Name: Dr. Jonathan Miller on Letterman, October 8, 1984
Uploaded: 2019-11-27T22:25:52.000Z
Description: Watch the stand-up comedy video 'Dr. Jonathan Miller on Letterman, October 8, 1984' from Don Giller on Comedy Buff. Published 2019-11-27. Transcript available.

Watch the stand-up comedy video 'Dr. Jonathan Miller on Letterman, October 8, 1984' from Don Giller on Comedy Buff. Published 2019-11-27. Transcript available.

welcome back to the program tonight my first guest is probably the only man in
the world who can claim to be an actor director producer comedian author and
physician he was the host of the PBS series the body in question and this is
his latest book right here it's called the facts of life it's a pleasure to
welcome dr. Jonathan Miller
thank you for being here on Columbus Day hate to ruin your holiday like yes it
really is it certainly ate interest tell me about the the PBS series the body
in
question now the times that I saw the show how many how many elements were in
the series there were 13 13 now maybe this happened only the one time but it
seemed like you were he had an array of organs human organs yes and you were
describing them in fascinating detail and then also cutting into them yes yes
now
that seemed awfully strange well yes it is really I mean they weren't my organs
for
a star and they wear the organs of someone who'd lost interest in them at
the time so it was it was all right it does seem an odd thing to cut into them
I
mean I think what startled people was how much like a butcher slab it looks oh
yeah yeah I can remember in fact I believe it was the liver and it was just
boom
right there and wacko you had cutlets or something and it was it's it's it's
very
similar to that now is there is there an ethical question involved here I'm
sure
there isn't if you're doing it yes there is an ethical question you can't just
you
know take organs as you want to and play around with them I mean you
couldn't just seem to get them on a comedy show for example even with
permission I don't think we have tried it's quite hard to know how you would
actually ask for permission as well you know you say yeah we've got this comic
coming up is your liver free but how as you as a doctor how do you get them
where
do you get them well what you do is you you approach relatives very softly on
tiptoe and say look we have this comedy show coming up is his liver free at the
time I said no it's appearing on the west coast at the moment yeah on the
Carson
show but you know it was it was it was stunning to watch because it you it gave
you a whole different perspective as to actually what is he most people don't
know
what they got inside it no and you can't you can't know by concentrating on it
because you wouldn't know what to concentrate on yeah and you didn't think
very hard and you still don't know what you've got inside now now you as a
doctor is
there a point where even today handling those and and cutting them up makes you
a little queasy are you way beyond that what I mean you make me yes it does
make
one queasy really it doesn't make you queasy if you're in the right setting if
you're in the autopsy room then you're not thinking of being in a restaurant if
you go too quickly to a restaurant after being in the autopsy room then there
can
be a clash of interests oh my tell me about the the commander of the order of
Great Britain oh the British Empire yeah the British Empire that's rather
embarrassing
thing to talk about you know I mean what happens is that every year twice a
year in
fact the Queen hands out a series of decorations for people who've done one
thing either defused bombs or put on shows or done exports or discovered how
the
liver works or something of that sort and and there are a series of ranked
orders which
go all the way from medals called the MBE up to knighthoods and beyond I mean
it's a sort of
stratospheric orders called the order of merit and I I came in for one of these
things called the CBE which is commander of the British Empire what had you
done
to get your CBE I simply lived long enough I think really and been around they
just go
through the phone book and I kept my liver to myself and all my organs were
intact and
she said well we'll give it to him and no I suppose I've been in showbiz long
enough and done enough plays and so forth and so what is the ceremony like what
it's
it's it's it's rather touching really because you get a range of people all
together it's rather
democratic thing in spite of what people think because it's in that you get
lots of people who
defuse bombs and and rescue children from canals and people who've discovered
how cancer works and so
forth and they're all herded together in this ballroom watched by proud
relatives with an orchestra playing
in a little balcony medleys from Fiddler on the Roof and and that's exactly
what goes on in fact had you met the
Queen before I've met her once at a luncheon now what is that like is she is
there any way possible you
can have any kind of rapport with the woman or is it all behind the facade that
she has to maintain
well she's she's really very friendly and she's rather witty as well one's
