Where is this story from?

[greygreygrey]

Hi there, I wonder if any of you can help me.

I'm trying to remember where a particular comedy anecdote comes from. It's told by a comedian, probably on a podcast, but maybe on a TV show. I can only remember sketchy details.

The comedian telling the story gets a call from a friend who is drunk or on drugs. The friend says "I've caught one" or "I've got one". What have you got? "A leprechaun/goblin/elf" replies the friend. They go to the person's house and they have captured their housemate, thinking that they are a leprechaun/goblin/elf. I think they're all at university at the time. I think the captured housemate might be Chinese.

First off I was thinking it was a female voice telling the story, but now I'm not so sure.

I think it was told on a podcast. Elis and John, Adam Buxton, Adam and Joe, RHLSTP... possibly one of those.

I've searched everywhere I can, but come up with nothing. So if anyone can work it out from these crap clues, that would really help me move on.

Sorry this is a totally unfascinating request, rather than a hot new topic.

Thanks.

[Captain Z]

Ohh I've heard this. I would say it's more likely to be one of the Ricky Gervais or Russell Brand/Matt Morgan podcasts, but I can't place it either.

[greygreygrey]

Ohh I've heard this. I would say it's more likely to be one of the Ricky Gervais or Russell Brand/Matt Morgan podcasts, but I can't place it either.

Interesting. I don't listen to either, but it could have been on an advert during another Radio X/FM one. Thanks pal.

[Captain Z]

FWIW I don't listen to any of the podcasts you listed, but it could be that someone has told the same anecdote more than once.

[JaDanketies]

Here it is on Snopes. It's in common urban legend territory now. Yours has a lot of the same elements but with a few details swapped around or amended.

[robotam]

On an early episode of Doughboys, Nick mentions that he has a friend who claims he has had an experience with a goblin.
Here's a clip where they talk about it.

Eventually they have that friend on the show and he reveals that he had heard it from a different friend and that he had talked to that friend after that episode and the friend of the friend heard it from someone else, so they realize it was an urban legend. He tells the story anyway and in that version, the person captured is not a Chinese housemate but a disabled child.

[Icehaven]

I've been listening to old Adam and Joe podcasts recently and I'm pretty sure it's not been on any of them yet, but I'll let you know if it pops up.

[greygreygrey]

Here it is on Snopes. It's in common urban legend territory now. Yours has a lot of the same elements but with a few details swapped around or amended.

I had no idea how deep this thing went.

[Ambient Sheep]

Here it is on Snopes. It's in common urban legend territory now. Yours has a lot of the same elements but with a few details swapped around or amended.

I was about to say, I've never listened to any of those podcasts either (except for AB's interviews with Chris Morris) but even I've heard this story before, although in my case I think the captured person was a small Japanese student.

When I say I've heard it though, I do mean on the radio (OR similar), rather than from a friend.

[Icehaven]

Reminds me of the old one about the sailors seeing a dog swimming miles out at sea, so they go over to rescue it and just as they reach it they realise it's not a dog but an absolutely enormous rat.

[Wayman C. McCreery]

Wasn't this on Gossipmongers?

[franticplanet]

Wasn't this on Gossipmongers?

Yes, I was just about to post this. It would've been much more recently than the other suggestions, although in the Gossipmongers version it was an alien instead of a goblin, and they stopped reading it out when it got to the reveal of who was actually in the airing cupboard, as it was too horrible/offensive.

[Jumblegraws]

This story and the one about the seemingly affectionate python that is actually sizing its owner up for eating (https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/snake-measure/) are two of a handful of urban legends I've been told as "happened to a friend of a friend" deals. The version of the story I got told was that a drugged-up Glaswegian appeared at the door of the friend of a friend with scratches all over his face claiming to have caught a leprechaun and locked it in a cupboard, but it was actually a person with dwarfism.

Yes, I was just about to post this. It would've been much more recently than the other suggestions, although in the Gossipmongers version it was an alien instead of a goblin, and they stopped reading it out when it got to the reveal of who was actually in the airing cupboard, as it was too horrible/offensive.

There was a version of the story printed in the Glasgow QM Union magazine once in an article about urban legends where the "goblin" turns out to be a child with Down's syndrome, I suspect that was the one they were reading.

[JaDanketies]

I'm pretty sure someone once told me the LSD goblin kidnapping story as if it really happened to them or to one of their friends. I'm not sure if it was on the telly or irl but I do know it pissed me off a little.

[Icehaven]

I'm pretty sure someone once told me the LSD goblin kidnapping story as if it really happened to them or to one of their friends. I'm not sure if it was on the telly or irl but I do know it pissed me off a little.

You hear a lot of incidences of this sort of thing happening though, usually some gobshite in the pub pretending it was them or their best mate "so it's definitely true." To be honest though if it happened to me, unless it was a good mate I doubt I'd call them on it as however they responded it'd be excruciating, if they either admitted it was bollocks or doubled down. You have to know someone pretty well to call them a fibber and not have it be spectacularly awkward.

[Captain Z]

The version I heard almost certainly mentioned the Down's syndrome element, and I feel like it was told in a knowingly tasteless, borderline-acceptable way. It might have been told in-character within a sitcom, or could even have been on a panel show like Mock The Weak.

[Annie Labuntur]

The version I heard almost certainly mentioned the Down's syndrome element, and I feel like it was told in a knowingly tasteless, borderline-acceptable way. It might have been told in-character within a sitcom, or could even have been on a panel show like Mock The Weak.

Hard to imagine a comedian so crass and witless as to make fun of people with Down's Syndrome.

[Dead Soon]

Pretty sure the place you originally heard this would be buried deep within the Ricky, Steve & Karl XFM treasure trove. Possibly Ricky recounting it to Karl as a test to see if he'd believe any old urban legend bollocks, Karl appearing to believe it and Ricky ripping the piss out of him (''NO, KARL'') as a result.

[the]

The punchline of the story is 'disabled/foreign people are grotesque, laugh now as you picture them', while diverting the responsibility for this from the storyteller onto a fictional person's drug-addled brain.

So I'd guess that there is zero chance of there not being a recorded example of RG telling this story, because it so perfectly encapsulates everything which enables that little boner he gets.

[thenoise]

Definitely hearing it in Pilkington's voice, with the punchline 'little chinese fella / monkey fella / penguin fella' etc, with Gervais screeching in the background.

[C_Larence]

I'm pretty sure this happens in an episode of It's Always Sunny In Philadelphia.

Edit: Yes, season 11 episode 8 to be exact. https://itsalwayssunny.fandom.com/wiki/Charlie_Catches_a_Leprechaun

[phantom_power]

Sounds like something Russell Howard would repeatedly swear was true during one of his piss-weak stand-up bits

[BritishHobo]

It does sound like a story Karl Pilkington told - but I don't know if I'm confusing it with the story about a babysitter on drugs who says they cooked the turkey that was in the kitchen, and the parents in horror say 'we didn't have a turkey'. But it does ring a bell from them.

The execrable Movie 43 did this as well I think, with a leprechaun.

[JaDanketies]

It does sound like a story Karl Pilkington told - but I don't know if I'm confusing it with the story about a babysitter on drugs who says they cooked the turkey that was in the kitchen, and the parents in horror say 'we didn't have a turkey'. But it does ring a bell from them.

also snopsed

[thenoise]

'we didn't have a turkey'.

Little bald monkey fella ... with no 'ead.