Russell Howard was on The Chris Moyles Show on Radio X yesterday (November 7^th) to promote his 2026 tour.

A story about him being at a party with Stephen Hawking was picked up on by The Daily Mail (here) and then replicated on other websites (the old copy / paste job).

Their picking up on Russell being “drowned out by Jimmy Carr’s laugh” completely missed out on the nuance of what was really being said. Partly because Russell / Chris didn’t make it entirely clear that what they were referencing was a party (or parties) at Jimmy’s house.

Around 6.35 Chris starts talking about comedians being weird / unusual and Russell leads on with bringing up that “a friend of mine, who you know, who normally throws those showbiz parties” (Jimmy) has a go at him for just talking to comedians there (not mingling).

Chris goes on to say “I was at one of those parties once when Stephen Hawking was there”.

It seems everyone in TV / comedy / Radio was there – judging by the number of times I’ve heard this particular party brought up.

The 2 of them go on to discuss what Stephen’s laugh might sound like and Russell says it would be drowned out by another laugh in the room (followed by a poor attempt at mimicking Jimmy’s laugh).

They cycle back to this a little when Russell brings up (18mins) that people look at his nipples when he takes his baby son swimming. They joke about him (and others) having 3 nipples and the press clearly missed Chris saying “amazing what you pick up at these Jimmy Carr parties, isn’t it”. You’ll have to listen to it to understand the triple nipple part.

And then, one final mention, Russell compares his brother’s laugh to Jimmy’s, around 21 minutes.

Even though he wasn’t physically there – Mr C took up a fair bit of this 20 minutes.

Other name drops: Stephen Merchant, Rob Brydon, Jon Robbins, Jon Richardson, John Oliver, Alan Carr, Ross Noble, Al Murray, Mighty Boosch, Simon Pegg, Jerry Seinfeld, Nigela Lawson, Harry Styles