Name: Norm Macdonald Live w/ Guest Stephen Merchant (S03E01)
Uploaded: 2016-09-15T00:00:00.000Z
Description: Watch the stand-up comedy video 'Norm Macdonald Live w/ Guest Stephen Merchant (S03E01)' from Norm Macdonald Live on Comedy Buff. Published 2016-09-15. Transcript available.

Watch the stand-up comedy video 'Norm Macdonald Live w/ Guest Stephen Merchant (S03E01)' from Norm Macdonald Live on Comedy Buff. Published 2016-09-15. Transcript available.

Norm Macdonald Live w/ Guest Stephen Merchant (S03E01)

So this is it, huh? This is the book. Two years of my life and finally I wrote
a real book. And you can get this on Amazon. You can pre-order it.
You can pre-order it right now. How have the pre-orders been going?
Well, based on the pre-orders, I can say, as your publisher, that I feel pretty
confident we could do a coffee table book.
No way. A coffee table book would be fantastic. A book that would be on
everybody's coffee table.
Very similar to that, except in this case we would take your book, we would
throw it into a mulcher.
A mulcher.
To make a fine pulp. And from that pulp we could reconstitute a coffee table.
Wait a minute. Aren't there lists, like best-seller lists and stuff? Is it on
any of those?
What's fantastic about your book, Norm, is it's beyond lists. It's in a class
of its own.
Wow.
We haven't seen a book like this in publishing. This is going straight to the
RB.
Straight to the RB? I can't believe it. I've never heard of a book like this.
I can't believe it. I've never heard of a book going straight to the RB like
that.
Just one question. What's an RB?
Oh, that's publishing talk. The RB stands for the Remainder Bin.
Oh, the Remainder Bin?
So all the books that just sit waiting on bookshelves, never being bought,
eventually when it gets too sad, they send them back to a warehouse.
Well, forget about the critics. It's like Stephen King. Maybe the critics don't
like him, but the people love it. That's who I wrote it for. I didn't write it
for critics.
So we have been getting some good responses from the people, particularly on
the paper.
The paper. Wasn't it I who said we have to go with a paper with some substance,
a high quality paper?
And everyone has been complimenting that, particularly when it comes to taking
the pages of your book to wipe shit off their filthy assholes.
That's what they said? Mm-hmm.
You know, I'm not sure you even had the best interest of this book at heart. I
mean, were you an advocate for it?
Norm, I've got to be straight with you. I didn't have a chance to read your
book.
You didn't have a chance to read it?
But I have a very good reason why.
Really? Why is that?
I've been reading a better book.
Well, there's lots of better books. This is just a silly celebrity biography.
It's not a big...
This other book is a celebrity biography.
The book you're reading?
Yeah, a better celebrity biography.
Oh, jeez. Is it Tina Fey?
It's not Tina Fey.
Amy Schumer?
It's not a lady.
Oh, well, there's that at least.
But it was written by someone who knows how to write a celebrity memoir. Maybe
you've heard of him. His name is Fred Stoller.
Fred Stoller? Well, I guess that wrecks it. I'm no author.
I've been telling you that since before you started.
I've been doing this two years. I've got nothing to fall back on. I'm an old
man.
Didn't you used to have a thing on the internet?
Oh, God.
Yeah, people would come on. The podcast.
Yeah, the podcast. That's right.
I promised myself I would never do the podcast again.
You also promised yourself you'd write a good book.
Okay, now.
I mean, there is always one other option.
There's another option? What's that?
You ever heard of the Queensborough Bridge?
I'll do the podcast.
I extend the most robust and convivial greetings to all. To you, our esteemed
podcast viewers who are experiencing these words in places hither, thither, and
presumably on.
You've joined the proceedings on a most felicitous particular occasion, for we
are welcoming forth with a true master of mirth, a veritable Michelangelo of
the lively art of amusing and delighting, the hoi ploi.
Which is not to say, he is not popular also with the hoity-toity.
