This week I chatted with Dan Cushnie for his Substack, in which he interviews comedians about their work, and you can read the interview here (by the by, I notice that Dan mentions having “the odd moment of ineloquence” while interviewing me, and I’d like to state for the record that I didn’t notice any ineloquence whatsoever and thought he was a very good interviewer!)

I’m doing another interview today (I’ve got a run at Soho Theatre coming up, did I mention it? I’ll take all the interviews I can get) and all this interviewing has made me want to get something embarrassing off my chest – I’ve been interviewing myself on Parkinson since I was about eleven years old. A couple of years ago I made a short film with the amazing Stuart Laws that was essentially about me interviewing myself on Parkinson, but I partly made it in the hope that documenting it would in some way stop me doing it, and yet it goes on. I’ll sit back in my chair and say “So tell me about this new show of yours,” in a bad approximation of that creaky Yorkshire accent of his, before launching into a long-winded answer about what I was aiming for with it, and how I feel about it now I’m done. “I suppose really it grew out of a very simple idea,” I begin, before boring the viewers to death. I often don’t even know how I feel about anything I’m working on until I’ve spoken to Parkinson about it. It has become #partoftheprocess (shout out to my guys Morcheeba).

I’ve been doing this forever, but despite it being the habit of a lifetime, Parkinson very rarely asks me any interesting questions. It’s always “So tell me about this short film” (imagine someone going on Parkinson to talk about their short film, it’s such a mad thing to roleplay) or “So tell us what was it like working with this team?” I’m so used to answering boring questions created by my own brain that I experienced a thrill of utter delight when Dan opened his interview by asking me “Have you ever walked through a door that you shouldn’t have?” I had never been asked this before. And do you know what, I had walked through a door I wasn’t supposed to, and I’d forgotten all about it! (I won’t retell the story here, you can go and read the interview if you want to hear it).

Interviewing myself again in a still from “Two-Way Mirror,” comfortably one of the weirdest things I’ve made.

Later on, Dan asked me if I could be trusted with custard. “Parky never asks me this,” I thought to myself. I came away from that interview vowing to ask myself more interesting questions in future. So to start building that muscle, this week I’m going to ask myself six questions I would like to be asked that I didn’t know I wanted to be asked. I’m going to write the questions first without thinking about them as a kind of automatic writing. I will be switching off my brain in order to come up with questions I didn’t know I wanted to be asked in five seconds (now would be a great time to rob my house, as I will be in a fugue state for approximately 90 seconds, please don’t rob my house). 3…2…1…

1. How many layers of a Russian doll could you remove before you stopped being curious about it and gave up?
2. Would you rather pay too much money for a bad painting in a good frame, or a good painting in a bad frame?
3. What’s the last thing you spent too much time doing?
4. Assign a primary colour to each component of the Holy Trinity
5. What’s at the bottom of your stairs?
6. What’s the best conversation you’ve ever had with a hairdresser?

Ok, cool, I’m back. Hey, what happened to my TV? Oh well. Some interesting choices in there. I’d particularly like to see Parkinson asking, say, Helen Mirren to assign a primary colour to each component of the Holy Trinity, I think that would make good TV. I’ve just realised that what I’ve done here, in trying to pioneer a format that replaces the professional banality of 90s chat show questions with something that is simultaneously more quirky and more mundane is that I have invented podcasting. Oh well, no point bailing on the newsletter now, may as well answer the questions:

1. I reckon your standard Russian doll has five layers (that’s a guess, no-one can ever say it’s true, but I know that I will always be with you – shoutout to my guy Katie Melua), and I think most people would agree that the concept could sustain further layers. There’s always a part of me that feels a bit sad when I get to the centre of a Russian doll. I think “Shame, could probably have fit another small one in there, what a bunch of slackers.” However, I think depending on how big the initial doll was, if you get much past…I don’t know – eight dolls? – the process would start to feel dull and repetitive and as though you were basically wasting your time. But I also think that after perhaps twelve dolls, sunk cost fallacy would start to kick in and you would just keep opening the dolls until you reach the Earth’s core if necessary, just to see how deep the rabbit hole goes. Eight to twelve dolls is like that bit in the Youtube analytics where 90% of viewers stop watching, and then after that point it’s just for the real heads (is this a phrase?)

