Stephen Fry - Long Time Friend of Craigs - Special Edition [+Helpful Text & Imagery]

[Music] [Applause] [Music] Stephen Fry everybody even though my dear friend even what a very odd odd odd world it is I've known you for what 20 years made me all obvious manure I was a sad drunken guy more is that right good you know right image a spectacle I know I was gone reflect with vomit yeah I'm property consider these extraordinary look at that it is my view I know they are one thing you have is good - yeah yeah makes me doubt you really are British because I I got the real nobody well they are mine mostly but they do all sorts of operations on them when you come through immigration oh yeah there's a fight nerves and drills and business and just a ghastly business hey Leanne please Brian Laurie yes ma'am she lured you Laurie has become my colleague Hugh has become stratospherically important in the Willing came huge star he took time off to get a medical degree yeah degree in American accents as well which is he's very good at it I know a lot of Americans but if he is American would I get upset but he was all you know I know he's a he remarkable actor I think house is an extraordinary achievement Vegas because he does thing I mean one of the hardest things to do as an actor is to play smart you actually believe that he is intelligent as his character as you know most accents okay most actors are probably I I know I don't they don't really know which way which way to sit on the laboratory yeah no they're there no they're not very bright blood and you're very bright oh you've written books and poor poor sorry my God look at this Oh what works yes yes isn't poetry very a very difficult difficult I think everybody's opposed inside I think it's one of the Forgotten Arts it's so much easier to write a poem if you have some sense I'm going to write a sonnet and that's all that book is it's just a well and but if interesting you're obviously quite passionate about I think poetry is is is one of those art forms it's often got very very wrong usually by people who are recently sober very true you know it's like that good enough to do with the inner child you know oh Lord I don't know also companies that try and sell greetings cards oh yeah oh really the equivalent of well I mean there's enough vomit in the world no open one of these things I want you horrifying now listen you're over here you know we are periodically usually a quite a lot and I love hearing I'd move the rear does it you know yeah there's link sales of qualities in the urine what about the what about tension relationship with the press over there I always had a very colonel well they ordered me basically but yeah I regard being a big an actor being the public eye as picnic we are overpaid we are over praised tempered and generally speaking life is very very good if you're in the public eye in whichever side of the Atlantic you happen to be right but like all picnics there are wasps yes and the British press are basically wasps and sometimes you turn up at the picnic and it's great and then the wasps arrive and you just want to dive into cold water and escape they may other times ago married watched yeah there's a very delicious the British they are they are vicious as wasps can be and the interest is what's up yeah you know as you know by the way who's not white anglo-saxon Protestant get very very annoying at a picnic as well as the was the white anglo-saxon so Jewish person yeah yeah Protestants charred and I know Gavin the hell yeah well allied what we already I thought I want likely oh yes now that's big deal in Casco yeah yes you've got to be one of the other yeah we live in a very tribal world all over again I when I was growing up we have this vague idea that is all over this whole business of what religion you where mattering and and you know it's all batted with your body mattering and now suddenly everyone wants to smack everybody in the face because their one religion one of its yeah I know it's everybody in other people's business I don't like me always it was the answer Aaron fat dog they're not who said you wouldn't think necessarily he'd be the one servant he said all religious wars are the history of people arguing arguing over who's got the biggest invisible friend and this is welcome love you yeah we have to take a break over right bikes been Breyer [Applause] please welcome very lovely and clever Stephen Fry everybody [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] Stevenson lovely how lovely to see you again we don't we won't be needin it it's lovely to see I haven't seen you in such a long time be seen by you well look at this awarded a book with pictures you've been so clever and the reigning your whole life writing books that had no pictures then suddenly all pitch finally yes it's nothing to do with the fact that it's for the American market that because the concern I will show you no no no I'm speaking to an American I asked America now yes I'm an American citizen look I go by Charter and everything oh yeah yeah I'm it would you ever think of that yes I genuinely would honey I the reason I did this is about a journey I made if you go to every state in America went to every one of your 50 glorious states someone are some of them are vandals yes I didn't spend that long in Delaware yeah what was our weight as we went on Delaware's where all the credit card letters come from that's where they yes under mr. mrs. du Pont have a big factory there I did yes yeah you may do I don't know it wasn't in the citizenship exam so did you have to learn all the state capitals it was they've changed the test it was quite easy when I took the test because when I took it it was do you like soda yes do you hate al Qaeda yes welcome yeah welcome you drug ah yes yeah but now it I think it's a bit hard enough I think you'll be fine you you're clear yeah well he's an on thing went when um when I was about ten my mother told me that my father who's a physicist had been offered a job when she was pregnant with me in Princeton University right and he very nearly took it and she said it was really funny because if he had of course he would have been born in America she would have been in America I know and the moment she told me that I had this sort of image of a doppelganger living in Princeton called Steve who would be physically the same as me identical in every physical respect maybe a bit trimmer maybe a bit fat on the film and and and I just put it to this day I don't know I mean with my attitude have been different with my sense of humor have been different like I don't know I'm not in Princeton that's that's kind of pretty much Inc I could buddy yeah I look forward to your letter yes and I'd love you to show you one thing the spelling better be good now but the didn't you one of your books wasn't that set in Princeton this one's from the new yeah we all happy cause of that you deserve Joseph it always had a bit of an obsession and oddly enough my great university friend Hugh Laurie plays a doctor in prints that right yeah how weird is that it's gonna board have you ever been to print i I feel I made a film in Princeton I did a movie called I can't thank you well then Robbins and leg ride and water matter oh yeah yeah that was a good movie it was I played the usual English part of yeah yeah mostly it makes me feel that a don't come along the emotionally constipated nobody who yeah right but I tell you there with the the III Jim Robbins best I would say by Tony Shalhoub then went on to be mr. monk yeah then I did another movie with Tony Shalhoub in it and also in it was James Gandolfini who went on to be mr. soprano miss panel yeah yeah mr. soprano is okay that those tablets in the dressing room you leave for your guests yeah I want to talk about you I could put this together oh yeah you got to take a vitamin C yes it worked surprising the attendance record I think time to talk in a factory listen the last thing you were here we had we had a discussion not an argument a debate about flying because I was saying how terrified of flying I was we were saying you're a pilot yes I'm terrified crashing but my wife is fine I'm also terrified of crashing any of the time since you you it's been three years there's not three years I have since become a pilot and I have my private life congratulations what you play at my Cessna oh yeah that son that that's just a little bit pathetic though because that's got a it's not a tail dragger it's not a tail dragger little bit fun it's good 240 horsepower engine is a good start the thing I was like the strange thing about fades great to flying being up those markers I in little old England where I am which is about the size of one of the three in Delaware they say by Jane I there's a part of me where I grew up and I know almost every field and every Church the moment I flew five seconds you're lost you've done it was very different just extraordinary and those are the things you have to learn how to read wind and how to how to look down and slow down orient and look down you can learn there Brent yeah good no no I've got a chip in my shoulder I never had a proper education and I feel that you know when I was about 10 years Luber flow barrier how many talk shows in America have people who mentioned flow bag that's pretty impressed he should be prized yeah nextly little bad good I got that are you applying on flubber oh yes I am rings all right either content for the bourgeoisie that's so you hey yeah he did it and but he also he you said he kind of deconstructed streambed deconstruct a little tiny bit fell over well that content for the bourgeoisie was a little bit you know but he was almost anal in the way he wrote to know he the most the exact word