Why Do I Say These Things?

by Jonathan Ross

Bad reviews are pretty horrible, regardless of whether they are accurate or not. A friend of mine once told me something that someone else had said: that when he receives a bad review it feels a little bit like someone has put a large wet blanket over his head – it’s like you are carrying something thick and damp around and although you know it will dry out eventually it seems to take for ever. To be honest, I’ve been pretty lucky with the press. I tend to get good reviews or no reviews, which is in some ways pretty much the same thing, and most recently people tend to review my wages rather than my shows. But I’ve come to the conclusion over the years that if I’m doing a show and enough people are watching it then it’s a good show, regardless of reviews. If I’m doing a show and people aren’t watching it, then it’s probably not such a good show, again regardless of the reviews. However, there are exceptions.

  Probably one of my all-time favourite programmes was a profile I helped to make of an obscure Finnish film director called Aki Kaurismäki, which when it went out on a Friday-night slot on Channel 4 was universally ignored by the critics and only reached an audience of around 200,000 people. Obviously a profile of a heavy-drinking Finnish art-film director is never going to take on Coronation Street as an audience pleaser. But we weren’t helped by the fact that Channel 4 broadcast it the same night that the very first Comic Relief went out, which was a very big deal, if you can remember that far back. And even if you can’t, I’m sure you can guess that it was quite an exciting event in British television history. I co-hosted that evening with Lenny Henry and Griff Rhys Jones, and it was terrific fun, and of course helped pave the way for the many years of Comic Relief and the huge amount of money it has raised ever since.

  I’ve met just about every famous person I’d care to meet. There are only a few who have eluded me and they tend to be the sort of people who just don’t do talk shows – Jack Nicholson being the primary one. I’m a huge fan of Nicholson as a screen actor and I rather like what I sense about his personality and his free-wheeling approach to life, but I’ve never interviewed him because he doesn’t do talk shows. At the risk of putting myself out of business, that’s probably a smart decision. He’s been quoted as saying that if you appear on shows like mine, people think they know you, and when they think they know you, they try and factor in what they think they know about you when they watch you in a movie, to see how much of it is you and how much of it isn’t you. That sense of knowing someone, even when you don’t really, only tends to happen on television. You don’t get the same feeling from a radio appearance, or from reading about someone in a magazine interview. You only get it when you see them and hear them on the small screen.

  More often than not, when I get to meet famous people I’ve admired, they don’t let me down. I’ll be mentioning my affection for Tom Cruise later, who is always remarkably forthcoming in interviews and just terrific fun to be around. Will Smith is equally great value. Jim Carrey is a dream to have on the show because he treats each appearance as a job to be done – he has to come on and entertain and earn his position on the show – and he’s fabulous. Harrison Ford – I’ve heard people say that they find him a bit cold and distant and a little bit difficult to interview, but I think that’s just his manner. I find him great. He’s charismatic, a terrific actor, of course, and I enjoy his company – not that I know him socially, but I’ve enjoyed the times I’ve spent interviewing him.

  I’ve always loved having Johnny Vegas on the show. Ricky Gervais, who I count as a friend, is a tremendously funny interviewee and I love having him on the programme because he has no respect for me whatsoever. Maybe in real life he has a little, but certainly when we’re out there doing the show he acts as if he thinks I’m a gibbering idiot. Russell Brand is another person I love having on because the to-ing and fro-ing that goes on between us is great. David Baddiel is another friend of mine and that also works on screen – which is unusual because it doesn’t always. In the past I’ve sometimes had friends on and I’ve found it a bit tricky because I’m always so aware that I don’t want it to seem like some sort of chummy showbiz club, which is a difficult thing to avoid, especially if you get on well. And then there have been one or two people I’ve met who have been difficult.

  A couple of times it’s because they’ve been drinking heavily – that’s always a problem – and once or twice they’ve been on drugs – I’ve had people on the show who are clearly off their tits on substances and that’s never easy because I always feel I’m talking to the drug rather than the person. And you have to factor in that even celebs and popular stars with a comedy bent sometimes have a bad day, as we all do.

