They asked me first, says Joel Dommett

It certainly won't come as a shock to anyone who was at the car-crash event – but Mike Read was not the first choice to interview Chevy Chase earlier this month.

Comic Joel Dommett has revealed that he was higher up the list, having been asked to host the infamous Audience With... event 'surprisingly late' in the day.

Producers apparently approached him because he had often talked of being a massive Chase fan, but Dommett told Iain Lee on TalkRadio: 'I'm a fan as much as the next guy of Chevy Chase but I've never told anyone I'm a fan of Chevy's.'

But he agreed to the gig, saying: 'My thing with anything is at least I'll get a story out of it.'

Dommett gave the proviso that he wouldn't have to write his own questions to the notoriously difficult Chase.

However when the goalposts subsequently shifted and he was asked to do his own research, Dommett reasoned that he was too busy and didn't want to spend Christmas watching Chase's films.

'I love that he was my Plan B,' he said of the eventual host. '”Oh, Joel Dommett can't do it, let's ask Mike Read!'”

Not that Read seemed to get bogged down with research, asking the Hollywood legend such searching questions as ‘how are your haemorrhoids?’, what his favourite soccer team was, and whether he had a message to youngsters about drugs – before cracking out his guitar for a sing-song.

Dommett was speaking to promote his new book, It's Not Me, It's Them: Confessions Of A Hopeless Modern Romantic, which features extracts from his teenage diaries.

He also shared some of his 19-year-old self's gauche thoughts on 'getting good at sex':

"I need to get good at sex". Comedian Joel Dommett shares an intimate secret from his diary when he was 19. @iainlee @FlippinKath @joeldommett pic.twitter.com/nIgd54Ai2n

— talkRADIO (@talkRADIO) January 23, 2018

Published: 23 Jan 2018