

For comedian Dom Joly, travel is in the blood. Born in Beirut he had what in his recent book, The Hezbollah Hiking Club, he describes as a curiously paradoxical childhood between a posh Oxford boarding school and a warzone. He dreamt of being a foreign correspondent, for his first travel book investigated ‘dark tourism’ and the world’s most unlikely holiday destinations and travelled the globe in search of mythical monsters such as Bigfoot and the Yeti, notching up almost 100 countries in the process. Not one to do things in any conventional manner, for this episode Lisa gets a tour around Oxford in Dom Joly’s car.
On this episode we cover:
Travelling through Oxford
Emulating James Corden
Dom not looking like a Goth
Being a Goth in a hot country, melting by the beach
Wanting to make a documentary about Goths
Getting beaten up in Beirut because of wearing make up
The Civil War starting in Beirut
Being at the same school as Osama Bin Laden
Moving to the Dragon School in Oxford
Beirut being exciting and amazing and a warzone
His new book The Hezbollah Hiking Club being a love-letter to Lebanon
Periods where his family had to leave by boat
Being bombed at home and having to hide in the garden
Being half an hour from the beach and the ski zone
Never enjoying living anywhere else more
Loving the perceived danger of Lebanon (when he really just had a lovely holiday)
No-one writing anything good about Lebanon
The vastly different topographic landscape of Lebanon
People think Lebanon is desert but a lot looks like Switzerland
His family partly coming from Lausanne, Huguenots that ended up in London
The family moving to Turkey then Beirut
How Dom should do Who Do You Think You Are?
Finding a bullet hole ridden bus in the middle of beautiful countryside
Lebanon having a litter problem leaving bloody buses around the joint
Driving into the heart of Oxford City near the Sheldonian
Lisa doing travel news in Oxford
The contrast of living in Oxford and then going home to a warzone
Being at school with most of the Tory Cabinet, Radiohead and Tim Henman
Getting caned for showing off his collection of shrapnel
Writing a great ‘what I did in the holidays’
Syria being his favourite country on earth
Going to Syria to get away from the war – Damascus and Palmyra (with correct pronunciation)
One million Syrian refugees currently in Lebanon
Syrian refugee camps now all over Lebanon
Travelling to the Jordanian border as an Ambassador for Save the Children
Growing up with Palestinian refugee camps around
His book The Dark Tourist
Netflix stealing his idea of him!
Failing his interview for Oxford University
SOAS School of African Oriental Studies being great for diplomats and potential spies
Finding London wasn’t a university experience
Japanese announcements on the train from Bicester Village
Is Bicester Village as bad as the Tuol Seng Priosn…?
Being obsessed with Cambodia and the Khmer Rouge and other dark tourist destinations
Finding Cambodia’s similarities to Lebanon fascinating
The whole generation that just disappeared
Falling into being a good travel writer by reading The Bridge
Stumbling across the war crimes trial
Swapping shorts with the trousers of the Cambodian guard
Having an incredible Adolf Eichmann moment, his eyes meeting the banality of evil across the room
Lisa feeling scared in the Cambodian jungle at Sihanoukville
The weird journey of visiting the Killing Fields
People who lie on a beach in Cuba and don’t do the culture
Dom watching the Kardashians
Suicidal pilots flying into mountains
Visiting Chernobyl before it was trendy
Worrying about nuclear war and acid runs growing up
When the Wind Blows, the Snowman and Fungus the Bogeyman
Reading so much about Chernobyl that he almost knew his way around
How Call of Duty is a great tour guide for a visit to Chernobyl
The kid that’s just won a million pounds playing Fornite
Driving past a massive mosque in Oxford
Hating tour guides
His mum saying ‘we’re not tourist, we’re travellers’
Being massively uniformed in his travel books
Lisa liking the Lonely Planet
Living in Prague in the 90s
Instagram and Trip Advisor influencing travel
Dom inter-railing after he just left school
Scary Monsters and Super Beasts – in homage to David Bowie
The ‘amazing’ Coop and Betfreds on the outside of Oxford
Reading Arthur C Clarke’s Mysterious World age 8
Being fascinating by stories of Big Foot, the Loch Ness Monster
Wanting to go to all the places Tin Tin went to
Tin Tin writer, Hergé, never leaving Belgium
Tin Tin in the Congo being racist
Belgians being ‘cool French”
The monster that blocks the rivers in the north of the Congo
Colonies being angry they didn’t get Tin Tinned
Tin Tin killed 400 animals in that book
The Belgians being a repulsively awful colonial power
Enid Blyton being a right old racist too
Becoming a Monster Hunter
Arriving at Vancouver to track down Canada’s Nessie
Whether he believes in Big Foot
200 miles of Lost Coast in California
The Yeti being the most believable one due to the Sherpas
The Hoopa Indians talking about a lost tribe of hairy people
Living in a ‘Brexity area’
Lisa writing guide books for Thomas Cook about the Cotswolds
Cream teas being a good indicator of being in a Brexit area
Going to Raymond Blanc’s first restaurant in Summertown, Oxford
Having travelled to 93 countries
Wanting to visit Algeria, Libya and Yemen
Being more a travel writer and always fascinated by travel writers
Wanting to be a foreign correspondent
Being a big fan of John Simpson, Robert Fisk, Jim Muir
Hostage journalist John McCarthy staying with the family the night before he got kidnapped
His family being part of the Levant Trading Company for three generations
His family being moved to a crusader castle on the Syrian-Turkish border
His great-granddad writing a debriefing note for the authorities
His Canadian wife travelling around the world
Driving from the Cotswolds to Istanbul and back with his wife and kids
The joy and useless skills of memorising capital cities
Dom’s experience on The Island with Bear Grylls (off Panama) being the hardest thing he’s ever done
Losing almost 3 stone in 14 days
Getting eaten alive by sand flies (buried into his leg!)
Is Bear Grylls a Ronnie Barker or a Ronnie Corbett
What’s real and what’s for TV
Bear Grylls getting his kit off and doing ‘the Bear Prayer’
Sarajevo being his top travel recommendation
Sarajevo and the (initially) botched assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand
Going to Vienna to see Franz Ferdinand’s car and the astounding number plate coincidence
The story behind the Hezbollah Hiking Club on the Lebanon mountain trail 27 day walking trail from Syria to Israel
Returning to Lebanon and facing some demons
Growing old disgracefully
Walking to his gig at the Cheltenham Literature festival
Lisa expecting Dom to be dressed as a squirrel
Listeners questions!
Whether his Trigger Happy TV big mobile gets him in trouble on trips
Loving guns but not going to shoot up a McDonalds
Driving through Utah and hitting on a gun range
Bourton on the Water being a cxxt magnet (!) as well as the Venice of the Cotswolds
People shouting his catchphrases at him in North Korea
Cycling into the library in Brighton
The big snail sketch in Trigger Happy TV being one of his favourite
Nearly getting beaten up by a Nun in a Londis in Notting Hill
Lisa and Dom’s coincidental Candid Camera box set
Racist hidden camera shows in South Africa
Benny Hill having Arabic and French subtitles in Lebanon
Music being Dom’s big love
John Simpson’s perfect answer to the music questions His first TV travel show (for Sky)
Wish You Were Here on an 8 track in the middle of the Syrian desert
Driving into caves outside Palmyra, camping under the full moon and the stars