  I like to think that I’m fairly approachable when I’m out and about, but if someone comes up to me for an autograph when I’m in the middle of a row with the wife or if I’ve just been telling one of the children off about something, obviously I’m going to try and smile and be nice to them but it’s going to come a little less readily. Ditto with the guests on the show – sometimes they’ve just had a really bad day.

  There’s one very popular female actor in this country who is more of a comedienne, very well known, she’s been in any number of shows from the sixties onwards. She’s a lovely woman and a great storyteller and I’d been a huge fan of hers for years. I finally got her to come on one of my programmes. She’d always been the sort of guest to have appeared on Parky or Wogan, not the new kid on the block, which I suppose is what I was seen as – a bit of an upstart. At the time she was more famous for a series of television commercials than anything more substantial, but I was really keen to meet her. She came on the show and it was dreadful, just horrible. She was unhelpful, she was truculent, she was difficult. I got the feeling that she didn’t like me and didn’t want to be there. It turned out that her eldest daughter had received her examination results that day and had done far less well than she’d expected, which explained her foul mood. At least that was the explanation she gave me afterwards. People are people, no matter how famous they get.

  I spent some time backstage once before appearing at a Royal Variety performance in London. I was due to introduce some youngsters who’d done quite well on a talent show I’d been hosting for ITV called The Big Big Talent Show . I was delighted to be on the Royal Variety. I’d never been on one before and it was, weirdly, quite a thrill. Since then I’ve been on it a couple of times but it’s still a thrill. I’ve still got the keyring that was given to me to commemorate that first appearance – the date has faded a bit but I think it was 1997.

  Anyway, it was at a strange theatre over near Victoria where Starlight Express ran for about seventy-five years, and I shared a very, very small dressing room backstage with – get ready for some world-class name-dropping – Joe Pasquale … Michael Ball … and Jim Davidson. The four of us squeezed into a room the size of a large coffin. None of whom I knew, none of whom I was, at that time, a particularly huge fan of, but all of whom I found to be very pleasant company. You might think that I wouldn’t necessarily get on with Jim Davidson because he comes from a different comedy and political perspective from me, but he was very charming and I liked hanging out with him.

  He turned up last and was in a foul mood when he arrived, and we were all a bit worried and a little bit intimidated, especially as we were sharing such a tiny room – and none of us are small fellas. Michael Ball leaning out of the window smoking, Joe Pasquale changing his shirt and wondering whether he could get his trousers ironed, me sitting there trying to read a book, and Jim Davidson saying what an awful, awful day he’d had and how his wife was a terrible pain in the arse. About an hour later a bunch of flowers turned up for him from her, so presumably he was in the right that time. We ended up going for a walk around the block and chatting to each other, and I was amazed at how decent he seemed, if a little messed up. But Jim Davidson went on stage that night and killed, he was terrific, as was Michael Ball. Joe Pasquale didn’t do as well, and I died on my arse, completely and utterly and painfully. But when I came off they a
ll smiled at me and said, ‘Well, you’ve done it again.’

  Able to leap tall churches with a single bound

  Famous people are naturally cleverer and better informed than non-famous people. This must be true, or why would we get asked to talk on TV and the radio on every subject from marriage to gardening to travel to drugs? Why would we offer up our opinions on modern parenting, eating disorders and how best to dress your dog if we didn’t have something vitally important to pass on?

  I myself have been asked to talk on subjects as diverse as gardening and the Boy Scout movement, despite the fact that I’ve never been a Scout. That wasn’t a deal breaker, either – quite the opposite, in fact. They felt I could offer a fresh, new, non-Scouting perspective. In the last twelve months I have been approached to sit on panels focusing on British sausages, how best to maximize the positive impact of the 2012 Olympics, and wind farming as a viable energy source for the next hundred years, none of which I know any more or less about than the average ill-informed schmo.

