Micky Flanagan
Desert Island Discs
BBC
4.3 • 14.3K Ratings
🗓️ 19 November 2017
⏱️ 35 minutes
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Summary
Micky Flanagan found mainstream success as a comedian in 2007 with his autobiographical 'What Chance Change?' show at the Edinburgh fringe, where he was nominated as best newcomer.
Raised in the East End of London, he left school at 15 with no qualifications and followed his dad into work as a fish porter at Billingsgate fish market. When he quit that job, he spent a summer working in a kitchen in New York, and then returned to London to spend much of the 1980s working in the furniture trade. When his business collapsed he worked as a window cleaner and decorator.
He played truant through much of his secondary school career, but in his mid-twenties he studied for a GCSE in English, and later gained a place at City University, London, graduating with Social Sciences degree. He trained to become a teacher, and then discovered comedy through night classes. Sell-out UK tours and appearances on 'Mock the Week' and 'Would I Lie to You' followed, and he's made two TV series for Sky - 'Detour De France' and 'Micky Flanagan: Thinking Aloud'. He's just finished his third tour of the UK and Ireland with his show 'An' Another Fing...'
Presenter: Kirsty Young Producer: Cathy Drysdale.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | This is the BBC. |
| 0:03.0 | Hello, I'm Kristi Young. |
| 0:05.0 | Welcome to Desert Island Discs, where every week I ask my guests to choose the eight tracks, the book and the luxury item |
| 0:12.0 | that they'd want to take with them if they were cast away on a desert island. |
| 0:16.0 | For rights reasons, the music on these podcast versions is shorter than in the original broadcast. |
| 0:22.0 | You can find over 2,000 more editions to listen to and download on the Desert Island Discs website. |
| 0:31.0 | Music |
| 0:48.0 | My accustomer this week is the comedian Mickey Flanagan, one of Britain's most successful stand-ups. |
| 0:54.0 | The France sell-out tours and his DVDs top the charts, as journeys go, his is something of a jaw-dropper. |
| 1:01.0 | He's been a Billingsgate fish-porter and a painter and decorator, and once upon a time he was a window cleaner, |
| 1:06.0 | working opposite the building site of the Millennium Dome and thinking, who's going to go to that? |
| 1:11.0 | He's just finished an astonishing 12-night run of shows at the Dome's O2 Arena. |
| 1:16.0 | Quite something. |
| 1:17.0 | For a man who describes himself as a right East End Herbert, of course it's not just his cockney-gift of the gab |
| 1:23.0 | and he's taken him all the way to the top. |
| 1:25.0 | Funny? Yes. |
| 1:26.0 | But his routine's burst with a droid observations on class structure, sexual politics and social conditioning. |
| 1:32.0 | He says, am I ever scared at all, stop? Of course. |
| 1:36.0 | But that's why you've got to enjoy it, not to worry too much. |
| 1:39.0 | And I've still got my window-cleaning bucket and my paint brushes in the basement. |
| 1:42.0 | Welcome, Mickey Flanagan. |
| 1:44.0 | You've just finished this run of 12 gigs, as I was saying at the O2 Arena, also for it Wembley as well. |
... |
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