he would sometimes spend a week on on a sentence a single sin polish oh well can a single said you know you see I could have sank all that no no I have nothing but contempt I used to enjoy him although I do portray him as a polystyrene pig to be fair yeah yeah I'm and you insulted English cuisine which was very upsetting well said is ela you're Scottish I am sure you are see they've the deep fry mouths bar yes they do they put them in hot oil and they fry them yes that's a fact yeah yeah yeah well others places in America but that's popular do many places that you go a Dollywood Dolly Parton's place you can get deep fried candy that's good I think so I made that up yes Father people just make stuff up young say it's true and people believe you cause you're brainy all the time yeah yeah but fun enough what go and we didn't go to Dollywood it isn't end of scene anything yeah I think so I did have an experience in Tennessee that is one of the most shattering things that ever happened to me so what it's a marvelous place right in the morning I've been in North Carolina in a balloon looking down on the Blue Ridge Mountains and we landed and I thought how beautifully did this barbarian a fight we drove through the Knoxville which is a nice town and there's a campus and in the corner of the campus there was a lady waiting for me in the camera crew we were filming there and I haven't been told exactly what we were going to see but that I should be ready for something slightly weird and we I was ready for something weird because I was in America so I that's a good thing yeah and there was a padlock pair of gates and razor wire above she said come in she opened unpaid locked gate in we went cruising she had locked it again we were in a sort of garden she said put on these little paper shoes these little bootie thing like the way on the CSI those kind of things exactly and some rubber gloves like they were in the club like they were in the club with you and I usually go to and then around me this is going to get creepies the laughter better start getting nervous good yeah really weird old nervous yeah yeah I noticed kind of little white things and flashes of black and whatever and I was in a place known as the body farm and it was filled with cadavers with dead bodies in various states of decomposition of suppurating rotting decomposition and in various places some were left open some there was a car somewhere in the trunk of the car some is a little a little cabin so right we're talking about the whole the whole purpose of the place was the Department of forensic anthropology and it was the first of its kind in the world and you know you remember that William Peterson character gruesome Grissom as he was known CSI who had this thing about the bugs that we could tell time of death from the bugs that were hatched inside a dead body that's where they discovered this and I saw bodies with these maggots and things calling I saw things I would never hope ever to see again and smelt it was as if Satan found his way up my nostrils and tried to claw out everything that was decent in me if you see that they because they have to have sex they have they had a body that had a body crammed into a sort of like a mailbox and it was just a brown soup with bone sticking out and a smell that I will never forget and yeah it's creepy and it's grim but the wonderful woman take me around professor in this department she you know she she's gonna leave her body to have that done to it and it does it resolves murder cases it some people have found not guilty of murder some people have found guilty murder as a result of this extraordinary but I you know there's a phrase which you must have come across as an American and before which is only in America yeah now and when you hear that phrase only in America it means something extraordinary something extremely not the girls I think good yeah but you know well enough and if someone was to say only in Britain yeah it is something damp miserable no not till Wednesday yet it's unlikely and you know it how do you name Britain daily by the way I have a theory about about about Britain order I think that the people of Britain think that we Americans which I am known that they think that we Americans are a lot weirder than we actually are yeah I think we're not America's not that we know and I think it's the fault actually I'm one of the reasons I did this program was I was slightly set up of a lot of British journalists going over to America finding the weirdest people they could yeah well I'm so glad to we're out of the body farm Tennessee that'll set them right that was a summer an ennobling thing it was good science you know but but what if what I didn't go there was look up sort of mad Aryan warriors or militia people or strange religious fringe people who thought that God hated everybody and yes you know this because that's easy to do and then you film them very happy yes and then and then we British hug ourselves and say aren't we normal and aren't Americans with but actually my experience of Americans I don't know that I've ever visited a country where there are a higher proportion of genuinely hospitable kindly well disposed people it's absolutely I'd rather you know run out of gas in a small town in America than in Europe and knock on a strange door you would get people and they'd walk there and as my daughter help yourself and they go there [Laughter] but once I say that I don't know I'm here walking I'm not even make any sense they they would have spotted that they would have seen he's gay he's English it's find out my daughter facilities on a big helper come on exactly don't we completely other time Steve and I oh well you know one of the things about acid is you know time yeah it's lovely snow please don't make it three years until the next time because I don't want to get any more tattoos or more flying lessons I'd like to just cook Cariad normally it's lovely to see you good luck with this I am a great fan of you of your work and I'm looking forward to booth reading this and seeing this will it be on BBC America it's on PBS essentially oh really yes it is on various PBS stations throughout the nation well that's very classy and sweetly answer hi everybody I'm going to talk to one man no it's not just any mind of the the man I'm going to talk to today is it's really protection for me Stephen Fry who will be the guest on the show tonight is a very brilliant man a very clever man to be honest I knew him in London in the 1980s now he's kind of intimidated by him he's very clever and very successful and I thought well if I can't do the show tonight he would be able to handle it fine on his own so in the words of my predecessor the late and much lamented mr. Tom Schneider sent back fire up the cola teenies and watch the pictures as they fly through the air we'll be right back welcome back everybody welcome to Los Angeles California welcome to the Late Late Show I am your host TV's Craig Ferguson nom i i'd like to welcome tonight a prayer a friend of mine he's an actor a comedian a friend please welcome the lovely stephen fry i'll have to clap myself if you don't happen thank you for for doing that i'm honored to be a little white mouse in your laboratory experiment yeah it's very it's not really that much of any experiment the weather i mean people have been looking to people in the CBS building here they've been going around as if suddenly a new alien species has been discovered it's the most exciting day in the history of this broadcasting station everything unbeliev it's extraordinary again would it work is it possible to talk to someone without people blooping in the background I must say I'm a little bit nervous about it because the idea of just talking to someone it doesn't you and me kind of vulnerable to ever comes up and I wonder if if anything if anything well let's let's start at the start at the beginning for me with you which I used to watch you on British television when I was working in a bar and it's a dangerous place for you to work yeah it was actually yeah actually I was going to do it working behind a bar because I I kind of made sure everyone else was drunk which they liked and then I didn't look so bad around I used to watch it I always thought all through the 80s when I would bump into you in London when I was getting into show business and you were doing terribly well in Britain I always held you up with someone who was had their life completely together it's strange that isn't it it's like I mean I've this is sort of a truth about all humans is that we you know like you arrive at a party right and everybody's in your mind armed with a club and all you have is a little q-tip behind your back and you think somehow everybody else was at investment school where they learnt some life trick that you will never know because you missed that lesson and you'll never catch up I'm dating the same as of you I'm fascinated hear you say that because I I had always assumed that you were until I read actually your Urata biography the I'd always assumed that you were the golden gifted child you know the Cambridge education the studying of the classics the knowing lots of clever people who were very attractive and rich and I had a terrible chip in my shoulder about that particular group of people I had kind of grown up thinking that the leave value would honestly we're all horrible spoiled pampered overpraised and that's and I knew that that's how everybody thought of me and I thought I was from a generation was born at least 20 years too late but maybe if I'd been born in the 50s when wearing a tweed jacket and smoking a pipe and talking about Catullus and Ovid was somehow acceptable and you were admired for it whereas