And we went away for a week.
And then, you know, came back and just started doing it because I love doing it, you know.
It's like, that's what I'm into. It's funny, it was the ultimate test of whether I was just doing it for the cash, you know, because, okay, would I then, once I got the money, take...
Two years off or something, and I couldn't.
I had to get right back into it again.
Well, it's clearly something. I can't remember the exact numbers, but the schedule you sent me the other day of how many things you've done in the last four years.
You wouldn't do that if you didn't love it, clearly.
Was it 50 or 60 TV shows in the last four years?
TV shows or movies? The projects I do for Netflix, I'll do seven a year.
Seven a year is the plan.
So I'm on year two at the moment, and my plan is to do this right into the next decade, under this contract.
Wow. So it's really exciting.
It's a lot of work. But it's kind of, it's about the pace I've been working at since I was 19.
And I'm kind of comfortable.
I still take Fridays off.
Like we put the kids in school on a Friday morning and we go and have a wee day in town and just go for a swim and a lunch and all that stuff and go and see a film.
And, you know, we have a really chilled out Friday and everything.
So I only work really Monday to Thursday.
That'll do.
And Wednesday evenings now.
Because you went from DC to Marvel.
They're major rivals, aren't they?
You described it earlier as Rangers to Celtic.
Yeah, I did a little bit.
Obviously, I can understand why someone would go from Rangers to Celtic.
I get that, because it's a move up.
I have to say that to you. You're a Celtic fan.
Well, it is now. But in terms of around the old firm, it would be frowned upon, wouldn't it?
So in the industry, you going from DC to Marvel, how was that received?
Oh, not unusual.
That was not unusual. I mean, there really only were two guys that paid you good cash and people would jump between the two.
Most people did a couple of years at DC, a couple of years at Marvel.
But I tended to just stick in there somewhere.
If I liked the guys, I'd hang around.
DC, I wasn't having a good time.
Everything I was doing, I was bumping heads with the people who were there.
I just thought, I'm not enjoying this.
One of the books I did had become really quite big.
And Marvel were really interested and they poached me.
And this is weird now, a lot of people talk about this, you never really hear this, but Marvel was going into bankruptcy at the time.
You think of Marvel as this amazing thing that's done so well and everything, but in 1999 they were filing for Chapter 11.
Things were really bad. They'd sold the coffee machine.
That they had in their office and they were selling the doors to their meeting room because they had Spiderman on them and they thought some collectors might be onto them.
They had no money at all.
There was nothing. And there was, I don't know if this is true, but there was talk of a couple of guys checks bouncing that Marvel were paying them and everything too.
So you're like, God. But one of my friends just became boss at Marvel around that time, who was another comic book guy, another artist.
And Joe Quesada, who's a brilliant guy.
And Joe phoned me up and he said, things are so crazy now to put me in charge.
He said, the way he described it, he says, the lunatics have taken over the asylum, come on over and I'll pay you less than you're currently getting paid.
And I was like, okay. What was it that turned it around then?
Do you think you would have been part of that then?
Got me there. Yeah, we lost you then for a sec.
Oh, sorry. So you'd have been part of the rebuild then, I guess, of Marvel.
Yeah, yeah. The sales were in the toilet.
I mean, things were bad. But I think the real problem was the company had been part of this terrible asset strip that had gone on and there was all these terrible debts that had accumulated around it.
But they'd also kind of lost their way a wee bit in terms of publishing, so they restarted the whole company.
And they got me to reject some characters and a friend of mine, Brian Bendis, they brought him in to reject Spider-Man and everything.
And it all worked out well and a lot of that stuff got used for the Marvel movies and that kind of got me into Hollywood.
I mean, I never actually thought Hollywood was a credible thing.
I didn't think you could live in Scotland where I didn't want to move from and work in Hollywood.
But through Marvel and the Marvel movies getting made out of a lot of the books that I was writing at Marvel, I met loads of Hollywood people who were really nice and, you know, they said, you should maybe try doing some of your own stuff, send it out here.
And that whole Hollywood career just happened by accident while I was at Marvel.
Is that what led to the MBE? Because I'm like, Jay, I had no idea.
Obviously, we had lunch together.
Well, you bought me lunch, actually. Bought me breakfast.
I bought you breakfast. And I had no idea that I was being bought lunch by an MBE. An MBE? No, it's funny, actually, all my pals tease me about it because being a Celtic fan, being a Catholic and everything, you know, it's kind of, Buckingham Palace is not a destination.
But I'll tell you a funny story behind it, actually.
I was actually offered the MBE the year before.
I mean, I don't care one way or the other.
I mean, these things don't mean anything to me.
It's a day out, you know. But it came a year before and I thought nothing of it and I just sat on this desk.
I just sat the letter there.
It said you'd be nominated for an MBA if you want to reply.
And I think they send you a little warning just to see if you're up for it before they formally phone you and offer you it kind of thing.
And I didn't reply because, again, it's not something that really matters.
But my wife is English, right?
And English people are a wee bit more excited by this stuff than Scottish people.
You know, for me, it's like an exam certificate or a stamp or something.
It's just something that's got a royal crest in it.
And she said, I'd love to go to Buckingham Palace.
And I was trying to gain favour with my mother-in-law at the time, who also would like to go to Buckingham Palace.
And I said, well, I've missed the deadline.
I didn't get back to them and they were supposed to do it.
And she says, well, you have to wait till next year.
So she phoned them up and they said, well, we can put you in next year.
And I was like, cool. And I phoned my mother-in-law up and it was actually amazing.
I said, do you want to go to Buckingham Palace?
And she was like, yes. And the credibility I got from that was amazing.
So like... All my principals were sunk that day just to impress my mother-in-law.
I think men have done worse than that.
Yeah, all you need to do to impress the mother-in-law is just get an invite by the Queen.
That's easy enough, isn't it? Well, it's funny because somebody pointed out to me, they said that we pay for Buckingham Palace, you might as well get a lunch in there.
You might as well go and have a look around.
