Here is what I wrote down in shorthand:
Posted before the show:
“Over the last few months I’ve been exploring various
passions that I’ve felt unable to pursue.
One of these is standup comedy. On February 22 I was invited to take
part in an open mic event at a large venue in Zagreb. I decided to use the opportunity to talk a
bit about my Jehovah’s Witness background.
Please brace yourself for some colorful language. Thankfully Tibor has been gracious and
bleeped out the swearing to make my performance a bit more YouTube-friendly. I hope you enjoy the show”
The comedy routine:
I’ve had a weird experience just before coming to the stage
now. Someone said touch my rat for
love. I don’t have any rat song
unfortunately this will be a rodent free
performance. So uhm yeah, my name is
Lloyd and I live in Zagreb. (mild
applause) Thank you, not a bad place you
have here. I like it. But I’ve lived in Croatia for THIRTEEN
years. Most of that time I was in Sisak
(cross talk, you can barely hear him) which as we all know is a really hot
tourist destination. I mean… I’m confused as to why we don’t see more videos
promoting it. Uhm it has three rivers
that flood a lot and it has an oil refinery you can smell for miles
around. It’s absolutely fantastic,
really good place to live.
Uhm, the
thing I’ve struggled with since coming, because I am English of course, is
(says something in halting Croatian which gives him some decent applause). So, what we need to know is about English people, we have this reputation about
not knowing languages and not learning languages and not being bothered to
learn about languages and the reason for that is it’s part of our culture. You know, we don’t learn languages. What we do is we invade other countries, and
we make them speak our language (laughs at his own joke, gets some laughter and
applause). And the idea is that the more
countries you invade the more people will speak your language so that you don’t
just need to speak it anymore and look this is the results [sic]. And I have
tried learning a little bit of Croatian and mostly I rely on word associations,
so I learned the word Kalka. And I’ve
tried to be sure it is in my head and the football of Kalka who, towards the end
of his career was a bit shitty. (scattered
laughter) So that’s how I remember
things.
Similar story with Sveti Duh (Croatian for Holy Spirit)
so when I first (laughs to himself) so when I first came to Croatia, I was a
Jehovah’s Witness. (indecipherable…
sounds like “your thoughts?) And I’m not
anymore, I am an atheist. (audience
clapping, obscures his next line …so you are laughing in Croatia(?)) I thought you were all Catholics? I’ve been missing from. So yeah, I’ve learnt the word Svetti Duh
because it creates a really interesting mental image of a sweaty dog. That’s how I remembered it, and I was really disappointed
because recently I learnt that would not actually anatomically work because
dogs do not have any sweat glands and it destroyed the whole process for
me.
And, so yeah, recently we had some
really bad news as Brits. Our Queen
died. (someone cheered and Lloyd looked and
laughed). I just like to say that to
hear the reaction and over here we had a “woo” and a round of applause, well
done, your Queen died! I am actually an
anti-monarchist, Uhh I find the whole concept of being born into a position of
ridiculous power hilarious. Uhm, when
she died, uhhh she, you probably, you might have seen on the news they have
like miles of people, kind of like a line of people, millions of people going
round London in a queue to go and see the coffin, not her, I mean she was in
the coffin, we assume, we don’t know. Could
be anything in there! And if I were the
Queen, I would just for a practical joke, have it in my Will, put a dildo in
there. I want there to be miles of
people snaking round London to see a box with a dildo in it.
A few things I struggle to get my head
around, about Zagreb in particular, uhm, I think you guys have too many shopping
malls. I mean you guys have a lot of
shopping malls. And the issue I have
with them is that they’re all pretty much the same. We all have DM, and Muller, and Deichmann and
H&M and every single one is the same, and I think after awhile what might
happen is that there will be so many shopping malls in Zagreb that you will
reach a critical mass and all you will need to do is kind of knock through the
walls between them to make Zagreb one giant shopping mall. We’ll be like, so which part of Zagreb do you
come from? Oh I come from the
information desk. That’s where I feel
this is going and of all the shops in shopping malls, the one that confuses me
most and irritates me most is Elipso.
Which I call the cathedral of despair.
Because I do not need to be stopped from stealing a fucking SD card or a
data stick by a piece of glass where they, excuse me I’d really really like a
data stick, can you unlock this pathetic glass door for me. (clapping)
And then they are never there, they are never there to open the glass
door because they don’t give a shit about that stuff they are bothered by the
fucking LED TVs. If you want someone at
Elipso to serve you, because they, they do not give a shit about all of that
stuff, if you want someone to serve you, you go to where the TVs are, and they
are kind of prowling around (Lloyd walks round the stage imitating a suspicious
employee). They are fucking Jurassic
Park velociraptors. And then they’ll pounce
on you because they think “Ahhh now I’m
going to sell a TV.” And then you say, “Can
I have a data stick”. Really fucking […]
So yeah, uhm I’ve mentioned before that I
used to be a Jehovah’s Witness and Jehovin svjedok and you just said what? I promise you I did, it’s, this is being
recorded, I can prove I’ve mentioned that before. (laughs at his own joke, rubs his hair) Yeah, I, I left when I came to Croatia
because I was uhm, going to the meetings, they call it a (airquotes) Kingdom
Hall. That’s like a church, and I couldn’t understand a word of what was being
said. And like in The Matrix, that scene
where they pull the jack out, it was like (makes a move pulling something out
the back of his head) oh shit, I am in a cult.
(laughter and applause) What do I
do now? What am I going to do? And there so there I am in fucking Sisak,
this English guy, wondering how the hell he is going to get out of a cult. So I did the only logical thing which is set
up a YouTube channel which now has 108,000 subscribers to explain why it’s a
cult. And uhm, thank you, and if you
want to check it out, it’s my name, Lloyd Evans, please add to my subscribers
because, what the hell, you know? Uhh
but uhm you should be warned some of the content in there is of a sexual
nature. Not involving me, involving their twisted
rules about sex and, there are so many rules that you grow up with when you are
a Jehovah’s Witness, it’s like you are not allowed to fuck anyone outside of
your religion, you are not allowed to fuck anyone who is your gender, you are
not allowed to fuck anyone that you are not married to, you are not allowed to
look at porn, and you are not allowed to wank!
You are not allowed to masturbate and what is funny is that parents have
to have this conversation, which I think all parents have that at some point
about sex you know. They have to have (airquotes) the talk and I’m still
scarred by “the talk” that my dad had with me which was actually while we were
doing preaching. And going round through
door to door and in between, we went down
some alleyway and he, he started talking to me about what boys do in the
changing rooms at school. And he said,
you got to know, Lloyd, that some times at, when you are at school in the toilets,
some of the boys might touch their willies.
And when they do that, and their willies go big. But you shouldn’t touch your willy, and you
shouldn’t touch theirs. And that was
pretty much the conversation, so what that did was, because I had no idea what
he was talking about, but I was paranoid from that point forward that if I even
just slightly touched it, it would just balloon in size like one of those ramps
that they have on planes when you need to jump off the plane. It’s like… (makes a poof sound for when the
air ramps deploy). And they just fill
the room so thanks for that dad, uhm, and I obviously did end up wanking and then
feeling bad about it. Uhm, so yeah that
who I am, I’m Lloyd Evans, and I’m an ex-Jehovah’s Witness and I live in Zagreb
and you have been an amazing audience.
Thank you very much.
