Comic recalls a nightmare experience

Jack Dee has told of the time he, Rob Newman and the late Sean Hughes played a stand-up gig in a Scottish prison.

He recalled: ‘We went with a Canadian agent who was from the Just For Laughs festival. He said, "Yeah, it's no big deal, I've been to a lot of prisons in the US, you'll be fine, you'll be fine."

‘We go through the gates, and we all get searched and everything like that, and he just suddenly goes really quiet, this Canadian agent. After about 20 minutes, we got taken through to the chapel, where the gig was going to be. 

‘Bruce, his name was, came up to me and says "Jack, have I got this right? None of the wardens have guns?" I said, "I think you’ll find that is right"

‘He just went pale because he thought we're about to let in like 200 prisoners and do this gig, which was a nightmare anyway; I think he was worried for his life at that point 

’It was a pretty tough gig. I remember my opening line was, "I was on the bus the other day and someone at the back shouts, "lucky you!"

‘I thought, "Ooh, yeah, okay. I've overlooked that, haven't I?"’

The gig – at Perth Prison – had been arranged by his larger-than-life agent Addison Cresswell, who died in 2013, during the Edinburgh Fringe.

‘I don't know why he thought that was a good thing to do,’ Dee reflected on Kate Thornton’s White Wine Question Time podcast. ‘I think he must have thought it was my Johnny Cash moment or something.’

In a previous interview about the gig, he recalled the  Scottish warden telling him dolefully that most of the audience were re-murderers, so they had ‘murdered, done time, got out and murdered again’.

Dee recalled: ‘So it was for our own safety that the lights had to be on the audience instead of the stage.’

• Kate Thornton’s White Wine Question Time is available on all podcast platforms, including Apple.

Published: 9 Feb 2024