  My services have also been requested to help judge modern literature, horses, cars and young fashion designers. Clearly I have no real expertise in any of these areas, and with the exception of the sausages, very little genuine interest either. Being aware that at best I could only offer my opinion, somehow elevated in importance because I gently tease celebrities on a Friday night, has given me the wisdom to say no, and to avoid sticking my oar in where it doesn’t really concern me. But that’s not to say that I don’t enjoy holding ill-informed opinions on matters of great importance.

  Religion, for example, is a subject which every sensible bone in my body tells me to avoid. The best-case scenario is that you mildly upset whoever you’re talking to. The worst-case scenario is that someone puts a bomb in your car or chases you down the street with a knife or asks fellow devotees around the world to try and hunt you down and remove you from the planet.

  As a matter of fact, I have actually been chased down a road by a knife-wielding person who I’m pretty sure meant me no good whatsoever, and although it makes for a memorable anecdote, I wouldn’t recommend the experience. Although we didn’t stop to chat, I’m pretty sure he was of a different faith, although the knife-wielding and chasing had nothing to do with religion and everything to do with drugs. It was the first time I’d gone on holiday outside the UK, having bought a cheap package deal to Tangiers, which happily coincided with the Muslim month of Ramadan.

  I had spent the day trawling the bazaars with the rest of the tourists in my group, but then decided to go for a little walk on my own. I realize now that it must have looked like I wanted to get high, something young fashionable types often head off to North Africa for. That wasn’t, in fact, what I was after, as I told the young man with astonishingly bad teeth who started following me and offered a bag of hashish. Even though I did not doubt it was ‘top top quality get you high for long time English boy’, as he loudly advertised. I politely yet firmly said I wasn’t the dope-smoking type, didn’t have any money, didn’t want to get high just now and so on. Maybe it was my annoying face – and it was quite annoying back then – or maybe it was the fact that during Ramadan no one eats until the sun goes down so tempers are easily frayed, but he whipped out a huge bloody knife and chased me down the road. It was a proper scary Arab- looking knife with a curvy blade and I imagine a rather nice handle. I’m thinking ivory perhaps, with some carvings. I didn’t get too close a look, because when you are running from a knife-wielding person who you assume is hungry and you can see has started foaming around the lips, which are pulled back, the better to frame his monstrously bad teeth, you don’t hang around.

  To avoid him I took refuge in a little shop selling tourist crap – small camels made from that nondescript pale leather you see everywhere there, and models of mosques, and stuff that didn’t really look like anything. The shopkeeper was very nice at first, but when she saw the foam-flecked nut outside, waving his scimitar at me, and realized I was there to hide, not to buy anything, she shooed me out with a broom. I managed to hang around long enough for the dope-pushing loon outside to leave, but the experience didn’t overly endear either the people or that region or North Africa in general to me.

  I’m certainly not anti-religious in any way and, like most people, I like to think that I’m spiritual. What that means is I like to think I have a little depth, and am not merely interested in how many exciting features my new mobile phone will have and how long I can spend on holiday next year. Spirituality seems to be a catch-all for people who can’t be arsed to actually commit to a religion but who want to feel they’ve got some connection to the bigger picture.

  Years ago, I was interviewing a bunch of people for a job, and in order to get a clearer idea of what they were like, as well as to see if we would have to buy in any special milk or avoid making jokes about sacred animals while they were around, I asked if they were religious. Well, not one of them was, but they all said more or less the same thing – that although they were not really religious as such, they were spiritual. Which means, of course, absolutely nothing.