I felt that I was born into a post-punk era in which the idea of even speaking in sentences that didn't break up at the end and go sort of and like and oh I wonder just having an articulate voice was in itself an offense it was like rubbing people's faces in the dirt and that I was hated for it yes Punk was buried have a real anti-intellectual knee fell but that simply might affect my manner everything about me would with guaranteed to make people despise me do you think that that still exists there are parts of me that think that yeah and but I know that they would find me even less acceptable if I fortunately attempted to be demotic and street and unhip it just doesn't suit it's like when I wear sunglasses no matter how bright the Sun people say what are you doing wearing sunglasses yeah they know it's going Lee yeah good I meant right now there are some British people no one would say that to Mick Jagger right you know there are British people who are cool hard to believe is it is and and then there are people like me who just seem to be made of tweed I can't help it no matter how hard I try and even even if you tell people things about yourself that are did show your difference in England for example the fact that I'm a Jew the fact that I was imprisoned by the time I was 17 yes the fat I was expelled from schools that I'm gay that I that I will you really the Jack Rogers because I get it for 15 year and not that I wish to boast position I was shocked by your drug use and I have the Berlin line because I I was doing drugs and drinking at the same time but it was very obvious to everyone around me that I was doing that you you working on you know you were talking and you were writing musicals and you were you were very productive it I used to say that I took a came to call me dad and I was the only person I did it have mattered a well I'm another thing about me which is very tedious and people get bored with hearing this from everybody but I am bipolar as well and sorry I do have manic moments when I'm extraordinarily energized and so if you like the excuse if such a thing can be acceptable for taking drugs was was that it if you are subject to mood changes over which you have no control right very tempting to take some drug or substance which can control your moods because then you you have a assemblance or pretense at least of being able to control your moods well you were you aware of that when you were no I think as I said I didn't want to sound like a justification right the stupid act and a tedious act amongst showbusiness people over you all you took big deal you know I know it I know how dull it is to it you know reformed out it's going on about yeah well I'll risk that by saying that yeah it is a definite I'm sure lots of people watching who know that feeling of a mood change when you wake up one morning and you feel ghastly for no reason I mean all of us can feel ghastly because there's a bill that's come in or our children's behaved off some awful thing has happened that is genuinely upsetting but when the Sun is still shining and things are no different from those they were the day before but you feel you want to you feel worthless to the nth degree you feel absolutely like you usually like today excrement oh yeah not today fortunate right but you still experience I do yes I get these swings and how do you treat it now I don't as I made I made a documentary to to our films on this subject I spoke to over here to a friend of mine the actress Carrie Fisher well yes that's almost Harry although I'm sure you haven't it's very visible without her if you know who you're going to get and lady ah poor lady done I mean see I'm actually cyclothymic does that mean that sort of Cambridge embarrassing vibe all awkwardly in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual it is like a lower version of bipolars by another one by 32 and and some people in America call this bipolar light what why is it different from the other one what the serious thing about bipolarity which used to be called manic depression of course right is it is a very morbid as doctors we call it very morbid condition it increases your chances and early death by a considerable factor from suicide from suicide and from the neglect of one's diet neglect of exercise right and of course self medications it's called I you know basically addiction and the use of all kinds of substance when you put it like that it makes me think that and I'm not pushing an agenda for this at all but I does sound like perhaps there's a lot more of a around than it was initially think yeah I mean as a danger of early diagnosis of course and and the purpose of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual is it school which defines it is too people making claims in court or for compensation just because they're feeling a bit you know a bit hacked off they did with that and that that's the other side of it I mean it seems to me particularly in Los Angeles a you see a lot of this where there is a sort of the pathology of the human condition that everything has a sickness and an excuse everyone has a well I did this because I mean I don't think that I was quite interested - what did you watch Tiger Woods's dude I do I'm trying to cry I'm really fundamentally yeah I couldn't help it I could I was interested by though because he didn't he kind of said that III had he talked of a little bit of the Buddhist faith which I found kind of fascinating I was asleep rose but uh but on the other hand white boy you know sportsmen talk about faithful but I write course add to it I suppose I mean one of the odd things about that is I said about you you know this thing trolling a troll is it like a little Norwegian thing that lives under a bridge right you ads are three questions across the bridge or well that word is used to describe aggressive mostly unpleasant comments on webpages yes of course I know that yeah exactly right and it has become almost impossible I find now to look at something online like the Tiger Woods thing I watched that on the pond right without your eye thinking I don't want to go below the picture because people will be saying such vile things absolutely I saw that one over my son when should be sales who was an American comedian a groundbreaking comedian he died a few months ago was that when Sophie sailed died and my son who's almost nine wanted to see him and went to see because he'd heard the news and was he funny so I went on the YouTube to you know to Sherman and underneath people have seen mean things and cussing and using the F word but soupy sale how can you hate soupy anyone called soupy you know I mean but Soupy Sales you know it's a mean things about them and I think what happens is is that people can't help but declare themselves and we now have an open society which is an incredibly good thing and I wouldn't for a minute want to take anything right or I love the world of Technology enormous fear world of social networking and all the things like Twitter the right we talked about it I acted in them take a break I forgot that we're doing a TV show so let's take a break and we'll be right back with Stephen Fry everybody [Music] [Music] welcome back everybody I'm here with Stephen Fry and not an audience and we're talking what we're talking about we're beginning to talk about twitten which I you kind of got me into as well and a lot of other people were you involved at the very beginning with the Twitter well pretty much I mean I'm not involved in the business side of it right of the biz side one should call it which is a little enjoy because the founder is called Bisto that's that but never an audience here you're not everything that would be really whether we would have warned I think I laughed a fever pitch of all that stuff but I I was involved a year and a half two years ago I'd say I joined and I've always been an early adopter of these technological things I just love it I don't know why it's quite mysterious to me in some ways because as we were saying earlier people perceive me as rather old-fashioned than they imagine I would go around with an ancient fountain pen if not a goose quill and and and are astonished that actually I love technology I was the second person in Europe to earn an Apple Mac back in January 84 the first being Douglas Adams the author of hitch height and there I was a friend and we both like black children on the first day of a new you know a toy coming out we both rushed to get hold of one and then for months we would go around to each other's places swapping it and when new things come out I'm desperate to leave I think that shows it's not necessarily the idea of people expected to be old fashioned I think it's the idea of a of a good and open mind embrace the embrace the idea of a new idea or at least experiment with something yeah it's worth noting fascinated me because I expected it much like the the trolling and and the mean comments that you were talking about earlier I expected that it seems to occur a lot less its point well done nothing and I found the sort of level of politeness and decency you get the odd should on anything and it's extraordinary as anybody who tweets a lot will know that within 140 characters how attitude can come through yeah and you can instantly detect when someone is being snarky and unpleasant and Smitty but you think the effects thought do you think people begin to think differently if they think in these so both of you that have you construct I mean if your best friend Russell you know they say well I have to get you know principle Mathematica and 140 characters you know it there are two ways of looking at that I mean one is one is to say that rationally don't to that I've always been against