I'd help myself to a vase.
What was it like?
Did you meet her? No, it was Prince Charles.
But weirdly, this is really weird, right?
That morning, I flew down that morning to go, and I've never seen the Queen in my life, and I bumped into the Queen that morning in Paddington Station.
It was the freakiest thing.
She was getting off the Royal Train just at the time I was getting off the Heathrow Express when I was coming down, right?
And I saw this wee tiny woman.
She looked like Yoda. She's much smaller than you would think.
She was just like a wee puppet that they were helping into a car.
Because on TV, they must have her at some angle where she looks like normal, you know?
But I mean, she really is like a wee head on a stick that they're moving, you know?
And they moved her into this car.
And I was pushing the pram, right?
I had one of the kids who was still quite young at the time.
And I was pushing the pram.
And walking alongside her, and she was in the car, and she had a whole royal security detail around her, and the car was slowly getting up that hill at Paddington Station, and I was slowly walking along.
And it was kind of weird, because we walked for about 200 feet together, with me sort of looking in, then a bit uncomfortable looking away, and everything, pushing the pram up beside her.
And then she took off, and she was away.
And later that day, weirdly, I got the MBE from Prince Charles, and he started chatting.
I said, I saw your mum earlier, you know, it's weird.
So you had a proper royal day out.
Well, yeah, bringing back to your writing career and Marvel and the evolution of The film industry.
Obviously, mid-2000s, Netflix comes along as a new platform, if you like.
Prior to the work you do with Netflix now, how do you feel that shook up the film and television industry in the sense of there was a brand new platform and there was a brand new concept of how to run that industry?
Well, funnily enough, the thing I didn't know about Netflix until I started working there is it's actually been around for 20 years.
It's been around since the mid-90s.
Which is crazy, right? I had no idea until I got talking to Reid, the guy who started it, right?
And he's just like a guy.
You know, it's really weird to think his company's worth 160 billion or something.
He's just a guy, you know?
And he was a guy who was going to the gym.
He came up with this idea in the early 90s, right?
And he said he was going to the gym with his kit and he was just sort of thinking, you know, on the way and he wasn't enjoying the job that he was in.
And he thought, how come I can pay a flat gym membership for the month No matter how many times I go, I just pay this flat thing, but if I get a movie out of Blockbuster, I have to pay $2.50 or something, you know?
So, like, he actually just came up with the idea from that.
He was just thinking about a different way of a payment structure.
So he came up with the idea of a DVD mail-order business, but he was smart enough because he was We must have run it at a loss for a fair while then.
I don't know, but I think it did well.
And do you know what's really weird as well?
Do you know that DVD mail order business is still part of their business?
Oh, really? Because I remember there was one Love Film, wasn't there, that did that?
And they're not there anymore.
That was run by Channel 4, wasn't it?
I think so, yeah. But I think he was literally doing this out of a garage, you know, back in the mid-90s.
And it just caught on and did really well.
And it gave him the capital to build and expand as he did.
But he's still just a guy, you know, sitting in the chair, he goes into work every day, and he's actually a really nice guy, I really got on with.
That's an example of perseverance, isn't it?
Yeah, absolutely. So when they approached you, where did that come from?
Was it something that you'd heard about for a while, you know, like, they'd been some contact from this guy, and you'd been going back and forth, or was it kind of out of the blue?
Because it was a big deal, wasn't it?
Yeah, it was huge. I mean, it was Netflix's first ever acquisition.
I mean, Netflix had never bought another company at that point.
And what happened was, like, a couple of different studios had started to express interest in buying my company.
Because, you know, if you think about it, you know, DC, it went really well for Warner Brothers.
They got Superman and Batman and everything, you know, Wonder Woman.
And then Marvel, bought in 2009 by Disney.
And all this stuff's just going crazy.
I mean, those movies have crossed over $20 billion, man.
So they were kind of thinking, okay, what else is out there?
And Mellow World actually had a really good library.
Even though it was a relatively new company, there was actually 20 franchises.
And we sold them 17.
I pulled a couple out just to make things easier for another thing that was going on.
And I sold them 17 franchises.
And somebody else had already expressed interest.
And then we got a seller who was a New York lawyer to kind of...
and speak to some other people who might be interested.
Netflix is one of the other people who are interested.
So once you've got one potential bidder, you know, other people start cycling
because they wonder what all the fuss is about.
And Netflix actually was somebody, I didn't actually realize just how great the deal was there.
You know, like, they weren't even on my radar for being a possible place to sell it.
But then once I got a look at it, it was really interesting.
We went out and we walked into the meeting room on day one.
My wife and I worked together. We run the company together.
We walked into the meeting room and it was like we were just hanging out with our pals.
It was just a bunch of people we just really liked.
The second we went in, just funny.
It just seemed like the pub or something like that.
And they had great attitudes.
Because they hadn't been a studio that had been around for 90 or 100 years, all their thoughts were on the future.
And instead of doing, you know, 15 movies a year, they're doing 90, 100 movies a year plus 1,500 hours of original television.
So the actual amount of work that was being generated was incredible.
It was the best place really for the material to end up.
You're then an investment, aren't you, in the sense that because you're young and because you work like a prisoner of war and just absolutely go for it, I guess them signing you up in terms of the future franchises, the future films that you're going to produce and stuff, it's like a football club buying a 19-year-old and going, yeah, okay, this guy's cost a few quid, but wow, imagine what it's going to be like in 10 years, 15 years.
Well, I said to them I want it to feel like a bargain.
What they paid for was a lot of money, but I said, I want you guys to feel this was a bargain at the end of it, and I want you to feel ripped off.
I want you to do a load of good stuff here that all works out well.
So I sold them one batch of things, and then I did a second deal.
I did two deals. The second deal was a whole different thing, which was to come on and work and create a whole bunch of new things, as well as the old stuff they bought and the sequels to those things.
So it's exciting. It's one of those once-in-a-lifetime things.
I'm really glad it happened.
