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Asian Dub Foundation – Coming Over Here

Some stand-up routines take years to work out. This one slipped out, as Kevin Eldon would say, like a newborn foal.

I was driving my son to school on April 25th 2013. I heard Paul Nuttalls, the then leader of the Ukips, on Radio 4 talking about immigration and it was so jumbled up it made me laugh.

I went home, played back the interview, transcribed it, and exaggerated it until I had Paul taking a position against matter itself, and by lunchtime it was done.

The routine has had a massive half life, and seems to go viral whenever people are arguing about immigration. I am glad it has given some comedy comfort to people who feel like they don’t recognise the intolerant country we now seem to be in.

When ADF said they wanted to sample it I couldn’t be happier, as it seemed the final stage of letting go to serve the greater good. And what 50-something frustrated rock star could say no to appearing in a video with a veteran punk-dance combo whose records he’d buy anyway?

The boys were very gentle with me as I tried to work out what exactly was expected of me, and in the downtime they jammed John Coltrane-style on Rogers and Hammerstein’s My Favourite Things

The version of the routine I gave ADF is a bit fuzzy on some dates and a syllable of the Anglo Saxon poetry quote seems to have gone astray – every time I performed it there’d be slippage – but I love how they have tweaked it to serve their purposes in the debate about what exactly constitutes the ever fluid notion of national identity.

I love how the flute break before the Anglo Saxon quote sounds like it’s come from 1,000 years ago, and the record is the only thing I’ve ever been involved in that my kids actually like.

Irrespective of the rights and wrongs of Brexit itself, every time a deadline looms the police report upsurges of violence against those perceived by some as unwelcome here.

ADF seem to have made something that was merely funny into something improbably powerful and it is a great honour to have been involved in it.


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Krishnan Guru-Murthy’s Ways to Change The World Podcast
‘Today With Des & Mel’
Idler Podcast – October 2020
On Jack Docherty’s Show – 1999
Talking to Iain Sinclair about ‘The Last London’
Radio 4 Comedy
Word In Your Ear – “things overheard in record shops” and a Nightingales kazoo
StandUp Opera Video Diary
Content Provider – DVDs
Estate Agent Infestation
Glasgow Fest Preview
Content Provider Work In Progress Clip
Childhood
Clip from ‘Rock’s Back Pages’ podcast (Sept 2020)


Stewart Lee