He is an Emmy and BAFTA, award-winning writer, director, and comedian.
He is the co-creator of the original office of Extras, and he starred in the
HBO hit, Hello Ladies.
He is a splendid person.
And it's good, because otherwise they'd punch motherfucking goddamn face.
He is Steven Marchant, and he's with us for the full hour.
Why do that?
I didn't realize that the show was gonna have such hip references as William F.
Buckley, who's been dead for, what, 25 years?
It's ripped from today's YouTube.
It really is, yeah. The kids watching this online, they're gonna go crazy.
After about three hours on YouTube, you'll find her.
You just keep it up.
What is a popular documentary on Netflix?
It was a big popular documentary.
That was good, I enjoyed it.
No, it was great.
Yes, no, it was great.
Who was he talking with? It was Norman Mayer?
No, Gore Vidal.
Gore Vidal, yeah.
Did you see Jiro Dreams of Sushi?
I didn't.
It's a Japanese guy sleeping.
Is it?
For two hours.
Should we go through all the documentaries on Netflix and just give our
opinions?
Well, it's interesting because, like, at Jiro Dreams of Sushi, no one would
ever watch that.
Right.
I thought that was really popular, though.
It was, but they forced you to watch it, you know.
I thought it was great.
Did you?
Yeah.
Did you see the one about the making of The Island of Dr. Moreau?
Oh, I don't know, I want to.
That's a great, that's a great inside Hollywood.
Unfortunately, I've heard too many people tell me.
Okay, I'm sorry.
No, no, no, tell me little bits about it.
Oh, I see, you've heard the greatest hits.
Yeah, yeah.
But from bad storytellers.
Yeah, sure.
Could you do the whole show as William F. Puckett?
Oh, no.
Just in case anyone tunes in late and misses it.
I can't do it for 90 seconds, I can't do it for the whole show.
But you had a question.
Oh, no, I had a question.
Forget his question.
This just occurred to me on the way to the show.
I'm pleased he's so well prepared.
Because I was brought up on British television.
Okay.
Being from Canada.
And you know when you hear like an inside joke when you're a kid and you laugh
anyway,
you're like, I didn't get it, but I bet I should have or whatever.
And in British shows, they seem to always like mention like some small town
that nobody's ever heard of.
Do you know what I mean?
Right.
Like in Monty Python, he's like pearly, say no more.
Gets a big land.
Right, right, right, right.
Torquay.
Yeah.
Hole.
Hollow.
Hollow.
What are those towns like?
Do they mean something?
No, I think they are just, you know, I'll often refer to say, you know, Newton
Popplford.
That's more like the Rancho Cucamonga.
Yeah.
But they're places which people may or may not have heard of, but just sound,
even to an English ear, they sound small.
Yeah.
Or parochial or regional.
Yeah.
I don't think you were sort of missing out on anything too specific, you know.
Oh, okay.
But Hull is sort of, no one's vacationing in Hull.
Right.
You know what I mean?
If you're an American visiting England, no one's saying you've got to get to Hull.
Pilkington might, right.
Pilkington might.
No, even he would avoid Hull.
Oh, okay.
So you're a child in England.
What are you, 41?
Yeah.
You are?
I am.
Is this a thing you do where you guess people's ages?
I guess I should, yeah.
Is Circus Vargas coming in now?
Oh, you're 41.
Yeah.
Okay.
I forgot everything else.
I don't know.
I was going to ask you something and then I decided to say a number.
Do I look 41?
No, you look 36.
Thank you.
Yeah.
That's what I was fishing for.
But when you were young, was Jimmy Saville on the air?
Jimmy Saville?
Saville as the British call him?
Jimmy Saville was very much on the air.
In fact, when Jimmy Saville who, for people who don't remember, was
subsequently revealed
to be one of our most heinous pedophiles and general all-round rotten eggs.
Oh.
But this only came out after he died.
But when he died, you know, he was a figure from my childhood that I had great
affection
for.
Oh, you did?
He even sent a tweet saying, you know, "R.I.P. Jimmy Saville."