I saw an interview you did in The Guardian earlier last year where you spoke about the fact that Netflix will take risks where other studios won't.
Yeah. You know, some studios will do Spider-Man 7, 8, 9.
Fastly Curious 22.
Whereas Netflix will take risks on new content and do more outlandish content, if you like, to be the mavericks in the industry.
Yeah. Yeah.
I mean, somebody described it as like the type of stories we can do at Netflix.
We start where other people draw the line, you know, so we'll do mental stuff.
Like, I mean, the first thing that's been shot at Netflix is a thing called Jupiter's Legacy.
It's a book I wrote about five years ago.
And one of the characters in it is like an alcoholic, drug addict superhero.
And he's the hero, you know, he's the guy, he's like a massive womanizer, you know, he's just an old school Oliver Reed type guy in the 1960s, he's an older guy, but all the stuff with him in the 60s, you never get it through Fox or Disney or any of these studios, but Netflix are like, yeah, this is great, it's an interesting character, you know, so... From a creative point of view, just as a writer, it's really exciting because there seems to be no limitations on stuff.
It's just whatever you can come up with as interests.
When you're creative, as you are, a free reign is your dream, isn't it?
Oh, it's perfect. It's great.
I mean, all I want is people to keep out of my way.
And that's what they do.
Talking about free reign and stuff like that, because obviously you've got quite strong political opinions as well.
Have you seen how the censorship, and I don't like the term snowflake, but that kind of mentality, people use that word, that's around at the minute, has that affected the film industry and the comic book industry in that Obviously, that you're mentioning, you know, he's an alcoholic, he's a womanizer, you know you're going to get a bit of backlash off of certain groups saying, oh, well, you shouldn't be promoting a womanizer or an alcoholic or a drug addict or whatever.
Is that something you've seen in the industry that affects people's writing in any way?
Not really. No, no.
I mean, I think a lot of stuff online is people, you know, it's the same hundred people talking and moaning and things, you know, but in reality, people just want good stories, you know, and I'm the same, you know, as a consumer, all I want is to watch an interesting TV show that you can watch The Sopranos or Breaking Bad, which are my two favorite shows of the last 20 years, right? And, you know, one's a drug dealer and one's a mafia enforcer, you know?
They're not nice people, but they're interesting.
As a creator, your job is to come up with interesting characters and interesting storylines.
The minute you let anything interfere with that, you're lost.
I think audiences are very smart.
A lot of The controversy around these things is overblown as well.
People are generally smart and like the good stuff.
Yeah, I think the idiots have the microphone a bit more down there these days.
We're evidence of that. I'm looking at Jamie with a microphone in front of him right now.
With a pet, with a little toy elephant on it as well.
It's non-binary. It is.
Well, it's not got anything, has it?
No. I've still never seen Breaking Bad and everyone always gasps when you say that.
No, I don't watch a lot of telly.
I've watched 15 shows in 20 years.
I've watched virtually nothing. But Breaking Bad is brilliant.
Have you seen The Sopranos? No, I've not seen that either.
I remember The Sopranos. I watched telly when that was on, but I don't have time.
I don't really watch telly now. I watch Netflix, to be fair.
I do watch Netflix. I'm watching Luther at the moment, which don't watch before bed, people, because you won't sleep.
I'm watching The Wiggles. Have you watched Luther?
He's like a detective.
Do you know what's funny you say that?
We were going to start watching it last night.
I've never seen it. He doesn't ever have cases where it's a Gobby Chav's punched a guy and he's killed him.
No, it's always messed up, mind kind of what stuff, but perfectly feasible.
And it's, yeah, it's not stuff you want to watch before bed, really.
Is it worth watching?
Yeah, it's good. It's got five series.
Some people must like it.
I think we only watch it because my fiancé fancies Idris Elba.
It's always the way. Always the way.
We've got that with Last Kingdom.
My wife's like, oh, I love Last Kingdom.
You're not even paying attention to the Vikings or anything.
It's the fella. Who's in that?
I don't know. He's a Danish guy, but to be fair, he's in good shape.
I'll give him that. All right.
Fair enough. So, you've started on politics.
We might as well carry on on politics.
Yeah, and when I said The Wiggles, that wasn't a joke, by the way.
Actually, that's all I watch every evening is The Wiggles because the little one loves it, so we end up watching these strange Australians dancing around.
How long do you let your kid watch kids' TV? What's the longest you'll do in an evening?
Until she goes to sleep.
LAUGHTER It's normally...
Because it depends how tired you are yourself is the life you tell.
Yeah, totally, yeah. Because she's, at the moment, she's only seven months, so at the moment, it'll be 2.30 in the morning, she's like, right, I want to party, and I don't.
I want to go to bed, so just stick the wiggles on.
Which probably isn't great parenting, but I don't really care at half two in the morning.
He's putting me off having kids.
It's hard work. But yeah, so I mentioned politics.
Obviously, you're... For me, obviously, you're pro-Scottish independence.
So am I, and I'm English. I'm not.
Definitely not. You're not pro-Scottish independence?
I was for a little while, but I'm definitely not.
Ah, okay. The internet's lied to me then, as it often does.
No, no. I was in 2011.
Then I got a little look at it close up, and I was like, oh, no, thank you, and stepped back.
That question's backfired, isn't it?
No, it hasn't. It's actually opened it up more.
For me, that's really interesting.
Okay, so what was it that you looked at and changed your mind on that then?
There's a couple of things, you know, like...
I think what pushed a lot of us in Scotland towards the SNP was that we were so disenchanted with Labour.
I mean, my family are Labour voters.
I was a Labour voter. Then things like Blair happened, the Iraq war and everything, and I was like, I'm checking out, you know?
And you know when you've nowhere else to go, you look at the Lib Dems, they're scumbags.
You look at the Tories, there are even more scumbags, you know?
It's like, where do you go? So Scotland en masse all just went for the SNP, you know?
And it was very attractive.
We were getting free university education, which is cool.
Nobody could not like that.
We were getting free prescriptions and a lot of things that looked kind of like what left-wing people would be into.