rations and I've always been an empiricist it's just look and try and see what examples there are and a good thing is Robert Graves wrote a very famous essay on poetry in which he said can it pass what he called the telegram test if you remember there was a long period in which cables telegrams weren't wires as they were called in which again words were very expensive it was a you know a narrow bandwidth right so people used to say coming tomorrow make room ready hello Cary Grant not very gratifying how you yeah that oh that guy exactly using the word stop for a full stop right and I get very terse and Robert Graves said that poetry which is after all the highest expression that we have it you know linguistically should actually be that concentrated like a telegram and here he had great fun criticizing Wordsworth poem called the solitary Reaper behold her single in the field young solitary Highland last reaping and singing to herself and he said this is bad poetry because it actually is tautological it's is a good word clear nastic clear now I have absolutely I'm thinking about dinosaurs legitimately do you like them is like a a repetition or an unnecessary repetition like a tautology said behold her single in the field young solitary Highland glass reaping and singing to herself so he said three times that she's on her own that to Robert Graves that is a bad example of poetry and actually he would argue that if she if he'd tweeted it he would have concentrated his mind better and come up with with a better use of language and actually that's my good about Twitter is because you have to stop and think oh I've only got 140 characters of this you can compress everybody adhere and you are in that sense poetic there's a concrete concretization of what they're saying which is rather often very elegant and delightful do you think there is a bigger a bigger when dough into contemporary psyche at these things does it give you a me because as a kind of a marketing man's dream you get here everybody is thanking I think I mean it's an element to that it reminds me there's a famous passage where Sherlock Holmes in one of the Sherlock Holmes stories talks about what were known as the agony columns that's to say D that the sort of personal columns with the stack of newspapers right and he would talk about near listen to all his cries and sobs and heart-rending noises coming from the millions of people trying strangers trying to contact each other trying to contact other strangers trying to sell things trying to buy things you know all these noises and whispers coming from the compressed humanity and you could argue that really since the Industrial Revolution this has just been the same thing that it's increased and it's increased and it's become closer I mean a good example people moan about text abbreviations right and say how terrible that is but actually if they look in the 18th century time of Jefferson and people like that when when writing letters was very expensive again again was the narrow bandwidth people used to write why are for your and they would write ple exactly the same prints right because it was expensive to send a lot of text and they were ugly illiterate people no they weren't what about the the use of you were talking about it's an open society and we're doing a broadcast television non-inertial now which I forgot both until I started talking about it again but if the idea of censorship for profanity or more control do you think there is I mean because there are it's really the Wild West still in terms of the Internet there is no real control no real kind of policing of it that that I can see would you advocate that no personally I wouldn't I mean I'm I'm a pretty much a libertarian when it comes to that kind of thing I personally I've never understood why people are offended by references to particular parts of the body over other parts of the body right I don't know why testicles should be more offensive than knuckles seems to me a batch of I for all my testicles might have and they do look a bit luckily I know but some people are on they say that you know they have that hung up about sex all right a big shame thing about sex are you however no sex I mean you you're a gay man you clearly had to you know think about how you were going to explain that I have to confess a deep within me are the same the same strange hang-ups that most people have if I saw two people making love in the street I would regard it as a very different side to people shaking hands in the street or to people eating well is very different act yeah you know I mean the actor the actor it compares a different intimacy you know you might say this is almost a sacredness about it which means that one of the reasons we don't want to to be a voyeur to people's dinner activities that it's might be exciting and for all time but it's exciting because it is a taboo if if the act itself is sacred then the the excitement is surely within the taboo of watching the Allegra's acting and being profane around the the the sacristy of that the idea of of kind of how naughty can we be but I always thought that boat cocaine actually whenever I took cocaine and this is why I was very different work from you and I think when you took it because I I think most people when they take cocaine they start thinking what's the worst thing I can get up to the XIV how can I be and I don't I don't think you really believe that way so Scrabble with myself on the computer so bad you can even to travel on the computer I still do that yes actively if I mean Scrabble yes it's very so it's something about once might I just took Inge the loaf of that thought right were the if if an alien was looking down on us and infecting our language they would see that the worst thing we do on this planet is we torture we kill we abuse we harm people we're we're cruel and those are the things in which we should be ashamed amongst the best things we do as we bring children we raise them and we make love to each other we adore each other section itand fond of each other those are the good things we do and they would say how odd the the language to the awful things is used casually all the time all the the traffic was agony was held as cruel oh it was torture waiting in them waiting in line she seems why it's like torture that's the worst word right and yet if we use the F word which is the word for generating our species yeah for showing physical affection one to another then we're taking off air and accused of being wicked and irresponsible and a bad influence to children now we're part of this culture so we often don't question it but if you think of someone from outside it is very strange we are very weird D highly true we're going to take a break Stephen apparently uh we'll be right back with her Stephen Fry [Music] [Applause] [Music] craig ferguson's dark maxi physique can be dangerous in the wrong hands what appears to be a large birthmark in the shape of a referee's whistle offers invigorating surprises okay strange completely forgotten well I don't remember I was six months before I went to rehab that game I think yeah contestant on a game it was a sketch and there was the it was 1991 1991 right it was a an age benefit in London you know I you were hosting I think or you certainly were very much involved undirected it right so that would be involved in everything and then that sketchy was a yourself hugh laurie emma freud i think right and and and me and you of course as a lapsed into obscurity america no he's a cleaner Fox Studios I don't even evil what's happened to it issue here right yes I've been thinking about this a lot with the moment I'm writing the second volume of my autobiography which covers the years when I met you at univer it's sort of unbelievable it's so not unbelievable as well a way I mean mate sounded I got late he's very talented he's got a fantastic charisma about him yeah it be known from the earliest time and people saw him at a party they were gonna go who's that guy well I remember him i Thompson talking about how he's with the most gorgeous creature she ever saw when she first went with the university totally smitten by yeah yeah yeah and now he's become this rather Limpy cranky American drug addict doctor it's a strange because he also had a very traditional British up upbringing in to Eton College in Cambridge and well you are you are I think the quintessential Englishman but yet you're very American as well do you do you have a place here right here in Hollywood Ryan love America I used to live in New York and I have I have an apartment there I absolutely adore this country I like like you I feel I can lift it for the rest of my life I'm magically not sweetly smitten to you you're citizen now I am yeah I would you do that I would I mean I'm a resident alien in the member I charming enough and and I I feel I feel pride in America but then I felt pride in America before I even set foot here it's a very all no no I I know you I would watch movies and you know I know something like John Ford's young mr. Lincoln and I would feel a sort of emotional warmth inside me as if it was the founding of my country and America has that you know it's well in a way I think it is isn't that because America is a country founded by forward thinkers I as far as I know it's the first real post-enlightenment country right and certainly political system and the idea that the I have it began when I became a citizen I did it very publicly well as publicly is that sharable allowed and and I I was fascinated it was at the end of the the bush-cheney administration and I was kind of interested to see how merry Americans had were on the point of being discouraged and I thought that this is this is