Michael Rosen and Dara Ó Briain talk about time

Introduction

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Birthday Reflections

1:06Hello. May the 7th is my birthday. So if you're listening to this programme on the first day it's being broadcast, I'm 80 today. Just saying this, I'm 80, brings up in mind straight away that 80 years seems to me right now, as I'm saying it, a very, very long time. After all, waiting for a bus can seem like a very long time. So 80 years is thousands of waitings for a bus. Put them all together, and it's eons.

1:37But then when you're watching a TV programme about the origins of the universe, waiting for a bus or even living for 80 years, well, they're nothings. The effect my 80 years has had on the universe is less than negligible. Well, yeah, that's brought me down to earth. This tells me that knowing about time, feeling time and understanding time are all slightly different things.

Understanding Time

2:01Let me explore these one by one. I know about time because people have been telling me about time, and I've been reading about it and so on, ever since I was born. Our language is saturated with expressions about time. The right time, the wrong time, in no time at all. Time for tea. Have a good time. Hmm, I had a bad time. I lost some time. I made up some time. I found time. I spent some time, and now time's up. So all those expressions and thousands more are ways in which we know time.

Feeling Time

2:33Then there's feeling time. I feel time because, well, I think about time again and again through all my waking life, being early, being late, looking at the clock, sensing differences between, well, being young and being old. And then there's understanding time. No, I really don't think I understand time at all. So, on this, my birthday, I thought I would try to understand this word that we use again and again every day. And to help me do this is Dara O'Brien, the marvellous stand-up comedian and television presenter

3:06who, handily for us, has also studied theoretical physics and mathematics. Welcome to the programme, Dara. It's a pleasure to be here, and happy birthday. Oh, thank you. I wasn't expecting that. Now, Dara, let's start with the basics, the stuff I don't understand.

Defining Time

3:18And can you help me with this question, what is time? No, what is it? No, it remains, I was just checking my notes on this earlier on, it remains a mystery that we don't fully understand. We have a better sense of how it fits into the fabric of the universe, but it's, see, we ditched a sense of it being absolute, that there being some clock somewhere that ticked along no matter what happened. Einstein got rid of that, basically. And then it becomes an issue of it moves at different speed depending on your velocity, it moves at different speed depending on how much gravity you happen to be sitting next door to.

3:51And so it's a much more malleable thing and a much more woven into the fabric of space, in fact, we call it space-time, than we ever presumed. Also, and I don't want to end the entire programme in 30 seconds, there's a whole thing about the Big Bang, where the Big Bang started, and people go, oh, what was before this? Well, there's no before that, because the Big Bang also started time. So it was an event that space-time came out as a result of this huge explosion of space-time. So, yeah, no, I don't think, and I want to put it at our ease, we're going to solve that issue because I think no one has quite solved the issue.

4:24So how are you coping with life? If you don't know what time is, I mean, we're here. You arrived a little bit late, dare I say, Dara, but I'm not going to hold that against you. But I wasn't travelling at the speed you were. So therefore, for me, my time was moving slower. We all, we exist, we have scales of time. The most interesting kind of way of putting it, and again, I seem to be putting the punchlines at the very start here, is that Hawking made a link in Brief History of Time, where he said that actually it goes alongside with what's called entropy, which is the disorder in the universe, basically how messier things go.

4:57Things tend to get messier. It takes energy to bring order to things. The third law. Yeah, exactly, thermodynamics. They all get a little bit messier. And that seems to be an arrow for time. So basically, time is the way the universe gets messier.

Story and Time

5:10Well, all you've done there is actually take me back to story, because people say, what is story? And the basic element of story is and then, and then, and then. You should know. You're a fantastic storyteller. And basically, you say and then, and then, and then, and people laugh. But you've actually said that all that we know about time is and then, and then, and then. Have I got that right? Essentially, yes, yeah, yeah, it progresses. It just goes, the and thens come faster for different people, depending on the circumstances they're in. Right. I mean, if you had a twin and you sent him off on a rocket for a year and brought him back,

5:42that twin will be a slightly different age to you. Yeah, because they've been going at some velocity. I think I just about understand that. That's Einstein, is it? That was Einstein. That was all, look, ultimately it all comes out of Einstein. There he was. He was a guy, Jewish guy, sitting in Vienna. How come he cracked this whole thing? That up until then, people thought it was chronology and chronometers. And then along come Einstein, who says, well, it's all relative. Well, he was kind out that he didn't, it was that more that we thought we understood how things work, but we were slightly less accurate than we thought we were.

6:14I've had the shape of the arcs of the plants and all that. So something was missing. And he, his great leap was to think of it, not in terms of, say, gravity being some sort of like rubber band that basically, you know, pulls in something like that. But gravity actually changing the shape of space itself. And to do that, he needed to include time in the equations. I've never caught up with that. That's the bit that really makes it. And that is the bit that, can I say, someone who's did this previous, studied this previously, has broadcast about this for many, many years alongside my other stuff. But I'm not claiming any greater knowledge.

6:44I just enjoy people's faces when I tell them. Yeah, exactly. Mine at this moment. Yeah, it is. Eyeballs. But in the midst of this, whatever this is, whatever this kind of procession of entropy, of whatever this disorder happening, we live it as a very objective truth in our lives and in its subjectivity as well. So, yes, all the phrases you talk about and our own relativity of time, our own sense of, you know, the last five minutes of a football match when you're winning passed very differently to the last five minutes of a football match when you're losing.