  A big part of me would love to be religious, if only because it’s so bloody predictable being an atheist. Recently it’s become oddly fashionable to adopt a sort of aggressive-atheist pose and knock all religions, especially Western ones. I think most people are too scared to come out against the stricter Eastern gangs. Richard Dawkins would probably happily accept the blame for much of this. If I’ve read him right – and I’ll admit I got a bit bored and gave up on him once I grasped the gist of what he was saying – his theory is that religion, which relies on a belief in the supernatural to explain who we are and why we are here, is simply incompatible with the rational, scientific conclusions we must draw from the more or less incontrovertible proof that we evolved rather than magically appeared. Which is fair enough, but I always thought the whole point of faith, the thing that made it such an attractive and wonderfully human characteristic, was that you believed in something without needing any proof. You put your trust in something bigger than yourself, outside of yourself. Sure, there’s a very good chance that a lot of people are going to turn out to be very disappointed when all’s said and done, but still it’s a rather beautiful and fragile idea, and it doesn’t need to be squashed down by scientific bullies, however well meaning.

  I’m certainly with Dawkins all the way when it comes to the spread of pseudo-science – people who have put forward various New Age ideas – at least I guess they were once New Age but are now middle-aged – about time and space and vibrations and the inner harmony of bodies and how you can change a glass of water’s molecular structure by writing the word ‘GOOD’ or ‘LOVELY’ on a piece of paper and sticking it on the outside, as some Americans seem to believe at the moment. All of this, of course, is absolute nonsense, and damaging nonsense as well, and people who believe this stuff and teach it to their kids deserve a good old Middle Eastern beating with a stick in a public square and should then be consigned straight to an Old Testament-style hell.

  There are any number of different practices that are supposedly beneficial – like reiki, for example. There are so many reiki masters out there you can’t move for them. These are people who claim to be able to help you by giving you a kind of massage without touching you, and it’s complete and utter bollocks. It’s all born out of a desire to help, I suppose, but it’s so depressing. Our friends the reiki masters may want to be seen as being special, but rather than spending a bit of time helping out at a local church fête or doing something useful, they go off and listen to some complete and utter twat teaching them to hold their hands six inches above someone’s body and move them over mystical points.

  My wife made several TV series for a cable channel, called Jane Goldman Investigates , in which she went off with a very open mind, hoping to find something of interest in the world of the supernatural and the mystical, the world of modern faith-healing, aromatherapy, holistic stuff and so on and so forth. She met a lot
of very nice, very sweet people. People who are doing what they do for the right reasons, because they want to help and they believe there’s something in it. They’re not all con-artists, although there are more than a few of those out there. But whatever the reason for their alternative beliefs, they are all bloody annoying.

  I went to see Barbra Streisand at the 02 Centre here in London, and I had my lovely eleven-year-old daughter Honey with me. In her excitement at getting a closer look at Barbra Streisand, whose legendary voice and nose I had described in exquisite detail, she tripped and grazed her knee on the steps. One nice lady there offered to fetch the first-aid box, while another, equally nice but horribly deluded, offered to perform reiki on her. Even at eleven my daughter can spot a nut, and politely declined. But honestly. Who in their right mind would try to heal a kid’s knee by waving her hands over it when a plaster and a hug do the job perfectly every time?

  We had contact with a definite flake once. She was a reflexologist by trade – a form of massage that focuses on your feet as a way of dealing with all other internal ills. I’m happy to concede that there could be something in that, seeing as the body is connected on the inside, via tubes which I believe are called veins. That’s about all I remember from Biology at school. That and some absolutely terrifying pictures they showed us during the sex-education part of the course. Older boys had whispered of this particular lesson, buried away in our Religious Education period for some reason, during which you would be shown photographs of an actual, real man and woman, in the actual, real nude, actually and really going at it. There are no words to describe how eagerly we all looked forward to this particular lesson, nor words of sufficient power to describe the revulsion and disappointment we felt when the pics we had so feverishly built up in our imagination were shown, and turned out to be of a middle-aged nude man and woman with their faces completely smoothed out. Featureless, smooth-faced monsters with sagging, aged bodies. It was like looking at screenshots from an especially disturbing episode of Doctor Who .