But then I sort of began to see it a wee bit more close up and I was like, there's no plan here.
And it was only as I got a wee bit closer to it.
I did a part of political broadcast for them and everything as well, so I got to know them quite well.
And I realised that I think we were heading for the Euro.
Really? That's where my foot hit the brake.
Because I was saying, listen, what's the currency plan?
Because obviously once we're in a separate country, what's our currency plan going to be?
And everybody was like, it'll be fine, it'll be fine.
And I started to just get a really bad feeling.
I was like, I think there's something else going on here.
And I feel as if we were just heading straight.
Coming away from one master, which was London, And going for an even worse one, which was Brussels.
And just as a Eurosceptic, that terrified me.
I just had ejected and got the hell out of it.
That's one thing I always found strange with the Scottish independence vote was that they want independence, but they want to stay in the EU, which isn't independence worth having, is it?
Well, there's something very interesting going on there.
It's funny you say that, because back in the 70s and 80s, these guys were all Eurosceptics.
You know, the gym sellers and all these people, they used to be We don't want London, you know, we're suspicious of Europe, because that was seen as a capitalist voice club and everything, you know?
But, I don't know, something happened, and there's fishy stuff going on, you know, with the EU and everything, and they infiltrated the Labour Party, they obviously got the Tories.
They run the Lib Dems, you know, and they got the SNP. I don't know how they did it, but they got them.
I remember you saying to us before, over that lunch actually, where you said that you were there when the independence vote was announced.
I honestly thought, having been in Scotland for most of the summer before the vote, I honestly thought it was going to be a yes vote and they'd leave.
I was shocked when it came back as a no vote.
You said you were there and Alex Salmond was there, obviously was the head of the SNP at the time.
Who didn't seem to care or didn't seem interested in the result in any way?
No, that wasn't me that was it.
It was one of my friends. Oh, right.
Yeah. I saw him next day, though.
I saw everybody next day.
And it was a big rally next day.
But I'd sort of checked out a little bit by that point.
I think by about 2012, I was starting to get a little bit suspicious of it all and just feeling this isn't for me.
And I sort of got out of that.
But yeah, I don't know.
It was a funny time. Like, See, being the dad of, you know, half-English kids in a place where there was a lot of anti-English rhetoric going on, it made me really uncomfortable, you know, it really was odd.
And we see all these weird binary things going on all over the world just now, you know, I mean, it is odd.
It's like, somebody said to me, you're back, you know, you know the Catholic-Protestant thing's really big in Scotland, or it used to be certainly in Scotland.
And there was a lot of Catholic immigrants, like my grandfather, you know, came in over from Northern Ireland, and they were a cheap force of labour.
Do you know what a Navi is?
Like a guy who digs the roads? Yeah, yeah.
Like my granddad did all that kind of stuff, and they were sort of despised by the Scottish locals, and there was all this resentment stirred up.
And somebody I know was speaking to one of the bosses at the company and he said, you know, I think it's awful that half your workforce hates the other half of the workforce.
And he said, as long as they hate each other, they don't realize that I'm screwing all of them, you know?
And I think that's kind of the way it works, isn't it?
You know, I think the genius is to find some emotive issue that splits people in half and make it a really simple binary decision like this, you know?
So whether it's yes or no or in or out, you know, leave or remain and everything, you know, Trump or Hillary, you know, People almost don't talk about issues.
They just argue about... It's almost like football, isn't it?
They just argue about a different colour, you know?
Divide and rule is unbelievable.
I mean, I've spent quite a lot of time in the last couple of years in America where literally everything is about politics.
Last time I was there in the summer...
Actually, sorry, I was there more recently, but for a length of time in the summer, it was just as Judge Kavanaugh had been nominated.
And all over the media...
For a start, why is a judge...
Got a political allegiance. That's surely where you should have the most impartial person.
That's all completely. Otherwise, you're going to have an agenda.
Whereas a judge, you should have the opposite of an agenda.
You should have the facts. That's true.
Judges could never say where they were.
No, I mean, it's just mental.
The divide and rule is so easy, as you say.
If you're arguing with each other, you're not looking at who's really calling the shots and who's really screwing everyone.
No. And people also, particularly in America, but also in England, they have a political opinion.
So I'm a Tory. Are you?
No, obviously not.
But in this story, I'm not.
In this story, I'm a Tory.
So because I'm a Tory, the Tories can do something that actually deep down I probably don't agree with, but I have to back it because I'm a Tory.
And it's the same, you know, Hillary could say, you know, shoot all the kids dead and everyone would go, yeah, but yeah, I'm with her because I hate Trump.
And it's almost like just have an opinion.
If Trump says something good, agree with it.
If he says something bad, disagree with it.
Same with Hillary, same with everyone else.
But like you say, this binary thinking of one way or another and almost like a tribal, I'm a Tory, therefore everything is right.
Everything's black and white. Yeah.
Obviously the whole world is a shade of grey anyway.
And also, I think most people believe in the same things.
I mean, that's the honest truth.
It's really easy to make it look like America's divided and the UK's divided.
But really, in reality, most people just want their kids to go to a decent school, to have a decent house, you know, and to be safe in the streets, you know.
You put 100 people in a room and they'll pretty much agree on almost everything except a couple of fringe nutters and some fringe issues, you know.
But most people just want the same thing out of life.
And, you know, regardless, the same rich guys are there under Trump.
People are still rich who were rich under Obama, who were rich under Bush, who were rich under Clinton before that.
It's like nothing really changes regardless of who's in charge anyway.
But it's that theatre, the illusion of change, isn't it, with a new wave of presidents coming in?
So people are arguing, like I say, it's no different from Celtic or Rangers.
They're just arguing whether their team's...
I think that's why there was such a high turnout for the Brexit vote, wasn't there?
Because you didn't have to vote for a political party.
It was a yes-no vote.
It was, I want to leave or I want to stay.
It doesn't matter what your political allegiance is.
That's how I feel.
I mean, isn't it the highest turnout in UK history?
