‘They want to extend the Northern line, but I think this is Morden adequate.’
Irish – sorry, Maltese – musical comedy duo the Rubberbandits answer the most frequently Googled questions about them. If you’ve ever asked the internet ‘Who are the Rubberbandits really?’ or ‘Why do the Rubberbandits wear plastic bags?’, this could be just the video you’re after… Or it might not.
Who are the Rubberbandits really?
Blindboy Boatclub ‘A few people have asked us that. My real name is Danny Glover.’
Mr Chrome ‘And my name is Mel Gibson.’
BB ‘Yeah.’
MC ‘He's the black one. And I'm the one who nailed Chris to a cross. Pictorially speaking. And with a hammer.’
Why do the Rubberbandits wear plastic bags?
BB ‘It makes us very sexual to women. We asked a couple of girls what they liked most about life, and they said definitely their number one thing was shopping. So we try and look like shopping then, in order to obtain flap.’
MC ‘And they're head-condoms because we like mind-fucking girls.’
BB ‘Mm-hmm.’
Are the Rubberbandits gay?
BB ‘We're gay in Ireland for tax reasons. Because in Ireland you get a tax break if you're gay, so we walk around and we hold hands, we go for dinner, we kiss each other, but that's because we get a tax break. Then when we go to England we don't have to be gay then, so we can kiss girls, all that type of thing. But back home…’
MC ‘[Whistles] And that's a… Not a… Just so you know.’
Why do the Rubberbandits hate Danny Dyer?
MC ‘We don't hate Danny Dyer.’
BB ‘We don't hate him. We first met Danny Dyer in Torquay. And he had a broken down car, and he needed to get petrol into the car, so we helped him out by… We went to the petrol station, we took mouthfuls of petrol and ran towards his car and spit it in. It took about 40 trips to fill the engine of his car, and he never paid paid us, he just span away, and we had nothing but the taste of petrol in our mouths. He got nickel poisoning.’
MC ‘Yeah.’
BB ‘Nickel poisoning! Nickel poisoning isn't an enjoyable…’
MC ‘And it all spiralled out of control when we tagged a pagoda, we said “Danny Dyer's a fool”, and we wrote it on a pagoda, and people started thinking that we actually hated him. But we don't hate him.’
BB ‘We don't hate him. We just… If we see a pagoda, we'll write something about him on it, but…’
MC ‘More often than not it'll be positive.’
BB ‘Sometimes we'll write a positive thing on a pagoda about him.’
Are the Rubberbandits teachers?
MC ‘I taught a fella how to jump off a building.’
BB ‘How did it go? Did it land well?’
MC ‘Yeah. He was grand.’
BB ‘Was he grand?’
MC ‘Yeah.’
BB ‘Oh, you're like one of those…’
MC ‘Because I taught him how to do it.’
BB ‘How to do it properly.’
MC ‘Yeah.’
BB ‘How to land. Like one of them base-jumpers.’
MC ‘Yeah.’
BB ‘But taller.’
MC ‘Well, it was only, like, about eight feet.’
BB ‘That's not a building then.’
MC ‘He was a child, though.’
BB ‘Ahh. So you taught a man who was a child…’
MC ‘Yeah.’
BB ‘…to jump off an eight foot building, and he landed perfectly.’
MC ‘Yeah.’
BB ‘Yeah, so we are teachers, yes.’
Are the Rubberbandits from Ireland?
BB ‘No, not at all, we're from Malta.’
MC ‘Malta.’
BB ‘We're from Malta. We originated there… Malta has two things… Two things I love about Malta: they have the finest collection of megalithic tombs in western Europe and, of course, it is home of the Maltese Falcon, the eggs of which we commonly know as Maltesers. So, yeah, we're from Malta. Malta.’
MC ‘Malta?’
BB ‘Malta.’
MC ‘Malt?’
BB ‘Malt.’
The Rubberbandits’s ‘Continental Fistfight’ plays the Edinburgh Fringe, Jul 30-Aug 25