often surprised by how
forceful she is I mean when you see her on television she often looks a great
deal more
sort of frosty and disdainful than you might think but actually she's extremely
forceful very
witty and very knowledgeable and the only thing that's likely odd is when you
wait for her to arrive at
something like a luncheon you're all there very embarrassed in a room talking
to her queries and
aids and so forth and suddenly there's a sort of rustling and scuffling out in
the corridor and
then suddenly hundreds of dogs are released into the room before she comes corgis
or you know very
small legs who all then make a tremendous die for your crotch so you stand
there while talking to
her pretending that these things are not sniffing you sorry about that they're
saying yes ma'am yes
ma'am and you're sort of pushing these dogs away from you and you see men all
around the room with
these these corgis sniffing at them is this her idea of a joke or is this a
just an icebreaker just
uh yes it's it's it's it sort of gets conversation yeah i would think so and
you say uh but it's um
it's also because she's surrounded by these creatures she loves them she loves
dogs and horses you
know i think probably did you hurt yourself on that um i i'm coming around now
okay well i'll tell you
all right we're here with uh dr jonathan miller now you uh were in the beyond
the fringe is that
the name of the review that is the name of tell folks what this is for those
who may not know what
we're talking about well yes this happened about 25 years ago um well yes a bit
a bit less than that
22 years ago and uh four of us dudley moore uh and then there was alan bennett
and peter cook and
myself this is together you were in medical school at the time no i was already
a doctor by then no
kidding i was working in a casualty department and someone came to me and said
what i like i mean
it doesn't mean that people were cruising the streets um going into casualty
departments asking
people if they'd like to do satirical shows you know um and people dropped the
instruments and said
yes i don't mind if i do yeah i'll be with you later dear um um but that was
more or less how it
happened and i i joined this team and we started doing a show at the edinburgh
festival and it came
to london it was very successful originally it was a one-time-only deal or yes
it was i was i was
intending to do it as a vacation between two jobs you see i was doing a um i
was doing this job i mean
this surgical job and uh i had to drop it like a hot potato and ask people and
put people on hold
what kind of things were you doing in the review well there were it was all
sorts of stuff we covered
satirical material which i suppose it was it was a pioneer in that way i mean
long before things
like saturday night live and that lot got going it started making attacks on
political situations it
attacked um some of the fatuous ideas of of nuclear warfare and deterrence we
had a civil defense sketch
which which made remarks about some of the absurdities i mean they tended to
treat civil defense at that
time as if nuclear war was nothing more than a thunderstorm which you'd have to
get out of
um i mean i remember there was a uh we had we had this uh cuddly moore was up
in the audience he used
to ask cod questions and he used to say things like um i have a question um in
the event of uh the
holocaust um how how soon will it be before normal public services are resumed
and one of us would rise
and say that's a very fair question uh following armageddon um following armageddon
we do hope to have
public services working pretty smoothly fairly soon after the event although i
feel in all fairness i
must point out that it must needs be something in the nature of a skeleton
service well you see at
that time um that was those sort of things uh those sort of jokes and jests
about it still seem to be
applicable today so it was it was a topical show but it was the first time that
anyone had actually
made specific remarks about nuclear war on a stage it was the first time anyone
had ever imitated a living
politician in england another state we peter cook impersonated harold mcmillan
we we took off um some
of the absurdities and sentimental myths of the second world war and all these
things were really quite
unforgivable at that time it seemed like i mean they were at that time very
pioneering it seems rather
dilute i think in some ways now but because uh you know people have advanced
through the hole that we
made in the uh in the wall but uh it was the beginning of that sort of
political satire i
think both in england and america so now uh if i understand correctly you're
going back to medicine
more on a full-time basis well i've been directing in the theater now for about
20 years and i think
i've done most of the things i really want to apart from there are a few also
direct opera yeah i direct
opera as well yeah and i've done most of the operas i want to do now except for
don giovanni which i'll do at
the end yeah i'd love to do that one myself it's a nice one well come on in dave
uh so now why why
