#231 Let me bore you to sleep - Jason Newland (6th October 2019)

Hello and welcome to jasonnewland.com. My name is Jason Newland and this is Let Me Bore You to Sleep. Please only listen when you can safely close your eyes because it's a sleep session and sleeping with your eyes open is a bit scary really for other people. I knew someone once, I've known lots of people but this particular person and he, we was out drinking, there was a group of us and we went back to the flat it's a long time ago and he was there staring at me just sitting there and it was really weird and I thought oh I've pulled and no it's he was asleep.

I said no and he said yeah he's asleep and I said I don't believe you. He was snoring but I thought you should pretend him and so how they proved to me that he was asleep was by drawing on his face with a marker pen and stacking, putting stuff on top of his head like some playing cards, I think a stapler and sort of dressing him up really, putting whipped cream, giving him a whipped cream beard and I think dipping his hands in honey for some reason.

I mean I probably would have just just given them a nudge would probably would have been enough to prove that he was asleep I didn't really need all that but yeah he's he had his eyes open whilst being asleep I mean is that and Andre does that sometimes he's asleep his eyes are like partly open and I suppose I can partly understand the animal kingdom you know some animals would perhaps have their eyes open to be half awake in case of needing to hide from elephants or something like that but not that ferrets have a

huge amount of contacts with elephants you know I don't know quite what the connection there could be if at all oh there's a weird vibration happened then it was like a almost like a miniature little dog scratching itself you know that kind of like vibration I don't know where that was from so for those that have not listened to this podcast or you know these recordings before I should mention Andre is my boy he's a little ferret that runs around sometimes when I'm making recordings I do talk about him a little bit and and I

kind of have to be a little careful when I say he's my son but also let you know that he's a ferret so when I say that he jumps up and is sniffing my crotch you know that he's a ferret you know it doesn't sound quite so strange and these podcasts are basically aimed at me just talking for about an hour about stuff so you can just close your eyes and fall asleep through the the boredom and through the calmness of my voice talking about stuff stuff and that pretty much is it and I've done

220 something recordings now and I've been doing this since I think it was January or February 2018 and we're now in October 2019 so technically this is the longest running series of recordings I've ever done it's the most of any podcast of just one recording like one topic one topic you know yeah so I really didn't expect it to last this long I thought maybe I might do 10 or 20 or 30 and then I'd get bored and I'd just stop because 30 is quite a lot but then I was getting feedback from people telling

me that they liked it for some reason they really liked it so I've continued and the only reason really that I have continued with this podcast is because of the positive feedback that I have received and the fact that there's people listening to it every day every you know I say I don't know if everybody's listening to it every day but not everybody in the world I don't mean that but I get about 10 at the moment about 10 000 downloads a month on this podcast so it shows how it's grown because I'm now at

about 93 92 93 000 no no it's 80 something thousand maybe 89 000 downloads on this podcast in well it's actually only been up in its current format since november 2018 so I had a lot more downloads before that so yeah it seems to be going pretty well and that's the reason I I bore myself more than I bore anybody else really I get bored when I start talking in normal conversation I actually stop midway sometimes when I'm talking to someone in real life I just say oh I've had enough of that that was boring

and I apologize to the person sorry about that that was boring I won't I won't continue I just stop mid-sentence I know or I'll catch myself because I don't really want to bore people in a kind of a real life situation I don't mind doing it in this because this is what this is for and it's just like if I was a singer I don't mean the washer sewing machines but I mean a singer as in singing the I wouldn't want to be singing all the time you know I'm sure Whitney Houston when she wasn't

singing I'm not sure what else she was up to but I bet when she wasn't singing she wasn't like talking to people but singing to them I'm sure she just like talked perhaps I should think of a different singer I loved Whitney Houston I proper loved her as in loved her I remember in 1987 I was watching I was watching the Wogan show I think which was on BBC one it was Terry Wogan and he was a big big star television star in the 80s and possibly 90s as well I can't remember how long the

