Welcome to part two of my chat with the wonderful Piano Valley. And if you haven't listened to

Part 1 yet, please do as he's well worth it. Also, I really recommend you pre-order a copy of his

forthcoming book. Why can't I just enjoy things? Because I guarantee you will absolutely enjoy it.

And while you're at it, I'd love it if you subscribe to walking the dog. So just to set

the scene for you, we're in Finsbury Park and we're going to rejoin Pierre telling us more about

when he first decided to give stand-up comedy a go. I'll shut up now so you can listen to the

brilliant man himself. Here's Pierre and Ray Ray. I was definitely worried about being shit, but I said to myself, before I did my first ever gig, I said, it's just three minutes, you know. Yeah. And then if it's bad, I won't do it again. I mean, it obviously was good. Yeah, it was good enough. The other thing I didn't know at the time about stand-up is that it gives you an enormous adrenaline rush even if you're bad at it. So you can get addicted to doing badly. Some people are addicted to stand-up even though they find it very difficult and, you know, don't progress. They're still addicted because it is like an extreme sport yeah but I I got

lucky because I sort of just hit the tail end of the the the very dying

whispers of the stand-up boom of the Nauties I got signed to an agency in 20 2012

and sort of started doing gigs for a little bits of money here and there quite quickly 2013

quite quickly out of uni these days I think it's a lot harder to break in because there's so many

of us there was a lot of us back then stand-ups but now there's even more five times as me I don't

know loads there's no official number i mean i was

aware of you anywhere and i'd seen your comedy and i thought you were super talented oh thank you

and then you joined our radio show i did initially just as part of the rotating cast of have i

got news for you hosts and then it turned out i was the, I got, I got plucked.

You were the chosen Dalai Lama. I was the chosen Dalai Lama, yes. I was very lucky and are very pleased

to be plucked from the, from the crowd, yeah. And, yeah, and also it was, it was such a thrill to be on the show live with you and frank and to have to

it's the closest thing to actually being live on stage live radio i'd done bits of live radio

but only ever sort of interview segments and stuff and uh much more adrenaline fueled than

say a podcast recording or an interview.

Just because, like, now, I could say terrible things to you, really awful.

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