7:14Oh, it's drawing and you're desperate to score. And I know we're speaking as confederates of a certain club of North London that we won't mention. We've suffered in the same church.

Perception of Time

7:24But it is our perception of time. It's probably then what shapes our language about it and the shapes our sense of it. And that is an enormously subjective thing that we place onto things. Yeah. So, language is intertwined with all this stuff. And through language, we can find that actually we hold two quite different concepts in our heads with the word. I'm going to just try you on this. I'm sure you know it. But we use the one word in English, time, to mean actually very different things. So, if I say to you, Dara, what time's your meeting?

7:55And you say to me, 2 p.m. And then I might say, Dara, how long is it going on for? And then you might say, well, a couple of hours. And then I say, that's a long time. I've used the same word, but one's an event and the other's a duration, isn't it? But we've got the same word. Yes, you're right. One occurs at a point, at an objective point. But the, and then the other is, yeah, you're absolutely right. Is the time along some scale that keeps moving? Well, I'm aware of it because I can speak French. And in French, you say, foie, foie.

8:26You say, il y avait une foie, there once upon a time, meaning a moment, foie. And then French other word is temps, T-E-M-P-S. And that's this duration bit, the time. Now, you speak other languages. In Spanish, for example, it would be horas would be time. Which is interesting there because you say what hour it is. Yes, it is. So, you're bound to the chronometer. Yes, you are very much. And actually, you even say something that will happen a la seis, at the six, at six, because they've dropped the hours. Yes, they drop the end of it off. So, yes, it is very much bound to there being some large bell ringing somewhere in the middle

9:01of a village that basically indicates it. It's the old watchman there clanging away. Yes, yes, yes, yes. And I remember years ago being in a Spanish village and every 15 minutes that bloody bell went off. A little dong once every 15 minutes and then a bigger dong in the air. And I thought, no one needs this. No one needs this at one o'clock in the morning, lads. There's no need for this level. Yes, I think French villages have taken it down to the half hour. Yeah, that would be right. Abstained. Yes. But again, whereas time is tempo, whatever, which is also weather, as in the guitar. Yes, that's right. And in Irish, we have that as well. In Irish, we say, I'm for time.

9:32And we all say, I'm sure, for a period of time. But we all say, I'm sure for weather. So they're inextricably linked. The notion of weather being this thing that proceeds all the time. Maybe they were ahead of Einstein. Perhaps. Yes, because they're linking time to elements of the universe, which you've explained, but not explained, that time is linked to gravity. You know, which I just think is a joke. But anyway, I believe you. I believe you, but don't understand it. Never mind. But now we know time is linked to weather through these French words, like French tongue, and as you say, in Spanish, and Irish, you say.

10:04Yeah, in Irish. I'm sure it's both time and weather in Irish. And so the very famous phrase in Ireland about time is, is some on scaly and thamshire, which means time is a good storyteller, which, again, is one of those phrases, I'm sure you know, in which basically, you know, the way with language is written, not in the court, but knowing the people, or written in the idioms of people, like whatever, whose lives are difficult in their lives. And so there's a lot of phrases that basically are about, you know, don't we, time will pass,

10:36this too shall pass, that, you know, the suffering you're having at the moment, you know, that will go because time keeps moving and then this can't last forever. So it means time will write the story and will write the great story. In Spanish there's a phrase, which is, oh yeah, nothing bad lasts a hundred years, which is basically to go, you know, look, this can't go on forever. Yeah, that's good. In fact, do you know, just on the way here, and I was thinking about time, I saw a graffiti

11:09on the side of a, some kind of box or other in the street, and it said, be happy now because the future doesn't yet exist. And I was thinking, well, I think some people actually believe the future does exist. I mean, it's fine, obviously this person was very ideological in saying that the future doesn't exist. But again, you see, there it is in a slogan, and you've given us some beautiful expressions there. People are reaching for these things because we find it unfathomable.

11:39We know that tomorrow will happen if I stay alive, but it doesn't yet exist. But people want to get hold of it. And then, of course, those people with certain kinds of religious belief believe that, may believe that it's preordained or that it's all a grand design and those others. So there are a lot of people moving amongst us who do believe the future exists. Well, listen, I mean, I'm not a religious person, but I am aware that religion, and this can be either, it says cynically or uncynically, offers comforting solutions to very difficult questions, right?

12:10And that can be both its weakness and its strength. But it is a, but it's certainly a case of, as we worry about, does time, does it end when I end, or does it end for me, like whatever, and the religions of reincarnation or religions of heaven would say, no, no, time carries on. Like, and there is, so there's still, you still have more time after this. This is not when it ends. So there is that sense of, is it inexorable? Does it go on? And even if I die, does it just keep marching relentlessly forward, grinding everything

12:44in between us, like whatever, in the search for disorder? I can only cope with the present, really. Well, no, that's not true. Present and the past. I'm somebody who obviously believes time remembered is in the present, because I'm remembering it now. It can't exist in the past as such. I know the past did happen, but when I remember it, I'm making it now. This is all a bit T.S. Eliot-y and Proust, isn't it? Time's remembered. Anyway, I won't go to them, but just to me. That, so I'm, I spend a lot of time remembering, reminiscing, writing about it, wondering about

13:17it. Yeah. But I think of it as the present, because I'm doing it now. That's fair enough. If you're, yeah, if you're existing in memories, you're drawing memories in, and then you're acting on those or reflecting or you're having emotional reactions, that is now. Of course, that's now. It is, isn't it? Yeah, exactly. If you're writing a thing that's based on memory, you're writing it now. The story will be read now. But the future for me is a blank exercise book. You remember when you got an exercise book in school? I remember it very well, and you used to smell it, and then kids would chew up the corner of it and flick it at the teacher. Well, goodness me, I'm back in the past.