Wogan show went on for but I'm pretty sure it used to be on pretty much every night of the week or weekdays about seven o'clock and it have it basically just be interviewing people like stars you know singers and actors and comedians and one of the funniest interviews I remember him having was with the bloke from Naked Gun the star of Naked Gun you know the films and the TV show I forget his name he's a very funny actor he was also in the airplane movie and he was in lots of lots of films but

he was very funny Leslie Nielsen let's say Leslie Nielsen Leslie Nielsen Leslie Nielsen isn't Leslie a woman's name it was Leslie Nielsen I'm pretty sure you know when you say a word or a name it doesn't sound like doesn't sound right that's what I kind of had with uh the president of the American uh states back in you know a few years back with Barack Obama I couldn't say his name Barack Obama Obama Obama Obama Obama and Barrack Barrack and I just don't know it's just one of those names that I just kind of just

a Barrack a Barrack Barama Bananarama I just kind of used to find it difficult to remember his name I did like him I mean I didn't know him but I think out of all the presidents in my kind of lifetime I would say that about Obama Barama was the coolest president ever like in my lifetime and Clinton was quite cool but I don't know it's the uh the blow thing you know the the blowing you know the you know what I mean it's the trumpet the trumpet he played I just it put me off a

little bit and but I do remember though the headlines it's weird that I remember this but I remember the headlines when uh what is it is it Jeremy Clinton Clinton Jeremy not Jeremy not Clinton anyway of whatever his first name was Horace Horace Clinton and I remember George who was the current president before Clinton won the election in I don't know what year it was 1990 was it about 92 93 something like that and I remember the headlines and it just the headlines was Clinton licks Bush that was the headline and I just sometimes it's

worth walking into a newsagent just you know go out of your way for about three minutes just to have a look at the headlines because some of them are quite amusing Clinton licks Bush and it's quite weird because that did seem to overtake his presidency president's presidency precedence of the presidency with his shenanigans and his exploits but for me it was that damn trumpet see I'm not prejudiced about a gang's trumpets I know they all they all do look the same to me trumpets but I just I'm not really a lover of trumpets and you

know I'm don't take it personally if you love blowing on things you love blowing blowing trumpets then good for you I'm not I'm happy for you I'm not planning anytime soon to write a poem to you about trumpets I won't be doing that so I'm not that emotionally involved but each to their own we all like certain things don't we I like toasted tea cakes and you may say yeah but what's that got to do with trumpets it's not the same thing I never said it was the same thing at no point did I say

oh trumpets are exactly the same as toasted tea cakes I didn't say that so why why are you pulling me up for something that I didn't even say it's that's unnecessary you know I was referring to things that we like of course a toasted tea cake nice to eat but you try and get a tune out of it it's difficult you know you can't turn up to join a band you know I'd like to join a band please what instruments do you play our toasted tea cake no you can't just turn up with that mind

you it'd be handy wouldn't it they're very light to carry around a lot less uh troublesome than a cello or a piano imagine going to carry that all around the country or even a trumpet you could travel anywhere in the world with a toasted tea cake all you need is a toaster when you get there or a grill because you don't need a toaster because although they say toasted tea cakes they don't come toasted in fact I think they're just called tea cakes but you don't have to eat them with tea they do taste nice

with a cup of tea I remember the first time my biggest memory of eating tea cakes is was two things when I first moved into my very first flat when I was 16 years old I I lived above the chip shop and it was April 1987 ish and my friend Neil that's my friend's name Neil I don't not saying my friend Neil wasn't a command so my friend Neil came around and I didn't have a lot of stuff in that flat because I didn't own a lot of really have any belongings basically what happened is

the contents of my bedroom that I originally like lived in like when we had a family house like the wardrobe and the bed which I hadn't slept in a bed for nearly a year been sleeping on a camper bed in the living room of my step-grandmama which isn't ideal when you're 15 or 16 it does definitely interrupt with your your love life so I not anyone being able to just walk in at any time you know something about living rooms isn't there lounges and living rooms is if the room's got a television in we don't

need to knock it's like yeah someone's you've got a teenager in bed you need to knock anyway I moved into this flat my step-mom moved away so I they moved out of their flat and moved to flew away to the other side of the country and I was in this flat and my friend Neil came around and it was a Sunday morning maybe about 11 10 11 and Words of Gummidge was on television and I had this black and white television and I was watching Words of Gummidge on and I made a cup of tea

one for me and one for Neil so I had a kettle and I had these hot cross buns and I call them hot crust buns because that's not the correct way to say it it's hot cross because they've got crosses on them because they're kind of Easter-y because toasted tea cakes were very popular in biblical times so I don't know how they toasted them I imagine I don't know I'm not sure how they had toasters back then but these hot cross buns I think I probably didn't have a toaster myself but I used the grill

of the oven you know the hob or the grill bit and I kind of cooked them not cooked them but grilled them and we had some hot cross buns each I think I bought them from probably from Tesco because there was a Tesco opposite me where I lived that would make sense to go there rather than to travel to the next town and go to Morrison's so yeah it makes sense to go to the one that was closest yeah it probably was from there if I remember it was a big pack of maybe eight which