terrible in America that people should be discouraged though of all things I think Americans are optimists that is their abiding quote I mean if there is a sort of national American emotion I would call this optimism if there's a national English one I recall it embarrassment Azzam isms yeah shame embarrassment confusion I said in the book that I notice you have that yeah yes but that if we say only in America you hear that phrase Indians refers to something astounding something new novel remarkable brave bold zany ridiculous you know colorful all in America if you said only in Britain it would be something claim as terrible yeah you indeed regrettin negative oh god and in Britain now why why do you think that is more more so about the about the Brit than the Americans I think the Americans if it's a very distant point and actually that thing we were talking about earlier by being by personal you want to bang that drum too much more than there is a theory and it's a it's a beguiling one which is that if you think the population of America with two incredibly important exceptions that's to say most of the black population and the Native American property right the rest came here by choice right they they wanted to come they wanted to leave your mostly Europe and come here and start a new life so it is that's the gene pool is people who said no this isn't good enough there can be something better I'm leaving and they left behind people who said all were damned you know yeah we also stay I will stay so Europe is just basically a gene pool of people whose ancestors said all oh I don't I don't think I can risk now I can't risk it America is a gene pool people say let's risk yeah they legs Masari and you think that still agrees alright feel it it's certainly in the air I mean I wouldn't obviously establish it as a Dutch academic truth no it needed to be studied but it's it's a beguiling as I said it's a tempting way of looking at it it's certainly the only place that I feel kind of at home yeah the to it is a wonderful country we have to take a break though because as America and you have to have carols there is that yeah all right we'll be right back [Music] what did their to you Danil bandit the baddest better than you look been some debate about that her never get involved in politics Oh welcome back everybody I'm here with Stephen Fry I was in the Alice in Wonderland I was the one on the left because I thought you looked at charming as the young lady Oh are we still playing at me me yes all right normally the sound of the audience braying and witching with laughter covers really cover up these technical errors but it now tell me about the about your film career because I would think that you're very very you're very clearly a very brave man you must be terribly patient to work as an actor because an actor basically you get told what to wear and where to stand which is a weird lines on the floor yeah okay I enjoyed but I don't think I'd enjoyed if it was all I ever did fact that I write and do other things as well means it's rather like a wonderful holiday with you arrive in a car that cup of coffees put in your hand colored tape stand there really does your lines you don't make up any new ones the odd bit of improvisation if you want but not and repeat it a bit and watch movies in your trailer in the meantime and is it is there a part of that the idea of going from from England to being a Hollywood movie star I think that's Villa because they come over in droves now these has been interesting young people that can do American accents and I'm not cut from quite that close that's it I've the odd the odd sort of Nazi villain or something like that is a very pleasurable thing to do any other Nazis always English well because you can we don't offend English yeah that is right we can't moon that we've been done done because for three hundred years we had an empire and from the top dog so we basically have to put up with now being treated as if we are the scum which is very much yeah yeah I mean I sometimes a part comes along I was very lucky in the 90s to play Oscar Wilde in the movie and that was a lead car but generally speaking I'm not going to get the parts that that Johnnie death has just turned down or maybe everyone is pretty it's good that I got a minute awesome well speech she was terrific yeah I saw him in 17 again not quite the same person but the I watch the under protest and I thought this kids actually really talented very unlikable did you know what I suffer from this and I wonder this is a real internet thing beautiful people are not allowed to be talented no the people get very angry when very good-looking people are talented everyone ket is clearly talented a talented actor but yet he's very beautiful so that I think that makes people quite angry sometimes any thank very much very much and if they turn out to be musically gifted and as he obviously is to rounds and that they're good at baseball something then they basically better look out for calm yeah do you follow the darker side of celebrity culture do you follow the the TMZ s and the gossip sites who you have not even feel interested I never know who anybody is I'm absolutely hopeless at parties cuz he's not power and I yeah but I literally people said Michael what did she say and I go who know with that woman there yes Madonna what she's here was that Madonna I literally don't know and you can tell her for her arms you get very strong arms and out profound colt knee accent yeah I didn't I'd spring her on the phone from then I she wanted me to play a part in the film she turned on Z but I she was looks different every time and I'm sure if I saw Lady Gaga at a party I wouldn't recognize her unless she had the wedding cake I hate I've never I thought when I heard her name Lady Gaga a fear I think I've become a real foggy now she's from the canto and say yeah that's what everybody said yeah I don't know enough about it um straw Denari it's all kind of things I never did we get to an age where the cycles just repeat and and that's the probably but I think the only thing to do to save this is why try for myself anyway the only thing to try and save myself from bitterness is is it enjoy what they're doing now yeah you know rather than say Oh things were better because I've never everyone saying we know when I was about that age people say oh in the 60s that's when things were really great and went really you know I know I don't I don't believe that people mean their late teens and early tax when they were denied whether they were in the 60s and 70s or the 80s you can always justify that period as having better socks and data tunes and better haircuts but it's not about that it's about the fact you were young bliss wanted in that dorm to be alive but to be young was very heaven there were ragged words with words were then on the edge of the French Revolution yeah that's kind of an odd way to prevail but um are you are you thinking that you will stay here now then that you are will you I have things that take me back my parents still live in England and I have other options dear friends and things you have done there's a television show I do regularly once a year in once a year is not really regularly Steven and in television terms like that you do an annual it's not frequent but it is urgent right okay I know what you mean but I could easily live here the rest of my life actually have to say would it be California and you like the Sun I do and actually I like California I like California great diverse state Northern California is probably the most beautiful part in the world yeah I don't drink wine though I always feel that I should I'm kind of missing out on something if I'm up there in a normally threw the wine but then thus acquire and run there and I do enjoy trees do you know that you know I'll probably take care of it then you know well if you don't want some wine I've got a lovely tree with lovely big tree but you become a quite an advocate for things environmental Avenue yeah well certainly yes I just done a series of films about disappearing species about some of the rarest species on earth and in fact I've just just just before Christmas I was translocating not personally but witnessing and filming the transportation of four northern white rhinoceros back from a zoo in in Prague right Czech Republic to Kenya and there are only two others in when they Czechoslovakian rhinos or they had been found in the Sudan and some of them at bred there right but they're only there to others in san diego's over here in california and otherwise that's it there is six on the planet and there are subspecies of runoffs wouldn't the idea then to keep them in and breed them before you it's a funny thing about these animals if they stop breeding after they'll breed once right but if there aren't enough males around it so it's an interesting sexual social thing that males need to provoke others into the kind of mixture of rage defensiveness territoriality that that sparks off a need to breed and if they're just a couple of males who become friends they no longer no longer get of our being to Rhino is tolerable or unfortunately suggests that amongst male mammals rather need to show off fatigue arose in Italy the right posturing maco thing macho thing right somehow necessary to get the old seed you know things a bit like that Jersey Shore thing be all these these have you seen that I've seen bits of it I'm sure I despair a little bit when I see stuff like that like I want to be in touch with my inner girl I I want to I want to have abdominal muscles like that that's really that young lady has fantastic well we have thinking critically is that do me oh well let's do one do that let's take a break [Music] welcome back everyone uh well that's pretty much the show tonight Stephen we've been really really really well I think it was okay I was a bit nervous and stiff in the beginning which those chairs over there hated me yeah no I think they were rough I found out a little disconcerting and beginning a strange evening yeah partly an audience I don't know what the people at home like Theo teams I think by them annoying it's I bet people sometimes think they find it annoying but now that it's absent they may feel be like that we're and really nothing else to fight it's not the audience annoying its eyes or in particularly me because you're not here every night so it's got to be me who's the annoying one they tune in for you they don't I don't mean let's be honest I don't know but anyway what we did do is we did conduct an experiment and I think no we'll think about what that is but I've enjoyed myself talking to you I I always do but it's nice to talk to you with less shouting and I'm sorry that in their past conversations I've been so shouting it's your jobs are you doing very very well thank you well good luck in your in your endeavors I think that becoming an American is a fine idea you'd be a great asset to our nation you have to get a tattoo like Mila huh yeah I couldn't do the well yeah it says join or die it's a Benjamin Franklin to the cartoon for the Pennsylvania Gazette in 1754 about the the threat of that the then you know the the native Oh became a portent symbol of the new hampshire's live free or die live free or die yet add the number place where as written are made in a prison which look at that sorrow me yeah I won't have the W chosen line we must love one another or die that's probably all right - it's a little less bit dramatic go yeah to live well but you are a bigger package is well we're done I guess I guess we'll we'll mosey off into the night thank you for joining us everyone and I'll see you tomorrow with an audience and the some skeletons and what else do we have tomorrow guests and it's actually pretty much like this except load good night everybody [Music] [Applause] welcome back my first and my only guest this evening is a wonderful man who's my friend and I'm always happy when he's in Los Angeles and that's why we are here tonight normally we wouldn't be doing a show on May the 22nd but Stephens in town the lovely Stephen Fry everybody [Applause] [Applause] [Music] even semen it's lovely to see you thank you so much for coming on the show right nice to you and I see Jeff and talking big penises yeah it is I had a wonderful pickup line the other day which is I've got eight inches for you admittedly in two installments that's nice objective there's oh I didn't know I just thought it was a good one apparently women like wit and modesty and self-deprecation in men and aren't interested in large penises I think they're a little bit interested in larger I think you did that well that the amount of interest notice I already knew plays though I think there are well they're probably like this much interested in this much penis I I think I don't know I'm not an expert on know you're me know you're mine more I then yeah sorry how you know it since the last time you were here I saw your documentary or I've seen your dad was great way to say it seen or saw I saw observable documentary series watched on the United States where you covered the entire 50 stage say that each state in it and you drove around them in a London taxi I did yes the 48 contiguous will write as in or flew to Alaska and Hawaii yeah they're very difficult to get to Hawaii by taxi there's only enough okay no I just finished a show called gadget man in which I converted my taxi to an amphibious vehicle and drove it along the Thames with put a propeller in the back out of it off the road onto the onto the Thames amenity Vermont like exactly yeah that's at one point I was ever taken by a duck so will you particularly effective but but it was the dream of a lifetime and oddly no one seems to have done it certainly on British television simply regard America as not a whole but as 50 states it was an interesting thing to watch for me because I have lived here for a long time and I and I thought I couldn't believe he went there and didn't go there you know it's like if you go to someone's home town and you didn't order the doughnut shop but the hounds are hard with you the longer you'll get I really the famous do not you're right exactly because people get angry with you or you didn't go to there and naturally there's that you can't do everything I mean it would have had to have been an hour for each state which is great you could easily do an hour on Texas or hour in California you slightly harder driven are on Delaware say or North Dakota with or do you respect both of them which I'm right yeah places my favorite I think was I think it was Iowa when you went I was a lovely place with lovely things and then we moved right on Castle and I like what the hell where are you going we haven't joined you the doorknob the most amazing day which just shows what documentary filming could be like was when we started in Asheville North Carolina which is a very charming but better because it isn't yeah and we went up in a hot-air balloon and it looked over there's the Smoky Mountains the Blue Ridge Mountains it was a gorgeous or autumn fall day with it were the blaze of scarlet and yellow maple and the leaves of the most shining the gorgeous color that just speak New England and it was heavenly yeah air was up Celine and lowered ourselves down and ice I picked a maple leaf off a tree enemy dropped and then we drove all the way to Knoxville in in Tennessee and there to the campus of the University of Tennessee and and I hadn't really been told about this here and there was a woman waiting for me by chain-link fence I got out of the cab and the camera crew followed me and she said can you put on these gloves please and I put on some latex gloves and some sort of paper shoes with the Dean had whittled and and then she opened the padlock for this and I could see razor wire at the top and she opened the gate and I went in closed and there I was aware of some things around me is a kind of garden but there were sort of white bits and black bits and I wasn't quite sure and she said welcome to this facility and she said I'm going to introduce you to some individuals to use the word individuals of each of these what turned out to be dead bodies and it was the famous in its own world body farm where people who leave their bodies to science the cadavers are then put through all kinds of extraordinary experiences and this is to help forensic anthropology you know rate of getting compensation Gus Grissom in in in CSI the original series right for example you know we could who could data time of death according to the insect larvae that had begun to start forensic science like Alec Holmes I am but they learn did all these kind of time of death things about about the rather gruesome stuff of the grubs and the maggots in the body from this single place it was the first of its kind so what they would what they'd often do is they take a body they put it in the rapid in a carpet put it in the trunk of a car for three days and then buried in the woods and this and this is legal yes because because that cell from what a murderer does he killed someone in going on a knee right rested in a carpet puts them in the trunk of his car gets blind drunk for three days and then drives to the woods and buries it and there's a very particular pattern in and so you know sometimes the police need to prove that someone was murdered or wasn't by fall yeah and would you it when in the you know I'm sure a long time from now when you expire would you have your body go through that's the question asked more so because the the thing that's that will never leave you it just won't ever leave you is the smell yes men of mortality is a Muslim doesn't think we're all lucky enough almost all of us are likely not never to have seen human body let alone smelt one in the state of decomposition right and and and I went in never having seen a dead body another Catholic so I haven't seen one in a casket I hadn't seen him bombed one you know and I left having seen about 200 some of which were literally there was one had been put in a sort of dump dump and skipped what have you call them sort of big thing rubbish trash thing and it was basically just a load of bones in a Brunson finalized use like Satan clawing his way up to my nostrils and trying to tear my brain out it's horribly horrifying but on the other hand it's a strange optimism that comes over you that you you realize how we are what Burroughs called a soft machine and and it breaks down instantly and it goes back into the earth you know actually to ashes dust to dust it goes into the worms and that's it and it just makes you feel all the more determined to keep the bits there bellowing rising Li that don't rot and I you are you a believer in an afterlife does that does that no I which is to say I'm along with Plato and the Greeks anyone who tells you that they know what happens to you after you die is either a liar or a fool yeah I must say it does seem to be a bit of guesswork going on if you ask me I think another number of people have said honey when I'm dead I'll come back and visit you yeah and they have not to this is this happened to you Paris lay or just you yeah right but you know it's a people said when it sort of ghost I don't know you didn't get yeah I wasn't I mean it does seem de unit instead may I was I suppose I am I take my cue from the great philosopher Bertrand Russell who I love Beth is wonderful yeah advise anybody just to have a fun time on use