13:47Anyway, there you go. So you had the exercise book, and it was blank. And I used to look at it and think, I wonder what's going to go into this blank exercise book. And I used to even, I used to really wonder about it, as to what would be in it, because at the end of the year, it would be full. Yes. And that seemed quite extraordinary. I don't know. Okay, can I ask, sorry, we may drift off and then drift back. No, no, drifting is good. So a blank page, would you regard, and have you always regarded the blank page as a potential rather than an oppressive thing? As a writer, have you already gone?

14:18I call it, I've written a poem about it, I call it a friend. It is the friend. You can say anything to a blank piece of paper or a blank screen, and it won't answer back. It won't tell you that you're naff. It won't tell you that you're wonderful. You can do whatever you want, and you can be just between you and that. And I have a sense of unfolding time as I write onto it. In fact, that's what I call it, unfolding. And that if I write, I'm with Dara, so let's say I'm going to create a present, even though it's in the past.

14:48I'm with Dara in the studio. And that's a line there. And then I do another line, and I unfold it like that. And I just think, yes. Do you find the blank page a bit frightening? Honestly, what I think, and this is maybe not, again, we're drifting, is I find my initial thoughts that I put onto a blank page are not worthy of the blank page. And I have that. Do you know what I sense when you, it's why I always buy cheap pads. The ones you go into is just any box out of a stationery store. Not the leather-bound books. The notion of opening this, every word should be perfectly pointed to be onto these books

15:24because you feel this is the draft of history that I'm going to leave behind, whereas the notepads... It's Dara's Magna Carta. Yeah, exactly. That's the whole thing there. So I, not that I quite like it, I like scribbling and I like putting things down and half-formed ideas. But I think the page is for that. Yeah. The page is for half-formed ideas. And just looking at your lovely scribbles there, and I love scribbles on pages, of course, you talk about the time-space continuum. If a page going down the page, that is space, it's taking up space, but it also, have I got

15:55this right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. It represents time, doesn't it? It does, of course. Because you go along that page. Yeah. Yes, you do. And you go along the page and then each mark is you further in time. Yeah. You're absolutely right. And each turn of a page of a book is you proceeding further in time. That's my exercise book, you see. I even had a sense as a 13, 14, 15-year-old that time would pass by the end of the year through my terms at school, and that that would then fill. So there was, that was the space.

16:26It was the time-space continuum, wasn't it? It was. I have a, in the few times that I do some sort of, if I try to be healthy, I like to print out a calendar, like just from the, off the computer, off the calendar app. And it doesn't matter what was in the calendar, I then mark in each box as it goes along an X, if I can manage to get some exercise, a circle, if I manage to eat, eat properly, a circle representing a plate. And one other thing, the square is for the representing a square meal, and the circle is the top of a pint glass, meaning, did I not drink that day?

16:57Yes, it's good that you know your symbols, because quite often symbols, you actually forget them, don't you? Yes, I do. But all it does is, it moves along that bit, each bit, and then the, and you build up, you build up a record of that, and it feels like a more solid sort of thing. Right, that's, for whatever it is, I have, however, found, as I've gotten older, and this is a question for a man to reflect on in his 80s. It is. It is. The, yeah, I have found it, possibly you'd think, ironically, easier to take on longer projects as I've gotten older.

17:29The notion of a destination, the notion of will I have enough time to do this, where do you, it seems, I felt when I was younger, it was immediacy, everything was immediate, and it had to be now. And as I moved into my 40s and into my 50s now, I'm kind of going, oh yeah, why don't I try another language now? Sure, it might take three years, it might take five years, it might take whatever, but sure I have, that is time I have, and I don't measure out in the sense of this has to be done as quickly. Ah, right, so you're not intimidated by the time left. Yeah, I'm not. And I also feel that, I also don't feel I need to have the result immediately on things, in

18:01a way, as a younger man, where we just geared up, I don't know if you felt, I mean, you're a writer, so you must have always had a sense of this will take time to do, to create this project. I live in a very immediate world of, I'm going to tell jokes, I'm going to go to a gig tonight, I'm going to write, I'm going to, I've got a response after 15 seconds. And being able to delay that response is in itself an investment in time. It is, isn't it? And it may have taken me 30 years to get to where you always were, that you went, no, no, this is worth doing, this is worth giving the time to. Yes, now I'm just wondering now that, just to bring it back to the fact I'm 80, do I think

18:36that because I've got less time left than I've passed, that I've got to make kind of economies of time, I've got to say there's no point in tackling that, because that would take me 40 years and I'm not going to live to 120. Am I, am I thinking like that? This is the, this is what we are and call the don't buy any green bananas, which is. You might die before they get ripe? Before they get ripe. Let's just say she's not buying any green bananas, is how you would speak of, and more elderly relative, that they're not making that, they're not making that investment, they're

19:07not taking that bet. Or, as you get older, are you just able to enjoy just the process of it without being about the results? I'm still there. I mean, as we know from Andrew Marvell, he was pleading with his coy mistress, wasn't he, to get into bed with her, and he said, had we but world enough and time, this coyness lady, would be no crime. But he was saying, had we but world enough and time, so he had a sense that, well, we better get on with it. Yeah, I have some confusion. Now, how about, how about where is time?