means we would have had I would have given him two and had six for myself because I've always been greedy I probably would have split it down four four or five three something like that and I remember eating the hot cross buns and for the first time in you know pretty much nearly a year I was getting to sleep in a bedroom on my own without interruption which I had done I think on the Saturday night before the Sunday morning and even though I didn't have anything as far as like belongings I had a few

tapes of you know albums and stuff I didn't have much stuff it just felt nice to have just to have that bit of space and my friend Neil and me we had these hot cross buns or I call them hot crust buns and we nibbled away had a little nibble cup of tea and a bit of a kiss and a cuddle you know just standard stuff no not really I imagine if he's listening to this like wait a minute that never happened and it was really nice because it's just one of those quite nice memories

that I've got in my head and yeah I suppose it was quite nice to have somebody to share that with because I didn't have many friends from school you know because I'd left school at 15 and I didn't have I didn't leave with many friends and Neil was one of the only people that still kind of stuck around and still wanted to know me and I knew a few people but he he kind of was more constant if that makes sense including when I was living in my step grandmother's place he used to come and

visit me there and he used to visit me he used to come to my house when I was a kid when I'd live in a home and I'd go around his house and he even used to visit me when I was staying with my dad when I was 18.

Yeah see kind of easy only friend from school that actually stayed friends with me after school once we left and you know kept visiting and you know yeah I did I don't think I really appreciated him back then or didn't appreciate that he was the only person but I still used to see people now and then and you know I had little times when I'd be friends with people and go out drinking and you know and I met a lot of people working in a chip shop I met a lot of new people that I

got to know but he was the only yeah he was the only constant really that continued from school and even in in 1991 after I moved to London I came back to visit him I came back and I gave him a visit and he was going to France or he was going traveling through Europe and he asked me to go with him if I wanted to go with him and I said no because I've moved to London to pursue a career in stand-up comedy that was why I moved to London and so I didn't go

with him and I think he sent me a letter pretty sure he sent me a letter telling me that he got away and you know something like that in the early 90s.

I don't think I've seen him since then I'm pretty sure I haven't seen him since that time but he I visited I did visit his mum or his mum and dad in about 96 because I just I thought he might be there I didn't know if he'd like come back or whatever and so I saw his mum didn't see his dad but I saw his mum and she was just like she remembered me and everything and that's nice but his dad was really nice as well when I moved into the flat because I didn't have

any I didn't have any cutlery I had a few bits that my nan gave me and he also gave me a bunch of stuff as well so that was nice and again I probably didn't appreciate it though because I was 16 and I didn't well maybe I did appreciate it but I wasn't that interested if that makes sense I was uh I don't know what I was I was 16 it's weird to live on your own at 16 because technically you're not really an adult I know in America 18 is um well 16 in England

18 is an adult 16 isn't an adult anyway but 16 year olds can pretty much do everything apart from they can't smoke they're not allowed to drink alcohol in pubs they're not allowed to have a mortgage I'm not even sure if they can buy a lottery ticket I think 16 is the cut off for that I think 16 is fine but when I was 16 you could buy cigarettes at 16 you still had to be 18 to buy alcohol that's in England I think the law is still the same not still but I think the

law has always kind of been the same in different places Scotland and Wales but I might be wrong but a few years back they put the age for cigarettes up to 18 that was quite a long time ago actually but it doesn't seem long that long ago and the age of consent for romantic things here is 16 I know in America it's 18 and for for for gay men it used to be it was a different age it was I think it was 21 and then it went down to 18 but that's one of the

the laws when they put the bill through that to try and get it down to lower that went through very quickly in the House of Commons and the House of Lords they skipped that through very quickly they all seemed very happy to get that to get that down so that 16 year old boys could partake without the politicians getting in trouble oh I didn't mean that did I say that and uh so that changed but the age for smoking cigarettes went up to 18.

I'm thinking of 21 but I'm probably thinking of America because the thing is you can't drink alcohol until you're 21 in America is that right it's uh I kind of can't imagine that really 21 it's uh I can imagine 21 because I remember I once was 21 21 it's uh it's a while ago and I could never get served anyway well I could we just had to go to the right pubs just needed to know which pubs served underage people and they're the ones that I went into because even though I was well I was

underage so yeah but even when I was 18 I only looked probably about 16 15 16 which is why as soon as I was able to grow a beard I did because I wanted to look older and now all I want is to look 16 again no I don't I really don't well can you imagine being 49 and looking 16 that sounds almost illegal doesn't it just just to be very strange to look 16 to be all spotty again I don't really no I don't fancy it but then I look at pictures of myself I

