Alright Bab? So, why the love for Birmingham? Is it as simple as hometown pride or is it something deeper?
Well obviously, LOADS of it is to do with hometown pride, but there are also a bunch of other cities in the UK I love. Manchester is one of the best cities in the world, London is great, I also think Hull is massively underrated. Bristol is cool. Milton Keynes is fine. But Birmingham is unique in that it IS the best city in the world and yet no one knows about it. Partly, or mainly in fact, because Brummies never shout about it. So, I am breaking with tradition and talking about Birmingham. As a result, I will eventually be captured and tortured by Jasper Carrott, as is custom.
Let’s talk about the trip. You’ve obviously done travel shows before as Travel Man, but those were kept to weekend breaks. How did it feel to do a much longer 2000-mile road trip?
Daunting. Exciting. Arousing. Infuriating. Emasculating. Career-defining. Brilliant. It was truly one of those trips that kind of encompassed everything. One thing it wasn’t: boring. Actually, I take that back some of it was really boring but you won’t see that in the show thanks to our highly trained editorial team. You’re not alone on your travels.
Can you tell us a bit about your bus driver, Randy?
Randy was literally a dude sent by the company which we hired the bus from, and he turned out to be one of the funniest people I’ve ever met. And I’ve met Jimmy Carr. He was completely baffled by the whole thing, (correctly), until we promised he would be famous within 15 miles of the M42 and then he really made an effort. He is really lovely and regularly texts me since we finished filming. (I do not reply).
As well as extending the hand of friendship, I think you’re searching for a common identity that exists across all Birminghams. What were your findings?
There’s definitely a sense of being seen as ugly, low rent, ignored, and embarrassing. But enough about Jimmy Carr, Birminghams are almost universally seen as the underdog wherever they are. Yet they all have an extraordinary amount to offer (I am not referring to drugs but if you are asking they all have access to drugs).
There’s a lot of food involved on your trip. Did you have a favourite dish?
Birmingham Alabama had some astonishing calorie-dense food that will likely result in my untimely death. Birmingham Michigan has some properly swanky restaurants - imagine somewhere a bit like St John’s Wood but called Birmingham. I had a sausage in a Bloody Mary in Birmingham Toledo. I ate well. Just look at a graph of my BMI (or every third message I get on Elon Musk’s twitter) and you’ll see I have put on weight. Thanks to the wonders of Wegovy I will soon return to a showbiz friendly size.
What was your highlight of the trip?
The friends I made along the way.
What’s the best thing to have ever come out of Birmingham?
Alison Hammond. Not even joking. She’s a truly incredible person. Talented. Lovely. Interested. I signed a contract with her once. Quite threatening. Some stuff in there about having to be nice about her in press interviews.
And finally, just to close things out, why should everyone come visit Birmingham?
In the words of Telly Savalas: ‘you can almost smell the energy*!’
*by ‘energy’ I mean ‘rotting household waste due to continued bin strikes’.