19:39Oh my God. Can I throw that at you? Because we do talk, I mean, this is in the language, we say things like, coming up, I've got a meeting, which would suggest that it's time can come towards us. It would say, yeah. When I get to it, or upcoming, people say, and various other things like that. But, so, there is a sense that the future is physically in front of us. That's in the metaphors of the language, and time passed, oh, that's all behind me.

20:10You know, when Arsenal won the, oh, I've gone there, when Arsenal won the premiership, that's behind us. So, but time can't be in front or behind, again, to the physicist. No, I thought it wouldn't be. I mean, it is, however, you exist in a four-dimensional universe whose state is constantly changing. The, so it is, the future is a future state of the universe. But no, it's not, obviously, in front or behind, but we do perceive it as there being like a travelator. Is that the best word for like a travelator?

20:41Yes. In the airport. The flat ones in the airport. And so, I'm offering no judgment on whether it's going up or going down. One of the flat ones that just gets you from A to B, like whatever, and that that is what we're on, and that time is just this thing rolling along, and that different states occur as it happens. So, yeah, I think there is that sense of it. Do you know what? This is when we should have had a neuroscientist in to go, is there a region of the brain that marks this or whatever? Are there brain injuries that mean that people can't do this in the same way?

21:11But I think my, certainly my gut feeling on the perception is that we regulate it in our heads and we think of it as a thing, which is that so that maybe the future is still this room that you and I are in at the moment. But somehow that snap, that, think of it in terms of 24 frames per second. That picture in the future of us, of a moment where I knocked over a glass, whatever, that moment is a photograph coming down the line. chink, chink, chink, chink, chink, chink. That's very deterministic. Okay, true. Yeah, you're absolutely right.

21:42I'm not happy with that. Okay, fine. Yes, it is. I realise I have. I have created a clockwork university. Yeah. Yeah. That move-a-later, travel-a-later thing.

Personal Life and Time

21:50Anyway. Yeah. Look, I tell you what, let's talk about our lives, me and you. Right. And how we think about, now, I'll talk about me for a bit here, about periods in our lives. And I wonder whether we see this in similar ways. Now, for me, there's a period in my life, and this is between, I can pretty well date it, between the age of five and about 13, and there's so much of it and so many details of it. I can even see shoes that people are wearing. I can see my friend James Gray's jacket, and I can remember his laugh.

22:23He had a little laugh that was sort of self-deprecating, going, ha-ha, and sort of little ha-ha thing. And I can see Max Wheeler, look, Max Wheeler, I can see his shoes. These are people I meet, so, you know, if you're listening, Max and James. But I can see them from this period, and I can see my brother, and I can see the frosted thing on the window, and the fact that it had little flowers in it, and all this, and I can feel it with my fingers now. I'm putting my fingers up to it, and it's really intense. And then I go to, and I'll pick another era in my life, 23 to 30, and there's none of

22:56the intensity, none of the detail. So I've got a sense that those are two different kinds of time, because one, because of the detail, is very long. If you sat me down in a room, this is a nightmare for my wife. Don't ask him about what it was like when he was seven. Anyway, and here I am. But anyway, so between five and 13, I could sit here for probably three weeks talking about it. If you said, now let's jump to 23 and 30, and I'd probably be through by an hour.

23:27So I just wonder, is there anything like you, or am I a bit of a freak? But it's opposite. So yes, yes, there is exactly the same thing, except that for me, the vividness starts at 16. And while I'm aware I had a childhood, and there are photographs of me having a childhood, honestly, I felt like my life began when I was able to start making decisions, specifically choosing subjects for the equivalent of the Irish A level, I think of the Leaving Cert, choosing subjects with a view to studying things I wanted to study, and making those decisions for

23:57myself, and then going into university, and then the years immediately afterwards, you know, first girlfriends, there's a, you know, up until about 28 or whatever, there's a whole period there of living, first gigs, first experiences in the working world. Those are incredibly vivid for me. Those are my nostalgia things, that I would go back, if I'm in a city that I was in in my 20s, I would go, oh, I must go and visit that place. I was in Paris about a week ago doing a gig, and I went to the hostel that I stayed in,

24:27in 1989. Is it still there? Oh, it's still there. And what did that do for you? Now, you see, I do this, I do a bit of that, I sort of creep around, but of course, I go to the place where I was, guess what, between the ages of 5 and 13. That's right, so I go there, and I kind of ripple, I have a sense that I'm there, but I know I'm there as I was, but that's not possible. Look at me, this is 75 years later, this is just absurd. You know, I stood outside the flat that we lived in, and I went round the back, and I

24:57picked up a pebble that I must have trodden on, because it was outside our backyard, and I've got it, it's in my actually empty harmonica box, but never mind that, and I look at it, and it transports me. I have a real sense of that. So when you, so I'm jumping in there, when you went to Paris, and you stood outside this hostel, were you there in these two senses? Yes, I could remember the window that we watched from, myself and a couple of friends who were taking this trip at 17, I can remember the feeling of everything being new, and the world

25:29being mine, and me being 17, and isn't the Marais an interesting part of Paris, it's very beautiful, and it's like, and I'm going to go exploring on a walk around the city that I absolutely adore, and, but also, I'm 17, and I've worked all summer to pay for this holiday, this is my trip, and I'm doing this, and it is the first non-family holiday I'd ever had, and it was just me doing, but I remember that feeling of potentiality, I remember the feeling of like, oh my God, everything is ahead of me, and that is probably what I go for more, that feeling, the emotion of, yeah, I remember that, and I remember picking