my ography extraordinary is very very fun yeah and she spoke and this beautiful high piping extremely heiress to get advice yes it was Earl Russell in Jack and you know he came from a very distinguished family his arms danced with Napoleon and he knew Robert Browning and I met a man who knew him which makes that connection when Mary knew yes but he he was asked why he was an atheist to me and so surely you mean agnostic because you don't know there isn't a god right no I don't know there isn't a god that's quite true he said but I also don't know that there isn't a giant teapot orbiting Venus in such an angle and way that we will never see it however I am perfectly entitled to base my life on the supposition that such a teapot does not exist and not to allow my life to be determined by those who do believe in such as he thought and that is my view about God I think I like a Carl Sagan's thing about about atheism which he said when people regardless the not God he said the question is too vague you know you have to define what do you mean by this it has I you know and saying they are idea of a large white man with a beard deciding what was on imperious individual life seemed absurd but the idea that there was an intelligence beyond what he understood the st. Augustine kind of you know to understand the mind of God is like putting the ocean into a car that seems like a little more but it's very new we're looking at the world and indeed much of the world most of the world are Animists and they have many gods and I think that's much more attractive why there should be one it's very recent there was one Pharaoh who decided an axe I could not exactly and he was killed for it but yeah yes he was they were very upset priests decided even tell Carmen's dad that's right because student Carmen's original name was Tutankhaten twosome and then he changed it back to Tutankhamun because he's his father was an idiot he's good yeah he's good I remember having tucks exactly and he was the first on record of this as a monitor see as to thought it was one God but it's not natural to believe in one God I don't think quite natural to believe in the principle of every principle of trees and their principle of rivers in the way that the Greeks did which makes fantastic story I mean it don't make people get very cross if you if you can have well yes that perhaps the there's a passive-aggressive victim status the religious people now have which is that they go oh these fundamental atheists well I'm not a fundamentalist atheist being it doesn't mean anything to me I don't want anybody else to be an atheist and I've no interest in spreading atheism any more than I if there was a word to describe someone who doesn't believe in the Tooth Fairy a flim pissed okay then I would have to say I'm a flim pissed but being a flim is meaningless it just means I don't believe in the tooth fairy right doesn't involve a set of values it doesn't invoke my certain values comes from humanism from the Enlightenment from them from the very set of values that built this country the desert of values that of Thomas Paine and Thomas Jefferson and and and people who actually thought for themselves and and didn't take any any text as gospel or any at which Marxists did and then which which many religions do I just think it's terrible to be told what's the case we told the whole idea is there's meant to be free thought here preach I think it will take a breaks where you can freely enjoy the products advertised and we will we were right back [Applause] [Music] bye-bye Emily welcome back I'm here with the lovely Stephen Fry but we're talking about is there or is there not God you might want to go another channel if that bothers you right now I tell you what I do think about religion which I think a theist slack and I think they should get on is some theater you know some clear original richyallum star-making classy the like hi I'm an atheist ending up you know like a smoke and and Kirk welders and Gentile Church in there's a church in London where they have atheist services every Sunday anyway yeah and quite quite good people to tend them about and far more than the nearby ordinary Church which has a very little cluster of ten people going in yes but popularity don't no no all right as they sing they sing Queen songs they sing substitution by Stevie Wonder they all get handed the words you know it's just like at a service and then someone will come up and talk about Dirac's theory of matter and antimatter for example Hyde is one of the most stunning theories ever ever evolved but by by mankind on the nature of the universe and so the people will talk about science and about discoveries about their you know animal behavior and so on as well as by wonder and joy and the remarkable nature of things what about what about other personal adversity though for example if you're in the state of fear do you find you find yourself at slipping a little bit then and thinking well if they're really you could have a you've gotta have a focus a name to give you you know so of course if I was in a plane that we're going yeah I began gone please yeah of course I would I mean there's a great Jewish joke that my mother's Jewish so technically I'm Jewish and and so why am I mad like I even you're not only my oldest I don't know you I'm a Jewish yeah right there you got the whole hog yeah someone said hog is about but there's a story of a couple whose mother has come with him on that holiday and they've got a baby and the grandmothers left to look up that little bunny babies a little hat sitting on the beach and they go up and eat go eat fred's me you know I look after the baby and and something is huge wave swells up and takes the baby snatches it away that's it's terrible yeah and then another calls mrs. I've been a bad us all my life I've never gone to Temple I've never I'm so bad please though if you bring back the baby I will worship you I will be so good I'll keep two fridges I'll do everything right and then there's another wave swirls and the baby is deposited back on the beach and the grandmother book stone goes and the Hat there it's just do you ever do you ever worry about because people get so aggressive to be honest about but they're religious about what they believe and you're quite outspoken I mean you're an out gay man you you say what you think in you and you live by what you believe yes and I do you ever think I just can't get into an argument with anyone today I have that experience just a few days ago I only arrived in America three days ago and the week before I've been in some Petersburg in Russia where they just possibly as beautiful said they love this yeah but they've passed the very unfortunate law which makes it illegal to promote homosexuality whatever that means in theory it means that you can't you can't tell children about Tchaikovsky one of the great heroes of that city because he was gay man and I wrote diary very clearly in his diary that it was you can't say for example that part of his identity made be in his music because that would be promoting somehow homosexuality and people have been locked up those a lawyer who tested it was actually strays saying my wife and I have his best friends a lesbian couple and we think there should be treated equally and that their lives are valuable and he was you know is immediately arrested so the man milonov who brought this through I interviewed him and as it happens I'm very big in Russia so that was terrorized by this huge press pack into his office we have actually sort of got rid of them and he had the same arguments I've been doing this documentary for two years on and off when I've had spare time called out there about being gay in different parts of the world right and I've been in Uganda and I'd been in India and I'd been in Brazil and I'd been in here in the United States and a common thread amongst homophobia's one is that you choose to be gay I can imagine choosing to be gay in San Francisco or in London or mantas we're choosing to be gay in a country like Uganda where they shoot you and beat you up and burn your house seems a very odd choice what you know the also why would that be a problem anywhere chose to be gay I mean sure I choose to be gay okay so right now it's bizarre the second one is that they insist on their absolutely evangelical or gay people on recruiting others to be gay yeah which is bizarre and the third is that they're exactly the same as pedophiles there's no difference I actually got a Ugandan Minister to say on camera this is he's the minister of ethics and integrity the only such ministry in the world and I said to him that even if these three utterly false supports on which you base your homophobia were true which they aren't there's so much more to worry about in your country than the odd gay person going to bed with the other gay person for example you haven't almost almost an epidemic of child rape in this country which is just frightening he said ah but it is the right kind of child rape Wow so I said I said that was on Cameron do you know that that was on camera he said yes he said can you just explain what you mean is what it is men wait raping girls which isn't natural just where do you begin yeah and where do you begin um and this you know so it has tried my patience a little and in Brazil there was a senator was officially and his big argument it was unnatural and fortunately I had armed myself with a few friends who are zoologist who gave me bit a number between 400 odd and $2,000 it was very hard than to be more specific of homosexual behavior observed in the animal kingdom and as I put to him there's only one example ever been observed in the animal kingdom of homophobia and that's in the human