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ON THE ROPES (9)
But you spend most of your time now writing words for other
performers to speak.
Not really. I write TFI Friday, I'll write for Angus Deaton
when he does "Before They Were Famous" and I hate
to say it and again, it's the thing, only of the moneys there
will I write for anyone else.
But do you not watch those Performers / Presenters, whatever
you want to call them, speaking your words…
No…..
And say to yourself that ought to have been me?
No, that's an old sore, that's an old sore John. I couldn't
do what Angus and Chris does. No, how many times to you have
to have series cancelled to realise no I don't do that, I'm
better at doing this. But the idea is that you're so good
at doing it that you'll get a fee that you know….I get
paid more for writing TFI Friday and I did for any of the
shows there.
But if it was only about money. You seem to be suggesting,
at least in part during this interview, that it's just about
money and earning……..
Anyone's career is……
Yeah, but in that case if you'd continued to be a successful
presenter, you could now be earning quite literally millions.
No, but I didn't. I didn't continue to be a successful presenter;
but either that burns you up and you try, try, try again,
or you think "Wotto!" I'll be a writer and do whatever
I do. It's cause and effect.
and no regrets about that?
You can only have regrets if there was a game plan in process,
or whether..or you enjoy……I was never more miserable
than that period, never, never and I'm not given to it.
But you enjoyed yourself on the radio, it was clear that
you did?
But I'm still do the radio. I did a three-hour show yesterday.
The show I did yesterday, I do a show on Sunday mornings on
Virgin, is exactly what I've always done and I'm sure Gillian
Reynolds would have loved yesterdays; the phone-in was, yesterday's
entire three-hour phone-in was, "Irrational things your
cat or dog is scared of". That was it, now that's all
right, I don't mind it, that's the base. So lets build from
there…….by the end of the show we had people ringing
in, they had a dog who was scared of a calendar…but only
when it was October. So you say "Can you do it?"
Okay, July….okay, August…..gottcha, September….we're
getting there, October…..bark! bark! bark!"
(John Humphreys laughs)
This, this is radio.
I don't believe you.
Honestly, honestly, that was yesterday's show.
….stuck a needle in it…
It doesn't matter. If you had said, "Your radio shows
are no good", which is in essence what can come out of
all this, then I would get insecure and say "Really?"
But they are, they really are good and there's nothing anyone
can do….It may not be mass-popular, I'll never be Noel
Edmonds and I don't think I ever fitted in at the BBC. I'm
not saying that's why they got rid of……That's perfectly
all right. The BBC's fabulous, it does great shows. TV heroes
what a great show I did at the BBC. Ten little shows, very
good; the talk shows weren't, so what? Really, so what? It's
not like, my talk shows didn't work. You have to understand
the process that leads you to the talk show. Somebody coming
up in a corridor, "Saturday nights, up for it?"
That's it. "Yeah Wotto!" Onto the agent, they want
us to do a talk show….."Yeah, why not?" Not
this is it, I've been heading towards a talk show. I've sat
with Michael Jackson in Los Angeles and toured with the Sex
Pistols in New York. I don't need to have the approval of
Alan Yentob to make me feel this is a life lived (LAUGHTER)
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