26:02up a, because I had a bike, and I had an hour to kill in Paris, and I went, and I remember sitting in a park called, how to kill, we'll come back to that, yes, and it was, there's this, there's a park called Square de Vergalon, which is at the front of the Pont Neuf, which is, and you have to go down steps, and it's this little triangular park, and I read the ending of Peter Kerry's Oscar and Lucinda in this park, and it's a real gut punch of an ending of a book, it's fantastic, and I remember that, and I went back to the park again, for the first time only a week ago, and I sat at the point where it all ended, where I sat

26:33down and read that book, and. And why do we do this? Why do we try to reconnect with times past, we go back to times, we remember them in the time, why do we need to do that? Is that something to do with our identity, that our identity is fixed in time, and so that we want to say, I don't want to lose that, because if I lose that, I mean, I don't want to be pejorative, but I will lose my senses if I'm not. Okay. Is that, is that what we're doing there? Is that what you were? Oh, well, I'd hate to think it was just a sense of, I was happy then and I'm not happy now, because it's not, I'm very, I'm a very, you

27:08know. But if I, if I do that thing that's in Philip Pullman, we're sort of chopping off your demon, the idea that if you, if someone could wipe your past, that that would be horrifying, that would be like a horror story. Yes, it would be, yeah. Yeah, because I feel it being the, I feel me being the accumulation of these moments. Yes. Yeah. And so that, so that therefore, this in some way added a brick to the delightful edifice you see in front of you, the, and that these moments were, were important and memorable to me because of this, the, and their things, but it was, it's, it's weird, it's not that that time

27:40was any better or any happier, and I think of a far rounder, more actualised, more content human being now with a fuller life and all that, like when I was quite a shy 17 year old, the, yeah, it's granted, but there was still an emotion in that, which is impossible because I'm not going to be 17 again. I'm not going to be. Yeah. Ah, now that's, that's scary. Yes. Now, when you said that, I'm not going to be 17 again, I got a little cold right ripple. Yeah. If you remind yourself that you, though you can go back, you can never be there again. Yeah. I mean, this is sort of the body of folklore, isn't it? That you

28:14can't go back to this place. Um, so yeah, but that's, that is quite frightening because that accepts our mortality. Yes. Okay. That's part of the reasons for religion is that you, you, that's too uncomfortable. So you have to have some other wider forms. Yes. There has to be, there has to be, maybe something beyond that at the end. But I mean, did you ever go back somewhere where I should have come back here, like, for example, return to your first school or return to speak at a university you're at? Yeah. And then I went back to my university to do a debate. I was debating in college and a couple of years

28:46I went back to speak and I put it off for eight, literally put it off for 25 years, 30 years. And when I went back, it didn't have any, it didn't carry any. No. It was an okay event and I, and I kind of enjoyed it, but it was like, I should have done this 20 years ago when it would have been. When the building was still there. Yeah. And when they knew who I was and I was around, I wasn't now 30 years older than them. And you are aware that, you know, it says that they are, they exist. They are all individuals of their own lives, but they exist as this class of people, young people, the, and I'm not in, and they don't

29:17see me as being part of that anymore. I'm not. Yeah. They'd see an older, an old smiling public man. They see an older. That's exactly what I've had. I've gone back to my old school and done a talk on it. And I think some of them are looking at me or at least I imagine this. I don't think, I'm thinking, they're thinking, I don't think I'll ever get as old as this bloke because he's really old. Yeah. So I think when you're, when you're about 17, 18, I went back to my secondary school and I think that's what they're thinking. They're thinking this, this would be horrific if I was as old as that. I mean, it's not going

29:47to happen to me, but there we are lifespan and all that. Now, actually talking about these periods of time, I wonder whether you've got a sense of yourself of speaking in different ways through time. So I can, so let's be personal. I can hear your voice. I can hear your voice as an Irish voice. Yeah. And, but you've lived in England for how long? About 25 years, 26 years. So if we can jump back to Dara 25, 30 years ago, do you think your way of speaking English has changed? Occasionally I slow down, which is not how you see what

30:20I write at here. The message has sometimes got through. I would also imagine that there's an element like, and this is the only way in which you'd ever really compare, like Margaret Thatcher. That's when I started in public life, I had a softer, more stronger accent and I I had a more, I had like a slight lisp, sort of soft palate element to it. And there was a very soft, it was a softer kind of voice, but still spoke very quickly. And maybe slightly camper voice, as somebody said at the time as well. But I have learned to speak more clearly.

30:51And even this hasn't worked. I mean, I still, the greatest complaint I get is that I mumble or stutter or that I stumble on words and I speak too quickly. But so I can't, you can't stop the person you are. But I certainly have shaped my voice by using it to talk on stage. Did anyone, did any person stand in front of you and say, Dara, could you now say the word film? Film? No. And not say film? Film. No. Did anyone ever say that to you? No. Time. Time. No. But I think, I think, the only conscious one was the letter R, which we call the letter

31:27or. And so, but here it's the letter R and I found that I'm spelled. Or even the way I say it, the letter R. Oh, there we go. I don't even say R. Okay, fine. Look. Southern Brit, I say R. R, okay. Whereas we say or. And I would say, I spell my name D-A-R-A and people go, so what, D-A-O-A. And I spent a good five years here before I copped on and just went, oh, I'm just going to have to go with this. And that is the, I don't think it's a shibboleth, but it's the slippery slope to just basically giving, like, of losing something of your, but you see, I had to change it.