race so which of us is unnatural well fascinating when he had no answer that choice I don't want to talk about Derby there's nothing it's not relevant Zoe didn't sell talking about the Bible and of course as you know the Bible is far more interested in circumcision and slavery and what you may do with the daughters of the people you have conquered than it is in homosexuality dimensions I think the only three times yeah I resolve all there I have to still go you're just so that we go to a commercial break and the light the sponsors without conversation look we write back I remember [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] welcome back I'm here with the lovely Stephen Fry who's just informed me not only is Arthur Conan Doyle's busty today but it is Richard Wagner Bob no the cruiser who I noted to the day I don't I know nothing about there nothing at all except I'm a bit frightened of them yet because the Nazis like him alone yes he didn't marry Natalie woods in case you were thinking of that's Robert right yeah just to be absolutely clear he was a he was a German composer born in Leipzig on 22nd of May 1813 and he was a towering genius who who cast a shadow over the entire 19th and 20th centuries in music and art on the other hand he was also if I may say they were howling all ah man rightful man yeah and I went out to make a film about him because from an early age I was obsessed by his music it is so powerful so remarkable it gets parts of you that no other music musician that I'd ever heard does I mean I love all kinds of music serious classical music or indeed you know rock music pop music jazz all kinds but there's something about violins was so special and yet as I said earlier with the Jewish mother this man who specifically wrote an article of a notorious pamphlet called on Jewishness and music in which he he attached use quite quite horribly it's specifically Mendelssohn the composer and Meyer who was the biggest composer of that period there was now largely forgotten and but it was very deep and visceral it was a her repulsive Jews were and that was bad enough to read this great great great genius writing such things but what was worse was that fifty years after he died Adolf Hitler came to power and Hitler had already been many many times - by Royd the the theater that vogner built I was a friend of vogner's descendants and family and then Calton they they called in the future XIII that the savior of Germany similar and every Nuremberg rally Hitler would go to Nuremberg and had the Meister singers from Nuremberg the master singers one of his long as great operas played so I went made this film and it was painful because I I had to confront a lot of a lot of the problems where if you love some art work but you hate Kate the art yeah yeah I know it's like there is like somewhere in genesis is it you know it's you judge it's the fruit by their fruit show you know them in other words that the tree may be ugly in now but if the fruit is sweet as addition see don't question me but you do question it and I saw this amazing woman called Anita Valtor bow fish who lassic eval fish who had as a little girl being at Auschwitz and be she had this astonishing talent on the cello so she played for the cappella the the the little band at Auschwitz in the female version which was conducted by the UH niece or cousin I think of Marla the composers and that's what saved her from death because there are the rest of her family once a talented all perished and she told me about this one occasion which just sent chills through me she said I was sitting picking lice from a friend's scalp and the camp doctor walked in you've probably heard of him his name was Joseph Mengele good lord this is God I certainly has one of them oh yeah evil DeRozan who ever lived yeah and I said what did you see he said well my bowels turned to what I was just terrified because we all knew that people would disappear into surgery and they were never seen again and or they would mutilated beyond belief and with those screams come from his surgery and I thought oh god oh god oh god he wants to find out what makes the brain of a musician or something is going to cut me open and and outside looked at him and trembled and he pointed to my instrument snapped his finger not off thank God he just wants me to play so I said what happened she said you followed him into his office and he pointed me to the corner and I played and I said remember what he fidgeted of course I remember it was it was time alai which is a piece by Schumann which is transcendently beautiful and I said him when it finished and I said he waked by the way and I said did he thank you and he said oh you sweet boy you still don't really understand do you and I said well I'm just thinking you know an intelligent man and his girl plays a beautiful music do you thank your telephone or your washing machine we weren't human good large whose were not human that is why they could do what they did to us because they really really did not think we were human and that was because they had had ten years of girdles and Stryker and and companies films and this propaganda and the guy with the colonel was you're talking about you're coming from Wagner and the anti-semitism a glory of the Aryan race yeah and this inter mentioned is literally is German for subhumans and that's what the Jews were unto mention or often mention eight men and and if you do that for a generation you just make some population feel that the other populations and not units they can do anything to as that's what the Holocaust proves well anyway so so what you're anywhere yeah against the Radian piece of music that yeah this is about love and it is energy power that is anti-fascist so that was that was a really this has become a very heavy example of The Late Late Show but I have I think I think the format is I think it's fine I'll get it they can go away if they don't like we can talk about rosy nipples at another point I'm thinking rosy nipples have a place but that place is tucked away okay evening so I think it's appropriate that way all you want to talk about it's very late at night yeah and I but what I find fascinating is that the idea that you are not affected your appreciation of the art is not a cycle you think I think oh my god ah ah oh yeah um take is beautiful music instead of cracking tutti frutti I dunno I do every single time I do until I hear it that's that and then as soon as I hear it it takes me somewhere so beautiful so profound so extraordinary he is he was a pygmy compared to the art he made and that's often the case and in the film I that the bioriod festival of spiel has the festive players that he found it to make his own music his own theater a unique theater with it so the orchestra is under the stage and it is only one that's allowed to break any safety laws so that when the ring starts the four Knights of the ring of the Nibelungen is this sequence of of dramas begins you're in complete blackness there no exit signs there's no spillage of light from the orchestra because it's under the stage where it blends with the singers and to this deep blackness this note sounds out and then the river the Rhine appears to glitter across the stage slowly and it's as if the world is being born and it's an amazing moment and it's moments like that that just shifted they'd passed that test that Gleb Miller had you know that yeah you had said you know IIIi want to hear that that's that wow you're that sound now and you've got it because what do you do you think it's best not to know about the artists of the art that you like are musicians and painters because there's been a couple drawings I've done some nice pictures as well I mean you have to be so true you know I'm due to summer they've beaten their wives they they've been yeah grade they've done all kinds of dreadful things it's really really hard to I don't I don't have and this is in no way a reflection on having you here but either some people I won't have in the show because I'm in such awe what they do like David Bowie I've been here and will not be here not not that he's what me no how can I be here but yeah like can i play on this yeah right but I don't want to come here because I am such a fan I'd hate him to be I've been in it done yeah I don't want that and so in the same way I would hate it if someone told me that Laurel and Hardy didn't get on and never spoke to each other I have cousins I know the air but but if someone told me that yeah no I've horrible even it's always a joy talkie I'm afraid we're out of time come on that most magnificent times yeah I feel that we didn't we should have included the the robot skeleton more but as always quite a lot Stephen Fry everyone we were right by [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] well we learned a lot about Widener didn't wait so listen if anything happened tonight upset yeah I'm sorry that you know I'm sorry that you got upset by people talking but I still believe people talking and saying what they think and saying how they feel is a good idea so you'll be fine go to sleep

Channel: The Jayleno Fly

Views: 374,980

Rating: 4.8642683 out of 5

Keywords: クレイグと女の子の女性, クレイグ・ファーガソン, ロボットをゲオフ, craig ferguson, craig ferguson and the ladies, flirting masterclass, funny late night, best talkshow, funny talkshow, talkshow compilation, talkshow moments, flirt talkshow, geoff the robot, the jayleno fly, funny moments, stephen fry, text and imagery, stephen fry book, stephen fry interview, stephen fry craig ferguson, stephen fry compilation, stephen fry craig compilation, stephen fry funny, stephen fry tv, stephen fry telling story

Id: eD-3-hLqg4I

Length: 81min 42sec (4902 seconds)

Published: Fri Jun 02 2017