Last night, Keith Chegwin featured on Radio 4′s PM show to be interviewed regarding his actions over the past three days. I can’t embed it here but here’s the link (courtesy of julesgregg), if you would like to hear it. The interview starts at around 49 minutes in so skip to that unless you want to hear some excellent in-depth analysis of yesterday’s news.
Here’s the highlights:
- Eddie Mair starts the interview by interviewing Cheggers about when he joined Twitter.
- Cheggers said “About a year ago for some fun” however he stresses that he has a “small fanbase”, quite possibly how he thinks 39,000 followers is small, I don’t know. I’d like to know where he draws the line between small and a large following.
- In the end he says that he could not keep up with the feedback he was receiving and decided to give a “daily dose of gags” for his followers. Is it just me who thinks this contradicts him saying he has a “small following”? Surely if you have a small following, you can keep up with response and by saying he couldn’t keep up, he’s kinda acknowledging the fact that he’s fairly popular on Twitter.
- Now for the funny part of the interview, Mair asks Chegwin to recite his “top three jokes”, which I won’t quote, in case I forget to credit them. Nah, actually it’s because I didn’t write them down when researching this post, but the funny part was, the jovial Chegwin’s jokes were greeted with just “yep” and hmmhmm’s by Mair. You really need to listen to it, because Cheggers expects a laugh but gets nothing.
- When asked when the controversey started, Cheggers gave not so much a biased version of what happened but more weasel words, skipping past the nitty gritty of how the furore began and focusing on how he was suddenly “bombarded” over his “nicked gags”, implying he’s some sort of innocent party in this.
- Cheggers then describes the situation as “bizarre” which it is to be honest.
- He then retorts that he only has a small following and not people like Jonathan Ross or Stephen Fry who have “millions” of followers.
- Apparently he likes to be honest on Twitter, too. He also describes his jokes as “stupid gags” which i’m sure the writers of those gags would disagree with.
- Surprisingly, he refuses to name the comedians who have allegedly “cyber bullied” him. Quite why this is, I don’t know seeing as he was happy enough to name them on Twitter last night.
- He also seemed to not remember important details when interviewed. Mair retorted “You’re 53!” which was both a good point, and very funny.
- Asked why he couldn’t just credit the comedian’s joke when tweeting, Cheggers answered that the reason was that you can’t do that within 140 characters. Perhaps not, but another tweet maybe? Or a retweet, that’s what they’re there for.
- Cheggers ended the interview by asking comedian’s out there if they could send him their live DVD’s, as he has “trouble sleeping”, which is ironic, because I’ve had the same problem ever since I watched Naked Jungle.
After Mair’s short phone interview with Chegwin, he then interviewed Ed Byrne and Barry Cryer. Ed spent most of the interview filling the gaps in what Cheggers had convieniently forgotten to include, giving the absolute truth and raising the point I have made before that Chegwin holds an audience on Twitter of over 36000. Ed also filled the audience in on the moment where Cheggers accused comedians of being “jealous” of him. Byrne then noted Cheggers poor excuse when he mentioned that he only had 140 characters in which to tell a joke and credit the comedian. Echoing my point that he could just send out another tweet or retweet other comedians.
Cryer then added his opinion, which was mainly refining what Ed had just said and made a very interesting point where he basically showed there’s a difference between jokes and material, with the latter being sacrosanct. The problem with what Cheggers has done is that the jokes he has told are directly traceable, Cryer added. And they “must not be touched”. Fantastic point.
The interview ended with Mair asking both comics for a joke, as it would be fitting given the situation. Byrne went with a humdinger, saying “Keith Chegwin writes most of his own stuff” as a joke (I must stress that joke is Ed Byrne’s and not mine. See Cheggers, it’s not that hard!). Cryer went with “A wife says to her husband, ‘Can we make love now?’, and the husband asks ‘why?’, ‘Because my egg timer’s broken’, says the wife”. Cracking.
This interview didn’t to Chegwin any favours. And the big winner in this was Ed Byrne, as after a few days of online arguments, it was good to hear him in person speaking about the debacle and speaking with panache.