32:01I know, I've been in America and I've had to change bath to bath simply because people have just gone, what, what, about 20 times. And I thought, oh, well, I'll say bath, even though it's not. Yeah, look, this is for the easy life. I'm going to do this. I don't feel like Patrick Pearce and Generations of Great Irish, not just turning in their grave because I have slightly made myself more pal or understand and more comprehensible to a British audience. But I am aware of a thing that it's a concession that I have made. And your father taught Irish? No, but he was involved in the Irish language movement.

32:33Ah, right. Yeah, and so that was in the 60s. And so, and then he was involved. He used to go, he was a conor for things called Conor and the Gaelge, which was an organisation set up for the promotion of Irish. So do you think, this is, again, across time, do you think your sense of Irishness has changed in time because you're an exile? Yeah. Self-created. Nobody sent you away, did they? They did not. That's good. Just clear that up. I left a time where nobody was leaving the country as well. Right. So do you have a sense of your identity that's changed?

33:04We've done language. So do you've got a sense of your identity changing? I have, no, but what I have is a sense of ice flows drifting apart because I'm not there normally during the time. So they're on a different timeline, essentially. And I began to notice that there were references that they had that I didn't, because I wasn't there for the six months that this particular band was very popular or that this ad ran and everyone was talking about or this thing occurred or whatever. And so I feel, I have that sense of, oh, you're, we're drifting apart from each other. This is very Einstein again, you know. It is.

33:34I know, but culture, they are their own relative, they're on their own bubble and they do their own thing, like whatever. Independent of what your expectations of it are, they're continuing, because their time is progressing and you're not in their time. It's like your twins thing. They're coming back in their different ages. Yeah, but a different person from a different world, an entirely different world. I've got a sense of myself speaking very, very differently when I was a kid. I mean, I can remember slangs, for example. We never said something was good. I don't think we even said things were great.

34:04I think great hadn't come in. That's how old I am. We didn't say, that's great. That seemed to be a new thing that came in when I was at secondary school. At primary school, don't laugh, everything was luscious. That was the word. That's the word, yeah. And then it got shortened to lush, which is still in West Country dialect. So, somehow or other, north-west London suburb, we arrived at Lush and wait for it, we then backslanged it and it became Shully. So, then, Lush, Shull, Shully. Oh, wow. You're a lucky puzzle. So, yeah. So, we used to talk about everything being Shully, Shully, and then we did it with Old,

34:39that became Doll. And then, because we were into farting, obviously, as young kids, so they became Traffs. So, the idea that it was a place called Old Trafford, then that was just one of the most hysterically funny things that had ever, ever happened in my life. And then you could talk about, oh, and the other thing, we shortened Trific to Trick. So, you could have a Trick Doll, Lemsy Traff was a terrific, old, smelly fart. So, this way, so backslang, a lot of people listening to this will know they did backslangs. Did you do backslangs? Were you reversed a word for this?

35:10Yes. In French, they have Veveron, you know, they say mirth for thumb and things like that. So, all over the world, people do backslangs of various sorts, and we did it, and sometimes added Ys, so smell became Lems, and then you added a Y, so it became Lemsy, you see. Now, this was like, in our speech, almost like every day. And I think, you know, this is, so me, 70 years later, I don't ever walk around talking about Traffs and Lemsies, but I do remember it. But you have, as like an archaeological dig, if you yourself are an archaeological site

35:44that people are digging through, they will find a layer, a layer of Traffs and Lemsies. That's it, all that language. And from that, like a clay pipe or a shard of pottery, they can date you by that. That's right, that's my carbon dating. They'd pick it up and go, somebody like, you know, the kind of people who really studied this, like the Opie's, you know, Robert, Iona Opie. Yes, when they studied it, they would go, hmm, well, it's funny, because that word for crossing your fingers, croggies, hmm, that's really Stoke-on-Trent, 1943.

36:17Yeah, so it's exactly that. That's right. So these slangs, so I can remember at university arriving with someone whose parents had a military or RAF background, and he talked about pranging the crate, which meant crashing his car, crashing the car, which is what the RAF used. So there in the 60s, he retained, there's your carbon dating, so people retain these old slangs, and he used to say, oh no, God, I've just pranged my crate. And he was basically talking his father's language, so he was retaining that.

36:48I bet you've got things. Oh, there's loads of issues. I mean, the things we describe as being deadly or gift or gear, I remember, was the one thing or whatever, yeah. Gear was good. Gear was good, it was good. The 60s. Yeah, no, this was just, it was gear. Ah, it was very good, the S Grand. There's a few of those that, but then we had, it's Ireland, we had our own language for all this stuff, like the, I can only remember the rude ones, unfortunately, at the moment. We carry these things, yeah. Yeah, yours all placed you in a particular, yeah. I think, you know, there was a period when I did try to speak more posh.

37:19Whether I did it deliberately or not, I don't know. I've heard recordings. I mean, this is micro-differential, because some people might think I speak posh now. Now, I'm speaking BBC English. But I think I, even some of my vowels, because I was at Oxford, that I think I acquired a few Oxford vowels when I was at Oxford. So, I don't know, maybe let's say a pronunciation of the word like deer, which I'm saying deer. I possibly said more like deer. Oh, yes. I possibly did deer. It's just micro-differences. Well, you know, you went to university.

