Name: Martin Amis Doesn't Care For Margaret Thatcher | Letterman
Uploaded: 2023-05-20T21:58:08.000Z
Description: Watch the stand-up comedy video 'Martin Amis Doesn't Care For Margaret Thatcher | Letterman' from Letterman on Comedy Buff. Published 2023-05-20. Transcript available.

Watch the stand-up comedy video 'Martin Amis Doesn't Care For Margaret Thatcher | Letterman' from Letterman on Comedy Buff. Published 2023-05-20. Transcript available.

Our next guest is a best-selling author and journalist whose new novel is
entitled London
Fields. I have a copy of it right here. Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome
the author Martin
Amos. Martin, are you here? Are you back there? Martin, pleasure to see you.
Thank you for being
here. Please have a seat, won't you? How you doing? Fine. Do you find yourself
spending a lot of time
in the United States these days? Not as much as I used to since I've had
children. I see.
How many kids did he have? Two. Boy and girl? Two girls? Two boys? No, not the
perfect family
formation, but just two boys. And is this the great thrill of your life, as
everyone says?
It's pretty good, yeah. Mind you, the people who do PR for children have done a
very good job. I mean,
every parent knows that each child is in fact heaven and hell at the same time
in the same package,
and the package is usually a diaper, and the diaper is usually full. But on the
other hand,
they're awfully cute and very funny. You know, I had a conversation with a
friend of mine about a
week ago on this very topic, and he has almost a two-year-old boy. Well, he has
a boy who's almost
two, I guess, is how that works. And we were talking about changing diapers,
and he was telling me far
more than I wanted to know on the topic. And he went on and on and on, and the
longer he talked,
the more discouraged and depressed he became. It's a bad experience, changing a
diaper. But the
thing is, I mean, as a new man, you do change your share of diapers, but the
thing is to pick which
diaper to, I mean, if it's a nice little one, you change it. If the stuff is
actually frilling the
baby's neck, then you, you say to the wife, this is one for you.
He, he actually told me sometimes it comes time to change the baby. You put the
baby up in the
little changing table or on the bed or wherever they do it, and he'll open up
the diaper, and he'll
close it back up. And he says, I have to go sit down for a few minutes to kind
of gather his
strength to pursue that. Well, tell us, how are things in Great Britain these
days? What, what is
going on there? What is the state of life? And how would we find it if we were
to go there now?
Well, Great Britain is still there, just about. I mean, I think Americans still
do have this
touching idea that it's full of dukes and beef eaters and changing of the guard.
And
everyone's very polite to everyone else. It's not really like that anymore. It's
sort of
rugged now. It's, uh, mean streets. Yeah. And why is that? What causes the
change?
Well, it's partly, uh, the old witch, uh, Margaret Thatcher has
has worked her magic over the last 10 years. And, uh, it's a different kind of
country. It's a
different, different feel on the street now. So, so people do not now like her.
Did they ever
like her? They must've liked her better than they do now. Do you mean like her
or fancy her? Well,
appreciate what she, what she's doing. Um, she's never been popular. She's, um,
you couldn't really
imagine this in America, but she's, she's won elections from 20 points behind
on personal
approval ratings. The thing seems to be with Thatcher and with the English is
that, um,
we only understand things that are bad for us. We only like things that are bad
for us.
The smack, the smack bottom is all we, the, the tingling bottom tells us that
what we're
getting is good for us. Uh, you know, that delicious tingle in the bottom that
means you've been
corrected in the right way. You've taken your medicine. It's good for you.
And this is, this is some kind of national policy is well, if I find it very
odd that a woman should
rule a country in the way she does, because I, I think of women as being caring
and provident
creatures who think about the future and like to, you know, make sure that
everyone's got enough
to eat. Um, on the other hand, there is, the remains summed out of whether Mrs.
Thatcher is a woman.
And at these summits she attends, I think there's a widespread anxiety that one
day she's going to
suddenly March into the wrong toilet. Um, this is a, you know, Mitterrand of
France said that she has
the eyes of Caligula and the mouth of Marilyn Monroe. Uh, Brzezinski, her own
Spigniew Brzezinski said that,
um, he thought she was a woman without any female qualities at all. In fact,
she, uh, this is well known
in England. She takes a lot of, um, hormone pills. So in fact, she's toxic with
estrogen and this is how.
Man. Um, what, um, what, what, what do, what do you believe is the, the popular
view, uh, the average
citizen, uh, holds for the administration in this country, specifically our
vice president?
I'm a big fan of Dan Quayles. I was, I was down in New Orleans when he was
unveiled. Um, what the hell does that mean? Oh, at the convention? When they
cut the ribbon on him.
Yeah. His, his first public act was to be kissed by Barbara Bush and the
cameras lingered on him
going... Then he was, he was taken by Bush proudly to the Californian caucus,
uh, part
party for him. And she made a speech and the first sentence he uttered in, you
know, in his,
in his role as capacity as vice president was, he said that a challenge faces
this country. He said,
um, are we going to go onto the future or pass to the back?
Yeah. And he meant back to the past. He claimed it was a Hoosierism, but, um,
and Bush, you know,
than whom the English language has no fiercer enemy. Even he, I think was
thinking, Christ.
It was only just beginning there. Uh, Martin, we're, we're out of time. Please
come back. I'd
like to talk to you some more and, and thank you for being here tonight. My
thanks also to Carol Leifer.
She'll be at the, uh, Paradise Theatre in Boston on Saturday. My thanks to
Steve Guttenberg
and everybody in the, uh, trick. Good night, everybody.
Thank you.