say there's nothing else I'm just letting you know I look at pictures of myself it's lovely now I look at pictures of myself and I don't see I don't have many pictures but there's a picture of me that I've got at my 18th birthday party and it was around my nan and granddad's and there's a picture of my nan my granddad and I think that's it well me as well and there's a cake and I'm holding a knife and I'm just about to put the knife into the cake and I look at myself and I

see just think oh I didn't have to look young but then I was young wasn't I yeah I was very slim very slim very young and from the look of that picture my skin wasn't too bad either but maybe it's the excitement of eating cake you know my skin just cleared up that doesn't make sense at all does it okay good I was glad I didn't get a trumpet for my birthday see there was a there was a reason why I mentioned all this because it goes back to the trumpet that uh the bloke that

licked used to play isn't that weird the connection Clinton licked Bush then Bush licked Clinton like the younger one and then I can't really connect Obama to Obama Obama Obama I can't connect him uh to Clinton let's see if there's a connection or Bush to to Obama no I can't however Clinton liked to play that play the trumpet and who's the current president Trump et al et al I don't know what et al means but that's doesn't that mean uh you know Trump Trump Trump et trumpet yeah all kind of fits together really it's almost

like a jigsaw a nicely nicely fitted together jigsaw but with a picture that doesn't make sense and the pieces that are wonky baby baby re-light my fire and do my only desire re-light my fire because I need your love the other time with the tea cakes that I have quite a fond memory about is when I was little well when I was younger I wasn't little I wasn't big but I wasn't young I wasn't old but I was probably 14 about 14 I used to go into the wimpy with my friend Dean and we used

to hang out each other a lot of the time all through school we was pretty much best friends and so I was friends with uh Neil as well and I had a few friends at school but they Dean was our friend all the way from junior school so from the age of um nine let's say nine to 15 I know six years generally you could say well that's not a great amount of time it's only six years say that to a six-year-old it's a lifetime to a six-year-old six years a lot can happen in six

years seriously you try standing on one leg for six years and you see how long six years is you try and listen to this on repeat for six whole years please don't I don't want that responsibility but six years when you're 14 is quite a long time or 15 there's a fair amount of time the thing is my friend Dean we didn't fall out of friends really just he was way more mature than me and he knew what he wanted to do and I was a bit of a messer I just didn't know what I

wanted to do I had no I had zero um vision or motivation or anything I didn't I had no interest the only thing I liked was martial arts that's the thing I loved and I lived in a little town and there was no jobs doing that if I could have got a job in like a dojo somewhere like a martial arts club that would have been because there are martial arts clubs that run full-time around the country that would have been a dream for me so if I lived in cold the way I do now

if I lived here then I would well first of all I'd have been training at that club all nightly and then I would have said to them like give me uh you know let me work here even voluntary I don't care just to do something you love doing that would have been brilliant but yeah I did I didn't do that because that option wasn't there I wanted actually to go and live in Australia and study monkey boxing because I had a monkey boxing book that I got because I used to get this magazine every every

month I think it was might have been every week might have been every two weeks I don't remember but it was I can't even remember what it was called uh martial arts something and they they did this article on this man that he moved to Australia now what now what he did he went to a Shaolin temple in China which I think China's China's not far from Scotland and and he then after studying monkey style kung fu like monkey boxing he moved to Australia which is not far from China and he did he kind of

opened a school there teaching people and that's what I wanted to do and had I the money then I would have loved to have done that so yeah kind of other than that I don't really have any I wanted to be a singer I wanted to be like a musician not a musician I wanted to be a singer didn't really want to play an instrument although I did learn three instruments whilst I was at school three instruments four instruments five if you include the recorder so everyone learns the recorder I think don't they when they're

a kid but I learned the violin when I was in junior school and then when I was in the sea cadets I learnt the bugle the glocking spill and the drums so I kind of did both all three of those at separate times during my time in the sea cadets and out of all of them the glocking spill was the probably the most challenging one drums probably in some ways the most fun but a lot to carry around you know these um not just to carry to and back from you know the sea cadets in

the evenings because I think we used to practice at home not just that but it was the whole trying to walk not I mean I could walk but I mean because you got the drum and it was just I think it was just one drum leaning against the left side of your front so the left leg and it's just and trying to march in the same as everybody else you know left foot right foot but at the same pace and my left foot at the same time as their left foot but I quite liked the