Oh.
And then within sort of 12 months, I was, people were sending me pictures of
that tweet.
Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Really, Steve?
Yeah, really.
And of course, it's only now if people were to Google a picture of Saville,
knowing that
he was a horrible pedophile and general all-round rotten person, that you'd
look at him, you'd
go, "Of course."
I mean, now you look at him, "Yes, that makes perfect sense."
I mean, with these, like, weird...
I knew about the pedophile.
You'd think he'd wear things a bit like this.
I knew a bit about the pedophile, but I didn't know about the opposite.
They didn't know about the all-around bad person part.
Yes.
Well, I suddenly realized that I couldn't remember all of his crimes.
I know they were heinous, and I also didn't want to lower the tone this early
in the show
and just go into the real detail and nitty-gritty of his pedophilia.
Well, one of the nitty-gritty parts was he was such a powerful entertainer that
he was
put on the board of a hospital.
He was on the board of a hospital, and he even had his own room in the hospital
where
he would, as we subsequently discovered, invite people, patients.
And he liked people or patients that were in comas or somehow disabled.
I don't know about that.
That might be your own speculation.
I don't know.
No, no, no.
That's what I heard.
Wow.
I'm glad we kicked off with this and didn't build to the Jimmy Savile.
And there's also clips of Jimmy Savile on the air, like, goosing a girl before
the show.
But you know what's odd is I feel like I remember even when I was at school as
a kid, I remember
Jimmy Savile being regarded as weird.
Okay.
Like, even then, that was sort of the joke, you know, that he was weird and
kind of eccentric.
Well, sort of all the jokes about children's entertainers are that they're pedophiles.
That's what, in America.
Right.
That's how, when you start stand-up.
Yeah.
That's what they tell you.
Well, it turns out a lot of them are.
It does.
You know what I found interesting about extras?
Because everybody thinks of England, they're always like Monty Python.
Like, it's the gold standard for comedy.
Yeah.
But it also had awful comedy.
Terrible.
And in extras, what was the show called within the show?
Oh, well, when the wind whistle blows?
Yeah, whistle blows.
Yeah, I can remember.
But I remember as a kid that there were shows like that with crazy, garish
costumes.
Yeah.
And there were shows that you, that never made it here.
Even the jaw, when Ricky should put his jaw out.
Very much.
Yeah, yeah.
There was a show called Love Thy Neighbor, which ran for many seasons, the
premise of which
was a white man lived next door to a black couple.
Which in the '70s was like, what?
Yeah, yeah.
Can you imagine?
Yeah, yeah.
Extraordinary.
I mean, that ran for years.
And it was all called Mind Your Language, where a guy was teaching a class of
basically
sort of ethnic stereotypes.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
You know, like an Indian man and a Chinese man and so on, teaching them English.
When you say astonishing, well, at the time you wouldn't think it was
astonishing.
You agree with the premise.
Huge hits.
Huge hits.
I saw the original Three's Company recently.
So let's say you're a young boy, you're a young man, and you see a black woman
and a white
man together.
Is it jarring?
When you're a boy.
Well, I never saw that.
I mean, we lived in England.
We didn't allow such things.
Right.
No, I don't remember ever.
You saw it at some point for the first time.
I remember when I was at school growing up, when I was 16, a bit younger, 14,
there was one
black kid in the school.
And I remember thinking, all I remember thinking is, oh, he's the only black
kid in the school.
Do you know what I mean?
Like it was, oh, he's the, like, I would look around and there would just be
white faces
and a few Indian faces and then one black face.
Right.
And now?
And now there's four at that school.
It's really very diverse.
How Muslim is London right now, the last time you were there?
Well, I did a quick head count when I got back.
Yeah.
Just to check if any more had come in or left.
And it seems like we're pretty, we're pretty even keel at the moment.
Yeah.
Your mayor is a...
The...
Our mayor is...
He doesn't even need...
I heard he was an imam.
That's right.
That's right.
Ye