Well, yeah, and a massive amount of the out was the Labour vote up in the North East, which Labour have basically ever since refused to acknowledge.
Up in the North East, the manufacturing industries in Newcastle and Middlesbrough, Sunderland, places like that, they were massively out.
And they're Labour areas, they're not Tory areas.
No, Derby voted out, Bolsover voted out, which is Dennis Skinner's constituency, and he gets all kinds of grief for backing leave, even though I think it was about 74% of his He was the highest one.
He was the highest constituency. Of course he's going to back Leave.
It's what his people, who he's supposed to represent, wanted.
But I was going to ask you about Brexit because obviously Scotland, I mean you might tell me different to be honest mate, but here it's almost accepted that Scotland voted to remain and that's just that.
I'm assuming that's probably not the case.
There's probably some Leave voters there as well obviously.
I think it was about 69% voted to remain and obviously 31% voted to leave.
And I was in the minority.
I was a leaver.
And it's kind of annoying because the way the narrative's been framed if you're a leaver is that it's a right-wing thing.
But a lot of us were left-wing.
Like you say, there's people in the north of England.
No reason for leaving was entirely left-wing.
We didn't like the idea of a federal Europe, which is obviously where this is going.
We didn't Make no mistake, if that vote had gone the other way, it would be in the Euro probably within five or ten years.
Yeah, absolutely. We've been in the European army, they're talking about.
Turkey are going to come in, Macedonia are going to come in, the bloc's going to get bigger and bigger and bigger.
It's never-ending. It's the European super-state it's always meant to be.
How has it been for you in Scotland as being in the minority of wanting to leave?
Have you got any grief for it or not?
No. I'll be honest, actually, in Scotland it's not talked about much.
It's less of an issue than independence was.
I think all the anger came out in the 2014 referendum in Scotland.
Everybody was going nuts over that.
People had posters on their windows and windows were getting egged and all this kind of thing.
It was crazy. But I think everybody was spent by 2016 and they just quietly voted in the whole Brexit referendum.
I was quite open about it, but I think Almost out of everyone I know, I was about the only leaver in my circle, you know?
Because most of the sort of leftists We're post-1988 leftists, as I call them.
You know, people who'd seen Jack Bloor give that talk at the TUC conference in 1988 and give this beautiful left-wing alternative to Thatcherism that seduced all of the Labour Party and so on after that, which was a shame because Euroscepticism, like I say, in the 70s was the preserve of the left.
You know, it was guys like Tony Benn and Peter Shore and everybody up against people like Teddy.
Well, it's people like Jeremy Corbyn who are Eurosceptics and now he's towed the party line.
It's pathetic. Well, I don't know how He's playing a shrewd game, I think.
He knows that basically there'll be an earthquake in his parliamentary party, and pretty much actually his national party, if he says what he really thinks.
So I think he's just playing this really quiet.
If it was any other Labour leader right now, it'd be different, but I think he, in his heart of hearts, wants Brexit to happen.
Yeah, I think he does too, because he was in, but he was very, very quiet during the referendum, wasn't he?
All the talks and...
Anybody else that had swung it?
I mean, there was a very small number of margin of error, just 2%.
And if that had been a Tony Blair or a Chaka Amuna or something, you know enough people would have got behind it.
So Corbin was the right man in the right place at the right time.
It was brilliant. Do you, because you were a vocal supporter of Corbyn when he first came in, do you still go with that feeling or are you a bit disappointed with certain bits of what he's done or do you think, like you say, he's playing the game pretty well?
He's playing pretty well.
There's a real tortoise and the hare thing with him.
I quite like, you know, he and Tony Blair out of Parliament in 1983, same day, and Blair's gone, disgraced, you know, shattered looking, he looks haunted when you see him, he looks like he's on the run, you know, he could end up in The Hague at any moment, you know, and Corbyn's now just easing into his prime, I think, and he's just getting the keys for number 10, hopefully, you know, so I don't know, I get it.
I feel alright about it.
I'm not disappointed yet. I mean, it may happen later, but I'm just going to see what comes next here.
It's a very exciting year.
Anything can happen, and I'm optimistic.
Well, Scotland's massively important in that, because every Labour government they've formed, they've had massive constituencies and votes in Scotland, and ever since 2014, and they didn't back the outvote, they've died in Scotland, really, haven't they, Labour?
Yeah, it's funny, though, because, again, people only remember their own lifetime, but, you know, Scotland used to be a Tory country.
Up until the 60s, up until 1964 and everything, there was a Tory majority in Scotland, which people can forget, you know?
But Scotland actually used to be quite a conservative country.
And even in 1979, I think Thatcher got pretty much as many votes as Jim Callahan in the election in Scotland, which is hard to believe, Thatcher.
And then in 1983, the same again.
And it was actually 87 before the divergence happened because the massive de-industrialisation of Scotland...
We're, you know, Ravenstrike and all these places all get hit that really mid-80s is when the Thatcher hate really began in Scotland.
Probably Geoffrey Howe's budget in 81, you know, so up to about 85 and then the Tories were never coming back from that.
Probably about the same time as the Midlands in the north of England, pretty much, I guess.
Because they destroyed the industry where we live.
Well, yeah, we're in Derby now, and this area, Birmingham, Sheffield, Manchester, cars, steel, all the manufacturing of this country was done here, and they've all been shipped off overseas.
Yeah, coal as well, huge.
When I was 11, in 1981, there was 20 houses in my street in a housing estate.
And out of that, I'd say more than half of them, probably about three quarters, it was people working.
And eventually, by about the mid-80s, it was my dad and one other guy in the street.
And then my dad lost his job when he was 62 or something.
And then it was just this one guy.
So imagine that in a street of 20 guys, there's just one guy working.
That's the very human, small-scale version of what happened across the whole country.
Jesus. It's the same in this area, isn't it?
The amount of sort of deprived houses and empty places, empty warehouses you see just driving to work.