return to medicine full-time not that it isn't a well i can't go back and treat
patients i'd be much
too dangerous and i'd leave all these organs you talked about all over the
floor now if you were
going to go back into practice what sort of a doctor would you be well i'm i'm
interested in
neurological research i i the brain yeah i'm interested in brain damage and
some of the disorders that
follow from brain damage and that's really how i spend most of my time now i
see patients who've had
strokes and then let me ask you just a couple of questions about the brain do
we know uh more about
the brain than we don't know or we the unknown is more than what we do know i
think it's vastly more
than we know uh and we've only just touched the surface of it and very little
at that yeah um we know
enormously more than we used to say 25 or 30 years ago but we still haven't got
anywhere near explaining
um how we find our way out of the room without advice another question you know
when somebody will say
remember uh when uncle remember uncle bill's second wife and you go yeah what
and you like a half an
hour later tip of the tongue it just appears in your head now how does that
happen well and what was
her name well it's a very it's a very interesting business it's a recognized
phenomenon it's called
the tip of the tongue phenomenon or the t-o-t they always go in for acronyms um
and if you notice if you
if you write down all the false attempts you make and take great care to do it
the next time it happens
because it's very interesting and then look at the right result when you
finally get it you'll always
find that all the false attempts bear a relationship to the right answer oh
really that they for
example they phonetically are very similar they scan the same they have the
same uh sort of rhythm
so it's a form of deductive reasoning well it's not that it's just that what
you're seeing is
something about the filing system under which these things are headed they're
often they're filed away
under things which are phonetically similar and they're also filed away under
names which have the
same meaning yeah so that you'll you'll often um remember a name which is uh
say if you if someone's
called ratner you'll probably have someone saying um it's catnip yeah now cat
and rat are related to
one another because in fact cats chase rats and so that you're getting a filing
system so you just
really are ruffling through as it were a huge card catalog that's right you hit
them but the card catalog
goes in different directions there's a card catalog which is under phonetic
similarities but there's
also a card catalog under meaning similarities or meaning connections so this
is the one of things
we do know about the brain well it's not about the brain it's about the mind we
don't know how the
brain does it but we but it's but certainly by looking at the way in which
people uh perform under
tests we've learned a lot about how the mind works we don't quite know how the
hardware does what the
mind does well when you get some progress on this for a moment i'll come back
oh sure don't go anywhere else come
right here don't publish it in a medical journal you'll be right here all right
and uh the new book
this is a fascinating uh bit of work by the way the facts of the life facts of
life uh jonathan miller
nice to meet you sir very nice to see you station identification here folks we'll
be right back

Dr. Jonathan Miller on Letterman, October 8, 1984

welcome back to the program tonight my first guest is probably the only man in
the world who can claim to be an actor director producer comedian author and
physician he was the host of the PBS series the body in question and this is
his latest book right here it's called the facts of life it's a pleasure to
welcome dr. Jonathan Miller
thank you for being here on Columbus Day hate to ruin your holiday like yes it
really is it certainly ate interest tell me about the the PBS series the body
in
question now the times that I saw the show how many how many elements were in
the series there were 13 13 now maybe this happened only the one time but it
seemed like you were he had an array of organs human organs yes and you were
describing them in fascinating detail and then also cutting into them yes yes
now
that seemed awfully strange well yes it is really I mean they weren't my organs
for
a star and they wear the organs of someone who'd lost interest in them at
the time so it was it was all right it does seem an odd thing to cut into them
I
mean I think what startled people was how much like a butcher slab it looks oh
yeah yeah I can remember in fact I believe it was the liver and it was just
boom
right there and wacko you had cutlets or something and it was it's it's it's
very
similar to that now is there is there an ethical question involved here I'm
sure
there isn't if you're doing it yes there is an ethical question you can't just
you
know take organs as you want to and play around with them I mean you
couldn't just seem to get them on a comedy show for example even with
permission I don't think we have tried it's quite hard to know how you would