37:50Were your parents university educated? No, they weren't. So, do you have a sense that you changed, you took on a... I probably did. I'm being very stereotypical now, I'm thinking of Trinity College Dublin. It wasn't Trinity, it was UCD, it was a catalogue one, the historic. But the idea of, you know, it's in Irish fiction, of sort of going to Trinity College and going to the university and moving away from the rural background. And that's what she said, I know it's not your story, but do you have a sense of being sort of poshing up a bit? I do, I do.

38:21Whether or not it was necessarily poshing, but it was certainly entrenching in the middle class thing. But it certainly was of a sense of a world expanding. And that was probably more my, the sense of the, that I would be doing things that they would not have considered doing. Or I found myself with opportunities that they would not have known existed. They, even though it's only down the road. So there are these moments of transition, aren't there, in our lives that we can mark. I often think it's a bit like a clothesline. You put the post in and then there's something happened before it, something happened after

38:53it, but there's this landmark kind of thing. A discontinuity, we say, in mathematics. Oh, I like it. A jump, as in the graph goes smoothly and then the graph jumps. And the graph jumps to a different point and it's called discontinuity. And then at this point and then, and then the graph continues, perhaps. Well, all I've got is I had a washing line and the pole brings it to a point and then there's a second thing and there's no going from that other, but back to. No. You can't go back. So I've got, you know, before I was ill and after I was ill. So I've got like a kind of BC, AD sort of thing.

39:24It's kind of BCE, Anno Domino and all that sort of thing. And I've got that before I was ill, before my son died, after my son died. So these things, they're kind of big landmarks and they kind of help me understand the passing of time because I see them as staging posts. My brother and I, don't laugh at this, we write to each other where we try to get down the exact calendar of our holidays, our camping holidays through our teenage, childhood and teenage years.

39:54Were we in the North York Moors in 1953 or 1950? And then there's little micro changes and we write to each other about that. I mean, people from the outside will think, what are you doing? And we do this. Trying to get that, trying to get that mood, the landmarks, the feeling back. I think those, yes, if your life is marked by large events, as yours has been, you can see the line. The line is still there for everyone else as well. Obviously, we move from being young people to being middle-aged people to being old people

40:25as well. But maybe there isn't a kind of a delineation as strongly. There isn't a point or whatever. Instead, there's a bit where you look back and go, oh my God, I'm not. Marriage, long-term relationships. Yes, they do. Before you weren't with someone and then you were with someone. So that's nearly always quite a big one. But the degradations of like when you're happy to when you're running out or whatever. Don't go there, Darren. Don't go there. But the degradations of that, like when I would go, oh, I'm not 25. But there wasn't a moment where I became not 25. I just know that somewhere over the last 30 years, that has changed.

40:57Some parts have happened, some people have, some things have. But having passed through that time, obviously, I couldn't go back. I couldn't restore that again. You can't go back. Can I give you a weird measure then which, and this doesn't apply to everyone's career, but that my career, that my actual day job is marked in time and it's marked out how well you are doing and how serious you are in this industry is marked by how much time you're allowed to have in front of an audience. Oh, yes. So you start with five minutes in an open slot club and then you maybe graduate to 10 and

41:29then you get a normal slot, which is a 20-minute slot. Yes. And then maybe some clubs, after a few years that you're allowed, maybe headline a club and do 40 minutes, three, five or 40 minutes. And then you go to Edinburgh with your first show and suddenly you get 60 minutes. Yeah. And if you do a few good Edinburgh's, maybe you build up a bit of a following, maybe you get on the TV and you're allowed to do a theatre tour, which is two hours. Yeah. Or if you're Ken Dodd, three hours. Five. I did five. I went and saw his show. I went and saw his show. That could be a unit of measurement. A Ken Dodd. A five hour. And in fact, it contained two full shows of an ordinary comedian and an opening bit.

42:02Like he did a 40-minute bit and somebody else got, then he did another hour and a half show, then there's an interval, then somebody else did a thing and then he came out and did another hour and a half show. He did, probably, of the five hours he'd said he did about three and three-quarter of those hours himself. And it was remarkable. What you're saying about that, that gradation, that metric that you've got, is reminding me of something that happened. And after I came home from hospital, you see, I'm doing the before and afters, I came home and two physiotherapists came over to the house and they sat down and sat in front of me and said, what are your long-term objectives?

42:33And I remember thinking, have I ever had any long time? I don't think I have. And they said, well, what are your long-term objectives right now? And I said, well, to get myself to the deli at the end of the street and remember what I went there for. And they said, good. Anything else? And then I said, well, my mother used to make very nice pickled cucumbers and I've never done it. I just go to the shop and I buy pickled cucumbers and I think, I'd like to do that.

43:05And they looked at me and they said, you're doing very well. So anyway, they must have had a sense of immediate objectives, namely stand up and walk or move. Yes, that would be good. And then this other thing, this long-term objectives. I mean, when you did your five-minute open mic, maybe you had a long-term objective that one day I'll play Edinburgh and do an hour. So they obviously had this notion of the long-term objective. And I quite seriously, when they said that to me, I thought, do you know, I don't think I've ever had one.