I drive past about three. Yeah, but then when the places tend to get a little bit more gentrified, like they're trying to make Derby a little bit better, certainly the centre of the city, it's wine bars and restaurants and fancy shops, and I always look at them and I think, who's paying for this?
Yeah, who's paying for those? Who can afford to drink in there?
Yeah, yeah, exactly, yeah.
It's not anything for the masses, is it?
No, not at all. Industry's kind of on its backside in the UK anyway, isn't it?
It is. Shall we bring it back to something a little bit more light?
Yes, go on then. It got a bit down then, didn't it?
Shall we talk about Spider-Man? Yeah.
I was reading earlier, which is probably the biggest, what's the word, recommendation you can be given in the comic book industry, is the CEO of Netflix compared you to the closest thing there will ever be to another Stan Lee.
Yeah, it's nice. That's one hell of a compliment there, isn't it?
Oh, it's crazy. It's not something...
To put in perspective what Stan did, it really is amazing.
J.K. Rowling's created a couple of things.
Ian Fleming has created a couple of things.
He did Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, Man From Uncle Land, James Bond, he did three things.
Most people, if you're really lucky, you come up with one or two things.
That's amazing if you've done one or two global phenomenon like that.
Stan's created 30 or something.
It's just nuts.
He's done Spider-Man, Hulk, all these things, all these characters.
I don't think you can ever have another Stan.
Stan's Neil Armstrong. He's the first guy, isn't it?
I'm assuming you've met him over the years.
Yeah, well, funnily enough, I met him I think when I was about 19 or something like that.
I queued up, you know, like everybody else.
To me, it was living with God touching down in Scotland.
It was because he'd been my hero my whole life and actually getting to meet him was amazing.
But he and I became quite pally in more recent years.
Because I'm in Scotland and he was in LA with an email friendship and everything.
And he was always good.
Like I say, he changed my life when I was a kid because I read this stuff and that's what I wanted to do.
But then he changed my life as an adult because he literally said to me, you should leave Marvel and And go and start up your own company.
And I say he changed my life twice.
But he's a great guy and nobody really has a bad word to say about me.
He's just a warm, funny, nice guy.
And super, super talented.
It's funny, he wrote an introduction for one of my stories.
A Spiderman book that I did a few years back.
And I was so excited when I read his introduction that I went off and read the books again myself, the books I'd written, because he got me so hyped up with one page that he'd written about, seeing how good the story was.
I was like, this must be really good, then I went off and read it again.
So there was a weird magic in Stan's works, you know, that you, there's nobody like him.
Have you ever had a cameo?
Because he always has a cameo in his films, doesn't he?
He was in Big Bang Theory as well.
But I mean, in all the Marvel films...
Yeah, he do have a little cameo, don't he?
Yeah, he always appears because my wife's obsessed with him.
Well, she's obsessed with Thor. She won't admit it, but she is.
And I'm fine with that because I can't remember him a bit.
He's better with his haircut. But have you ever had a cameo or will you have a cameo, do you think?
Do you know, I don't think I should do it just now.
I think I should do it in about 30 years.
I think I'm too young just now.
Like, I think it's a... Stan gets away with it because he's Stan and he's an older guy and everything.
But I think there's something a bit, if you're younger, it's a bit too showy.
You know what I mean? Here I am in one of my films.
I just don't want to be a bit showy.
So I think maybe when I'm old and I'm retired or something, it's time to do it.
But while I'm in the middle of it and working on all these things, I think just step back and let it work.
You're not going to be the new recruit in Kingsman?
But what it is, I don't want to shower and get into shape and all that sort of stuff, you know?
I want to be the mess I am, you know?
And I can stay behind the camera.
I could see that later on.
If you just sat in the background in a bar with a whiskey, just chilling, and then the real fans would be like, oh, hang on, there he is, there he is!
What they always have is they've always got my name in one of those things.
You always see my name on a wall or something like that.
So that's like my version of a cameo.
It's very subtle in the background, you know?
I'm going to watch Kingsman in a minute and try and find it.
In Kingsman, then, where is it?
I can't even remember. It's up on the bedroom wall in Kick-Ass Wanted.
It's on an office door and all that.
So there's little things like that.
I saw Eggsy once walking through Heathrow Terminal 3.
I saw the character that plays Eggsy, the guy, the actor.
I saw him in Heathrow Terminal 3 and he actually was dressed as Eggsy is when he's a chav at the start.
He was obviously just off on holiday somewhere.
Do you know, weirdly, I got on a plane about a year ago and he was sitting beside me.
I mean, what was the chances of this?
Just randomly, he happened to be sitting beside me on the way back from New York to London.
And he's a really sweet guy, actually.
He's really, really nice. He's totally unaffected by the whole fame thing.
You know, he's still a sweet kid.
Yeah, no, I watched a chat show with him when he was on there with Colin Firth just before the release of the first one, I think it was.
And he was talking about the fact his next film was playing Eddie the Eagle.
And he's like, it's done nothing for my ego about being a heartthrob, has it?
Being asked to play Eddie the Eagle.
It was actually a really good film.
It was. I was in tears. I really enjoyed it.
When he walks out at the end and I carry him aloft, gone.
But I remember Eddie the Eagle from when I was a kid.
Yeah. I'm showing my age there, but I remember him in real life, yeah.
When you see Rocketman, I was on the set of that a few months ago, and that's his Elton John biopic that he's done.
He's playing Elton John, and you think he looks nothing like Elton John, but he transforms into Elton John.
It looks great. I mean, I watched quite a wee bit of it when I was down there, and it looked brilliant.
I think it's going to do well to him. Saying that, though, Elton John does look like Eddie the Eagle in a ginger wig, though, doesn't he?
To be fair. Jesus.
He's probably got the gig based on that.
That's amazing. He does all his own singing as well.
You know he's an even better singer than he is an actor.
He's a brilliant singer. Really?
And footballer. He's one of those guys that could have done anything.
The guys that we don't like. Yeah, the guys that hated at school.
We should beat him up. He's probably a brilliant fighter.