actually ask for permission as well you know you say yeah we've got this comic
coming up is your liver free but how as you as a doctor how do you get them
where
do you get them well what you do is you you approach relatives very softly on
tiptoe and say look we have this comedy show coming up is his liver free at the
time I said no it's appearing on the west coast at the moment yeah on the
Carson
show but you know it was it was it was stunning to watch because it you it gave
you a whole different perspective as to actually what is he most people don't
know
what they got inside it no and you can't you can't know by concentrating on it
because you wouldn't know what to concentrate on yeah and you didn't think
very hard and you still don't know what you've got inside now now you as a
doctor is
there a point where even today handling those and and cutting them up makes you
a little queasy are you way beyond that what I mean you make me yes it does
make
one queasy really it doesn't make you queasy if you're in the right setting if
you're in the autopsy room then you're not thinking of being in a restaurant if
you go too quickly to a restaurant after being in the autopsy room then there
can
be a clash of interests oh my tell me about the the commander of the order of
Great Britain oh the British Empire yeah the British Empire that's rather
embarrassing
thing to talk about you know I mean what happens is that every year twice a
year in
fact the Queen hands out a series of decorations for people who've done one
thing either defused bombs or put on shows or done exports or discovered how
the
liver works or something of that sort and and there are a series of ranked
orders which
go all the way from medals called the MBE up to knighthoods and beyond I mean
it's a sort of
stratospheric orders called the order of merit and I I came in for one of these
things called the CBE which is commander of the British Empire what had you
done
to get your CBE I simply lived long enough I think really and been around they
just go
through the phone book and I kept my liver to myself and all my organs were
intact and
she said well we'll give it to him and no I suppose I've been in showbiz long
enough and done enough plays and so forth and so what is the ceremony like what
it's
it's it's it's rather touching really because you get a range of people all
together it's rather
democratic thing in spite of what people think because it's in that you get
lots of people who
defuse bombs and and rescue children from canals and people who've discovered
how cancer works and so
forth and they're all herded together in this ballroom watched by proud
relatives with an orchestra playing
in a little balcony medleys from Fiddler on the Roof and and that's exactly
what goes on in fact had you met the
Queen before I've met her once at a luncheon now what is that like is she is
there any way possible you
can have any kind of rapport with the woman or is it all behind the facade that
she has to maintain
well she's she's really very friendly and she's rather witty as well one's
often surprised by how
forceful she is I mean when you see her on television she often looks a great
deal more
sort of frosty and disdainful than you might think but actually she's extremely
forceful very
witty and very knowledgeable and the only thing that's likely odd is when you
wait for her to arrive at
something like a luncheon you're all there very embarrassed in a room talking
to her queries and
aids and so forth and suddenly there's a sort of rustling and scuffling out in
the corridor and
then suddenly hundreds of dogs are released into the room before she comes corgis
or you know very
small legs who all then make a tremendous die for your crotch so you stand
there while talking to
her pretending that these things are not sniffing you sorry about that they're
saying yes ma'am yes
ma'am and you're sort of pushing these dogs away from you and you see men all
around the room with
these these corgis sniffing at them is this her idea of a joke or is this a
just an icebreaker just
uh yes it's it's it's it sort of gets conversation yeah i would think so and
you say uh but it's um
it's also because she's surrounded by these creatures she loves them she loves
dogs and horses you
know i think probably did you hurt yourself on that um i i'm coming around now
okay well i'll tell you
all right we're here with uh dr jonathan miller now you uh were in the beyond
the fringe is that
the name of the review that is the name of tell folks what this is for those
who may not know what
we're talking about well yes this happened about 25 years ago um well yes a bit
a bit less than that
22 years ago and uh four of us dudley moore uh and then there was alan bennett
and peter cook and
myself this is together you were in medical school at the time no i was already
a doctor by then no
kidding i was working in a casualty department and someone came to me and said
what i like i mean
it doesn't mean that people were cruising the streets um going into casualty
departments asking
people if they'd like to do satirical shows you know um and people dropped the
instruments and said