43:38I know that feeling because, no, at every stage you just want the next gig. At every stage you just want three months on. The next will do. The next will do. As long as I get the next one on. Even when you get to a tour, you think, this is just an audition for a further tour on. I couldn't even guarantee I'd get a second tour. I remember asking, after I'd done one tour, I said to him, how badly would I have to do and how quickly could this run down? He said, oh, you get, they'd give you one more go and then maybe they wouldn't come the second time after. Maybe you get two more out of this if you just decide to not be able to do this anymore.

44:09But that's the most I ever thought ahead of how badly, how could this be taken away from me? And I'm not going to think any further than that. So you just carry on. And then you look back and go, geez, I've been doing this for 30 years. Yes, that would very shorten the long-term objectives. Yes, but I do remember, however, when my kids were born and your kids being born, particularly, and I think of a younger generation now. That's big. It is big. And suddenly that's a timescale unlike any you've ever thought on. Yes. And suddenly it's like, I'm used to going from gig to gig to gig, from show to show, and maybe thinking in terms of, you know, maybe I've got a mortgage.

44:40I'm thinking that term. I'm not really thinking about that or whatever. But then this thing appears in my life. And mortgages have got labels on saying 25 years. Yeah, I know. How dare they? But you don't, I don't think you think in terms of who am I, who am I going to be at this stage? I'll just sell the house. The child, obviously, you can't as easily move along. So I think that was the time where I went, oh my God, this is a timescale. This is a geological timescale compared to what I'm used to thinking of. It's quite mesolithic, isn't it? Yes. This is beyond, and beyond my own, yeah, it'll go on and on and on.

45:11And I remember a real sense of there are different timescales in life and I have suddenly hit, like, one of the big proper ones. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. One expression, we just mentioned it a bit earlier, must just do this. Our producer says killing time. She quite often says that. Now, come on, that is quite brutal, isn't it? Because, you know, you've talked about times in physics and maths and Einstein and our experiences and all the rest of it. And she's talking about killing time. I mean, I dare I say I have.

45:43It is quite, why would we think we're killing time? We're just passing it, spending it, filling in time. But why do we say killing it? Is it because there's a sense that we are not using this time well? That we are not killing the time itself, because obviously you can't do that. This happens outside of your control. But we're killing what we could have been doing, what useful thing we could have been doing. And so we're bringing nothing to this time has, maybe not earned us nothing, maybe not directly, but we've gained nothing from this time. Because even if you said, there's times we gladly relax or gladly sit and read a book now in the sun.

46:17That you wouldn't regard as killing time. Killing time might be doing something on your phone or just, you know, just staring at a window. And it implies there's murdered time, there's dead time as well. Oh, well, there's dead time as well. It's implied in there. I don't think you say it. People do talk about dead time. Oh, dead time, I think, is a whole other concept of time. I'm thinking of death. There's a phrase from Berlioz, and I'm not going to do it in French. You probably know it in French. But Hector Berlioz says, they say that time is a great teacher. Unfortunately, it kills all of its pupils.

46:49Oh, dear. Berlioz, that was, was it? Yes. Well, anyway, time has passed in this conversation. We've been talking. And, of course, actually, I mean, broadcasting is very timey, isn't it? You know, this place, the BBC. I mean, some people actually use it as their clock, don't they? I mean, I think I've done it at times. I never carry a watch because I get a rash on my wrist. So I'm very non-chronometer-ish. Have you got one on? Oh, I do, yeah. You have, yes. I always do, yeah, yeah. Yeah, no, but people use the BBC, don't they? Because there's the bips. Because there's bips. And you get the bips. And also you get the duration. It's the length of an archer's.

47:20And people have a sense. Conveniently. I've got just time to do this while the archer will have a sense of duration as well. So, yeah. And it is, unlike trains, unlike everything else that promises to be regular but is not, the BBC, and in fact all broadcasters, because that's the law, are quite bang on time. They'll give you news on the hour. The beeps are pretty beepish. They are. Are you telling me, do we feel the hot breath of another show? Well, time's winged chariot, we also, you know, that's another one. I think that's from Andrew Marvell as well, the idea of time flying.

47:52Time's winged chariot. Good Lord. Well, actually, I should say this, for the benefit of our listeners, that Word of Mouth is teamed up with The Open University. I don't know whether you knew this, Dara. No. And they interviewed me. They actually interviewed me about the language I've used throughout my life. There we are, across time. And listeners, if you'd like to hear more, you can visit the BBC Radio 4 Word of Mouth page, and then you follow the links to The Open University.

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48:51So, Dara, it's coming up to goodbye time. I wonder, in your goodbyes, various times in your life that you've said goodbye, have you ever incorporated a sense of time, like people say, see you later, that sort of thing? Have you got a... Do you know what? Because the other option is you use health. In Ireland, we say slán, which means safe. Yes, I've heard that. Safe home. Slán, while you'll be safe home, like whatever, yeah. So, not a time one. Not a time one per se. No, just more the, you know... And the other ones have to be explained. When we learn through the languages, that'd be ento and all these kind of phrases.

49:22Yes, well, indeed. I was going to say in French, you see, you've got à la prochaine. Yeah. Which is quite interesting, because it doesn't say à la prochaine fois, which means till, as it were, to the next time. You just say to the next. Yeah. So, just as you were saying earlier... Hasta luego is until later in Spanish. So, there is that sense of this conversation isn't over. What does that exactly mean? Hasta luego is until later. Until later. Until later, yeah. Ah, yeah. Well, let's wish our listeners... I'll do à la prochaine. You do yours. Indeed.

49:52Listeners, auditeurs, I'll say à la prochaine. Hasta luego. There you go.

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