We can't even beat him up. Oh yeah, definitely.
He'd just tick every box, didn't he?
Right, so we better not take up too much more time.
No, I was thinking that. I was thinking we've been chewing your ear for a while now.
I was thinking we'll go with what can audiences expect from yourself and Netflix in 2019?
Well, they'll see nothing.
2019, nothing. It's just going to be like other programmes.
But 2020, all the shows we're making now take that long.
Believe it or not, it takes like two years to make a film.
So stuff that we've been working on won't be out until maybe spring, summer 2020.
But there's five coming out really quickly, all side by side.
There's going to be Jupiter's Legacy, which is going to be the best superhero thing ever.
I mean, it really is good.
It's great. Six seasons, big, epic superhero drama, starting in the 1920s with the Wall Street Crash.
Running all the way to the end of the universe.
So the story covers everything.
It's like Game of Thrones for superheroes.
It's mental. Absolutely mental.
There's that. Then American Jesus, which is my Spanish language program, which is about the return Jesus in the modern world, based on a book I did about 15 years ago.
A sci-fi comedy thing called Sharky the Bounty Hunter.
I think so. I'm just laughing because of the name.
All I'm thinking is Doug, the bounty hunter.
Do you remember that show? Jesus.
And I think Old Empress, which is like Kramer versus Kramer in space.
And then I think Old Huck, about a guy with learning difficulties who's got superpowers.
So like five things are all happening at once.
It's really exciting. They're all completely different.
They all sound completely different there as well.
I'm glad we got in early with this because we won't get an interview.
No, we won't. No, no chance.
My publicist will be here in a minute to stop this one.
Yeah, yeah. Well, just before we finish up, we've got a list, three questions we ask every guest.
Yeah. So, do you want to go first?
Yeah, okay. So, because we were talking about politics, say you decided you were going to go and take Nicola Sturgeon's job for whatever reason.
And so, you win the vote, you're First Minister of Scotland, and you're walking out onto the stage and all the crowd are there cheering.
What song do you walk out to?
Oh, God. That's a good one.
See, I only like, like, three bands.
What bands? It's like, I only like Queen, ELO, and the Bee Gees.
So it has to be one of them. The good thing about now being a 40-something dad is that that's the only music I ever liked, you know?
So now I can get away with it.
It's brilliant. I love it. And Queen is cool again.
Yeah. Bohemian Rhapsody's helped with that.
Yeah. I know, I know.
I'm loving it. So, I don't know.
Don't Stop Me Now, maybe Queen.
I was just thinking, I'll go with that.
Good tune. Yeah. I love that one.
Right. If an alien race land on Earth and you're the first person they see and they said, take me to your leader, who would you take them to?
I'd say probably my four-year-olds.
She completely dominates my life in every way.
Our happiness as a family is based entirely on her mood.
So if she's stroppy and tired, her day's ruined.
She doesn't get asleep.
My day's completely gone.
And it's funny because she's about this size and she completely rules the house.
And even the other kids are scared of her.
Can you remember what the last question is?
No, you would tell it. I've not got it written down.
Okay, if you could have a meal with anyone, living or dead, who would it be?
Well, people always say the obvious ones.
They obviously are Jesus and Gandhi and all that, but I didn't think I'd have much to say to those guys.
I mean, Jesus, I wouldn't understand.
He's talking in Aramaic, so that's going to be real.
And then the most annoying, and Gandhi, I think he'd just be a wee bit, I don't know, he'd just try to be smart all the time, you know, so I'd rather somebody could have a bit of a laugh with, you know, so like, and people always say their family and their friends, that's the new answer to that question, isn't it, which is editing.
Yeah, it's a lie. Trying to show how humble they are, I'd like to hang out with my family.
I see enough of my family, that's fine, you know, so I think I would, I think I'd go for somebody that was a bit of a laugh that I'd quite enjoy, like, I think, you know, like Larry David or somebody like that, I think I'd quite enjoy just a wee hour with Larry David.
That'd be quite cool. Yeah, I can imagine he'd be a crack.
Yeah. I haven't really thought about it.
I'd probably go George Carlin, I reckon.
Yeah, see, I was thinking like Oliver Reed in terms of the crack, but I think after sort of the 14th bottle of wine, he'd probably want to smash me up.
He used to get dead aggressive after a while.
Lovely guy, won too many sips.
The agent has a great Oliver Reed story.
He was at a dinner with him one time in France, right?
And he said that he was in this quite posh French restaurant and nobody was paying him any attention.
He couldn't get a waiter to come and bring over a menu.
And it was driving him nuts and he was getting angrier and angrier.
And he was obviously drunk. He'd drunk about 20 pints before he even went in.
He was furious. And apparently he picked up a chair and smashed it through the window of the restaurant.
He took down the windows and threw the chair into the street.
And about 20 waiters all appeared from nowhere then gathered round.
And he sat down and took a menu off another table and he said, I'm going to start with a fish.
I'd love to have the money and the fame to be able to pull something like that off.
Oh, that's just class.
Amazing. He'd be good in the night out, actually.
Oh, man, yeah, absolutely.
He'd wake up in jail, but gladly.
Well, Peter O'Toole's got a great story about, I think it was Richard Harris or somebody, he said, we went out on Friday night and we woke up a week We've lost you.
I want to hear that story now.
He's not totally gone, is he?
Well, he's frozen on my screen currently.
Oh dear. Maybe it's a story that Richard Harris doesn't want people to know and he's in heaven at the moment making sure that nobody is it.
Yeah, potentially. That would work.
So we're going to hear the return of the Skype call.
Is that okay?
Yeah, you're back on. We didn't get the end of the story though.
I'm interested to know what happened.
Look, Peter O'Toole said he went on a night out on a Friday night and he woke up the following Friday in Cyprus.
No memory of what happened.
And it must have been great being an actor back then.
None of these guys moisturised.
Nobody had gym memberships.
They had no personal trainers.
They were just living the life of them.
That is mad, isn't it? Yeah, I love that idea, though, of just being that battered.