bugle but I wanted to do the drums I think the drums appealed to me the bugle um it's kind of spitting into the into the mouthpiece and it's I haven't played the bugle for quite some time but if I was to pick one up and have a little play I reckon I reckon within a short time I could get a tune out of it it just take my mouth a bit of time like I know how to do it because unlike a trumpet which has those the knobs that you play around with the you know

thing that you touch that you push down that are on top and the bugle is basically everything is done by your your mouth and your tongue I don't mean that your tongue pushes down the buttons on top how you call the knobs on top of your tongue like stretches out that'd be weird and what I mean is your tongue makes different shapes and it controls the sound of the bugle and it's very yeah I quite liked the bugle I think the best part of playing a bugle is the practicing so I always had that up

my sleeve as a last resort yeah so you know if there was an argument and my brothers wouldn't back down I could always have the last laugh because I just play the bugle and annoy the hell out of all of them I could play for hours and no one could do anything you couldn't concentrate watch television hear the television read or anything because they just hear me that's all it here for hours and hours and yeah I wouldn't have liked to have had to listen to it in fact sometimes during rehearsals at sea cadets I

just have to say please can you stop stop playing I say yeah but it's rehearsals I know but come on seriously if you heard yourselves I didn't even heard ourselves all about you I said what about me they said well you are pretty good I said I know and so are you they said yeah thanks it's nice to hear that it means a lot I said yeah that's okay and don't dance they say yeah we just all dance together around an open fire sometimes we'd have marshmallows they wouldn't be anywhere near the fire we just

eat them outside because I like marshmallows don't need to have them burn and hot just all smooth and gooey you could just eat them can't you that's a good thing about marshmallows because they're big but you put them inside your mouth and it's almost like you're eating nothing but you are eating something but it also feels like it's nothing but it tastes nice like something and it's it's a kind of unusual texture and I used to go into the the Wimpy and have my tea cakes I used to have a cup of tea and two

tea cakes and it used to cost me probably about a pound and what was his name the man that ran the Wimpy was a friend of my brother's my oldest brother they were friends I can't remember his name but he was cool he was a real cool dude and I was friends with his even his brother or his cousins that also worked there and in fact I'm probably better friends with with him because he used to like chat with me and stuff and outside of the Wimpy but what was his name not Ted but not

Bert but Tim I don't know but he was this really he loved George Michael absolutely loved George he I think he wanted to be George Michael he might not what he might have changed his mind you know a few years later I don't know but he really wanted to to be George Michael because in those days that is I suppose Wham yeah Wham was still around but George Michael was also making his solo singles as well like Careless Whisper and and I don't remember the other one and I suppose a lot of people wanted to

be George Michael because he was so brilliant so talented and you know he was just lovely what was his name was it Ted Sid you know his name might have been Sid it doesn't sound right though but he was really nice he lived upstairs above the Wimpy and I went up there a couple of times with him and my brother and good friends and stuff and because I think they were in a band or they or he wanted to be a singer and I wanted to be a singer so I played in well played everyone

a couple of my songs that I wrote and I don't know I think they not sure how much they laughed or if they laughed or didn't laugh I can't remember that's the weird thing you know when you're like 14 or 15 or let's say even 15 my oldest brother was four years older so at 15 he's 19 so he's an adult at 15 still a kid 19 still a teenager 15 teenager but there's a it's quite a difference to him really I suppose because at 19 a lot of people have left school and stuff like

that mind you I left school at 15 so I was that's why I've been so successful now because I've got a head start that's why I'm that's why I'm so that's why I'm so rich oh before I go I should share this it's been scientifically proven um this is a neuroscience I study and I study psychology just in my own time I mean I don't you know but this is just a subject I'm interested in so I listen to lectures and stuff like that online and the studies said that with neuroscience if you or this

might have been a positive psychology book that I was listening to I can't remember where it was I heard it it was today anyway and if you imagine receiving something or if you you know and if someone's got the the plugs and stuff on their head to measure the brain waves and different parts of the brain that are activated apparently if you imagine giving away something giving someone something like giving helping somebody imagine doing that it's the same part of your brain's activated when you eat chocolate it's a pleasure it activates the pleasure part of

your brain and that pleasure is higher than if you receive something so if you imagine receiving a gift from somebody else you imagine giving a gift to somebody that you care about or you're just giving a gift to someone else apparently the level of pleasure is higher when you give than it is when you imagine receiving and it's the same part of your brain that's activated when you eat chocolate isn't that interesting see a boring recording with an interesting ending so I'm going to leave you I'm going to go thank you for listening speak to

you soon and remember to be kind to yourself because you deserve to be happy lots of love bye