yes i don't mind if i do yeah i'll be with you later dear um um but that was
more or less how it
happened and i i joined this team and we started doing a show at the edinburgh
festival and it came
to london it was very successful originally it was a one-time-only deal or yes
it was i was i was
intending to do it as a vacation between two jobs you see i was doing a um i
was doing this job i mean
this surgical job and uh i had to drop it like a hot potato and ask people and
put people on hold
what kind of things were you doing in the review well there were it was all
sorts of stuff we covered
satirical material which i suppose it was it was a pioneer in that way i mean
long before things
like saturday night live and that lot got going it started making attacks on
political situations it
attacked um some of the fatuous ideas of of nuclear warfare and deterrence we
had a civil defense sketch
which which made remarks about some of the absurdities i mean they tended to
treat civil defense at that
time as if nuclear war was nothing more than a thunderstorm which you'd have to
get out of
um i mean i remember there was a uh we had we had this uh cuddly moore was up
in the audience he used
to ask cod questions and he used to say things like um i have a question um in
the event of uh the
holocaust um how how soon will it be before normal public services are resumed
and one of us would rise
and say that's a very fair question uh following armageddon um following armageddon
we do hope to have
public services working pretty smoothly fairly soon after the event although i
feel in all fairness i
must point out that it must needs be something in the nature of a skeleton
service well you see at
that time um that was those sort of things uh those sort of jokes and jests
about it still seem to be
applicable today so it was it was a topical show but it was the first time that
anyone had actually
made specific remarks about nuclear war on a stage it was the first time anyone
had ever imitated a living
politician in england another state we peter cook impersonated harold mcmillan
we we took off um some
of the absurdities and sentimental myths of the second world war and all these
things were really quite
unforgivable at that time it seemed like i mean they were at that time very
pioneering it seems rather
dilute i think in some ways now but because uh you know people have advanced
through the hole that we
made in the uh in the wall but uh it was the beginning of that sort of
political satire i
think both in england and america so now uh if i understand correctly you're
going back to medicine
more on a full-time basis well i've been directing in the theater now for about
20 years and i think
i've done most of the things i really want to apart from there are a few also
direct opera yeah i direct
opera as well yeah and i've done most of the operas i want to do now except for
don giovanni which i'll do at
the end yeah i'd love to do that one myself it's a nice one well come on in dave
uh so now why why
return to medicine full-time not that it isn't a well i can't go back and treat
patients i'd be much
too dangerous and i'd leave all these organs you talked about all over the
floor now if you were
going to go back into practice what sort of a doctor would you be well i'm i'm
interested in
neurological research i i the brain yeah i'm interested in brain damage and
some of the disorders that
follow from brain damage and that's really how i spend most of my time now i
see patients who've had
strokes and then let me ask you just a couple of questions about the brain do
we know uh more about
the brain than we don't know or we the unknown is more than what we do know i
think it's vastly more
than we know uh and we've only just touched the surface of it and very little
at that yeah um we know
enormously more than we used to say 25 or 30 years ago but we still haven't got
anywhere near explaining
um how we find our way out of the room without advice another question you know
when somebody will say
remember uh when uncle remember uncle bill's second wife and you go yeah what
and you like a half an
hour later tip of the tongue it just appears in your head now how does that
happen well and what was
her name well it's a very it's a very interesting business it's a recognized
phenomenon it's called
the tip of the tongue phenomenon or the t-o-t they always go in for acronyms um
and if you notice if you
if you write down all the false attempts you make and take great care to do it
the next time it happens
because it's very interesting and then look at the right result when you
finally get it you'll always
find that all the false attempts bear a relationship to the right answer oh
really that they for
example they phonetically are very similar they scan the same they have the
same uh sort of rhythm
so it's a form of deductive reasoning well it's not that it's just that what
you're seeing is
something about the filing system under which these things are headed they're
often they're filed away
under things which are phonetically similar and they're also filed away under
names which have the
same meaning y