In fact, I know a friend of mine who's actually Scottish, a musician that I went on tour with several times.
I won't say his name, but he was engaged to be married years and years ago and basically turned up back at the town he was from, from Troon, turned up back at Troon about six months later.
And he'd basically gone out on the lash, met up with some musicians, went touring Germany, Italy, France, all this, during the 80s, and didn't turn up for the wedding.
Came back and was confused as to why she was a bit cheesed off with him.
Are they married now? Oh God, well, he's married to someone else now.
Well, he would be, wouldn't he?
Yeah, I don't think she had any desire to talk to him.
But I do love that story. Yeah.
I've got my stag being organised by the man the other side of the table, which I'm quite nervous about.
Yeah, something similar could happen.
Is that a secret? What you're doing, is it going to be a secret?
No, I know what I'm doing, but...
He knows where he's going, but he doesn't know what he's doing.
Yeah, that's a pretty accurate way to describe it.
Yeah. Oh well.
Well, Mark, it's been a pleasure to talk to you.
Thank you very much for coming on the podcast.
Thanks for having me. Yeah, it's been lovely.
Basically, everything I researched about you was wrong.
That makes it more interesting. Absolutely, yeah.
You put me straight and I've left the podcast far more knowledgeable than I entered it, so that's great.
Thanks a lot, guys. Thanks a lot.
Take care of yourself. Take care.
Bye, mate. Speak soon. See you later.
Bye. So for that last bit, all I could see was myself.
For the last two minutes since he logged back on.
That's alright though, innit? Audience can check out this ridiculous beard I'm trying to grow.
He's an interesting guy, isn't he? Yeah, he's really interesting.
I really enjoyed that. How's the research?
Are we not going to research next week?
Or are we just going to do the opposite of the research?
Well, research, I just won't trust Wikipedia.
Yeah, well, I think we all know Wikipedia.
Which we should know anyway, really.
But, you know, there you go. I enjoyed it, though.
Yeah, it was good fun. He's a really nice guy.
Someone who's achieved all that to be so humble and just generally...
Obviously, we've both met him face-to-face.
He's just a regular bloke. Well, the first time I met him was in London and he paid for lunch for me...
My wife, my...
About ten of us. Four of my band members, and he'd never met any of us.
It was extraordinary. No, and I remember us trying to say, no, no, I'll get that.
And him being, no, no, you gave me a free ticket to a show.
I was like, yeah, that's worth about 40 quid, and you've just paid for what?
40 quid ahead. Yeah, because the lads were quaffing the beer and all.
Because we were quaffing the beer because we didn't realise he was paying for it.
We thought we'd just pay for our own, and then he just went and paid the bill, didn't he?
Lovely bloke. So that was quite a different podcast to the first week.
A little bit of politics, but a little bit light.
Yeah, I made it a bit dark for a bit, but you brought it back from the depths.
That's the idea. So that's the idea of the podcast, really.
Get people from different areas, from the arts, from business, from sport, and all that.
And the next couple we've got coming up are...
In those industries. We've got Simon Dowling.
I know nothing about him.
You're into business more than I am, so you know quite a bit about him.
I don't, so I'm quite interested.
He's a very interesting guy. Not a massively dissimilar story to Mark in the sense of he started something very young, started a business very young doing an accountancy, built that into something he sold for 65, 70 odd million pounds.
Wow. And he's just a multiple business owner and he wrote a book about it.
How to make millions without a degree and the tagline I love and how to get by even if you've got one which I've read and it's fascinating.
It just goes through the stories of people that are entrepreneurs that have made massive lives and careers for themselves that didn't necessarily go to university and it kind of breaks down the narrative that you have to go to uni to make a success in your life.
So that'll be interesting. We're going to be with him in a couple of weeks.
Yeah, I'm looking forward to being educated on that because obviously you've read his book and I know nothing about him so I'm kind of coming in fresh like our listeners which I think is Yeah, he's another guy similar to Mark.
Apart from the fact we're travelling down to Claridge's to record the interview.
Most people all know that's a ridiculous hotel.
He's just a regular guy. He's sat there and chatted to you.
I have no idea that he is worth the kind of money he is and has achieved all the kind of stuff he has.
He's just a lovely, humble guy.
We've also got James Skelly of...
The musical notoriety of the coral, which I'm a bit gutted because I'm on holiday with my wife.
I'm taking her away and we're staying in a log cabin by a river with a little one, which would be lovely.
So I'm missing that one.
So everyone knows your house is empty for a week then?
I've got big lads staying there.
Yeah, so I'm going to miss it, but I'm going to put in some questions because I'm interested because the choral came out the same time as the bees, the bees from the Isle of Wight, so I know them.
Similar kind of sounds, so I'd be interested to talk to them about that kind of explosion of that sort of English indie sound.
Yeah, that's going to be another good one. You'll have to ask those questions for me.
That's going to be another good one. It's weird because I'm interviewing a musician when I'm not a musician.
You are and you're not there.
It's kind of wrong. No, I'll be sat in a hot tub drinking champagne.
I'd rather be where you are. Prosecco.
Six quid a bottle. I'd rather be where you are.
But it's good. We've got two field trips, our next two episodes.
Claridge is for the next one and then I'm travelling up to Pass Street Studios in Liverpool to record with James before he goes on tour.
Awesome. Exciting couple of weeks and we've got a couple more guests in the pipeline.
A couple of very exciting guests.
Ones which hopefully we'll be able to announce sooner rather than later.
All very diverse as well, isn't there?
I'm not going to give anything away, but every little aspect that you could think.
Yeah. And also, if you'd like to tweet us and let us know some ideas for guests, that would be fab.
Because we're up for interviewing anyone, aren't we?
We are, absolutely. I just want to learn stuff, so I don't have to go to Wikipedia and get it wrong.
Ideally. No, that's the idea of the podcast.
Giving a platform to everything and anything.
Absolutely. Right.
Cool. Well, it's been a pleasure.
Yeah. As always, we'll see you next week.
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