2. Feels like “Bad painting good frame” is the “cool” answer here, like, “Isn’t the frame a piece of art in itself, isn’t the badness of the painting recontextualised by the goodness of the frame?” but I hate people who try to give cool answers, so I’m going with good painting bad frame, because then the badness of the frame is like a fun little easter egg. For every visitor who goes “Hey man, nice painting,” I can nudge them in the ribs and snigger and go “Yeah but look at the frame, it’s shit.”
3. I spent over forty minutes listening to “Goldfinger” walking around Regent’s Park singing along with some new lyrics I had written in the shower for a gig at ACMS. The new lyrics went “Joz Norris, he’s the man, the man who’s onstage right now, he’s not a cow” and as you can probably tell, I wrote them in the shower in the time it takes to listen to the song once. I thought it would be funny, but then spent so long singing along and trying to make sure I knew the words that I could have invested the same amount of time into coming up with a better idea. When I performed it, I also forgot one of the lines (the line was “With four stomachs I could use two for storage,” in place of “Golden words he will pour in your ear.” No, it does not scan very well.)
4. The Father is definitely red – big angry bastard. The Son is yellow – gentle, sweet-natured. The Holy Spirit is blue – mysterious, unknowable. I’ve never thought about this before, and now that I have, that answer seems irrefutable to me. I would be fascinated if anybody felt remotely differently about it, there’s surely no other way of doing it. It makes me wonder if the Holy Trinity were based on the primary colours, or vice versa if you’re religious and reckon the Holy Trinity existed before colours.
5. A six-foot tall roll of fabric, an umbrella, a ladder which now has a sharp bit wrapped up in gaffa tape since the time I sliced my head open on it while bending down to do up my shoelaces, and a wire shelving unit where I keep shoes, tools, big bags and board games (small bags are under the sink, obvs, we’re talking heavy duty IKEAs and a coupla totes). Shoes on the bottom two rungs, then two rungs of tools, then all the board games are on the top stacked up to the ceiling in an arrangement that is quite frankly dangerous. If anyone reading this is surprised that I have two shelves of tools in my flat, fear not, they are not my tools, they are my girlfriend’s tools, but I will sometimes trudge down there to get a screwdriver.
6. A few years ago my hairdresser told me a long made-up story about why I had come for a haircut, which involved me being left by my girlfriend and then dressing up in a bin bag to crawl to her house and beg her “like a dog” to take me back, then going to my mum and crying on her shoulder and then telling my sister that her husband was no good and had to leave our family. The story went on for about ten minutes and abruptly ended with the words “And that’s why you gotta get a hair cut, and that’s why you came to me.” I never went back there, he was weird. Now I get my hair cut by a nice man who says absolutely nothing and gives me a free energy drink at the end of it.

*

Wow, I enjoyed that. I should try to surprise myself more often. My own personal imaginary ghost of Parkinson could learn a lot from these questions. Maybe the Meg Ryan interview would’ve gone better if he’d asked her what was at the bottom of her stairs, or how she felt about Russian dolls. There’s a life lesson in here somewhere, I reckon. Keep surprising yourself. Keep surprising people. I dunno.

Anyway, the show is at Soho for four nights next week and I’d love you to come!

A Cool New Thing In Comedy – Tonight I’m going to see my amazing sister Katie Norris at Soho Theatre, and you should come too, or keep an eye out for the show next time it’s coming to a venue near you if you’re busy tonight!

What’s Made Me Laugh The Most – A bit in the David Sedaris book I’m reading where he’s really happy to have gotten a bruise.

Book Of The Week – Happy-Go-Lucky by David Sedaris. I just love everything Sedaris writes. I was lucky enough to see him read some of the stories from this latest collection at a recording of his radio series a couple of years ago, and they’re just brilliantly petty and judgemental and wonderful.

Album Of The Week – Double Infinity by Big Thief. This is, understandably, not as good as Dragon New Warm Mountain I Can’t Remember Where I Put My Keys or whatever their last album was called, but that’s one of the best albums of the last fifteen years, so it’s good enough that this is, I think, my second-favourite Big Thief album. I really like the song where Laraaji pops up to go “Wooooooo woodle woodle wooooo” in the background over the outro.

Film Of The Week – The Life Of Chuck. The first act of this in particular is brilliant, it articulates climate dread so well. The rest of the film is a very nice, Spielbergian coming-of-age story about joy and interior worlds and mercifully, even though Tom Hiddleston plays the lead, he’s not in it very much. Sadly, when he is in it he does the most obnoxiously Tom Hiddleston dance routine I’ve ever seen in my life, but hey, Hiddleston gonna Hiddleston.

That’s all for this week! As ever, let me know what you thought, and if you enjoy the newsletter enough to recommend it to a friend or encourage others to subscribe, I’d hugely appreciate it! Take care of yourselves until next time,

Joz xx

PS If you value the Therapy Tapes and enjoy what they do, and want to support my work and enable me to keep writing and creating, you can make a one-off donation to my Ko-Fi account, and it’s very gratefully appreciated!

PPS Did I mention the show’s playing Soho next week?

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