(Right, so I was being glib here. The joke Sal made was cheeky but it would have been fine. I thought I was just saying something throwaway, the sort of thing I would normally edit out before publication. But on reflection this is the point at which I lost the room.)

Sal: Oh really?

Q: Who is this for?

No, I’m being silly, it’s fine. It’s for Den of Geek.

Q: Oh, I know Den of Geek. Cool. You can put that in there.

Yeah, we’ll be fine.

Sal: Yesterday they (Murr and Q) were on TV in the morning, what was it?

Murr: Lorraine.

Sal: And the guy…

Q: Dr. Hilary.

Sal: Dr. Hilary. I thought it was a male?

Q: His name is Hilary Jones.

Sal: Oh, the guy’s name is Hilary? I’ve never heard of that.

Q: Yeah, he went through life like that, man.

Murr: We pranked Dr. Hilary on Lorraine and he called us bastards on live TV.

Sal: But that’s not even a curse to me. (To Den of Geek) I thought you guys, from what I gather, anything goes on TV. There’s like cursing, nudity. The first episode of The Office they curse so much. So to just say bastard and it’s all over the news.

Joe: Yeah, but it’s after 7pm in the UK.

I think it might be 9pm.

Sal: Who are they protecting?

Q: Well they’re saying if you have Lorraine on while you’re making breakfast and the family is around, the kids before they go to school, and you’re dropping b-bombs all over the place.

Sal: At 8pm a kid’s not gonna be flicking through the channels and hear the word?

Q: Yeah, but you’re taking the power out of the parents hands.

Sal: But bastard is actually a word, it’s allowed on American television even. If Dr. Hilary would’ve called them fuck-faces at 7am, then I would’ve been “Oh, well there might be a little bit of a…”

(From this point onwards, the interview descends into sweary chaos.) (While we wanted to render the below true to events, we’ve chosen to tweak the odd phrase – Ed)

Sal: If Dr. Hilary had turned to him, at 7am when people are making their breakfast and called him a stupid silly little (front bottom – Ed)face, I would be like, that might have some blowback. But not a bastard.

Murr: But different cultures have different meanings for things.

Sal: But bastard doesn’t even feel like a curse. Like, bastard, bastard, bastard, bastard, bastard, bastard, bastard, bastard, bastard, bastard.

Q: Right, but you can’t say (front bottom – Ed)hole, (front bottom – Ed)hole, (front bottom – Ed)hole, (front bottom – Ed)hole, (front bottom – Ed)hole, (front bottom – Ed)hole, (front bottom – Ed)hole.

Murr: Guys, you can’t say any of this stuff.

No, you can say whatever you like. That’s my editors’ problem

Q: No, it’s Den of Geek. I’ve been on your website, you can say anything.

Sal: So if Dr. Hilary would have said “You (front bottom – Ed) bastard!” it would have been “You (front bottom – Ed) beeeeep”?

No, you couldn’t have said (front bottom – Ed) in the morning. It’s the time of day.

Joe: Again, before 7pm. After 7pm you can call everybody a fucking stupid (front bottom – Ed) sloppy motherfucker. And everyone would be fine with it.

Q: But I thought in the UK, (front bottom – Ed)’s like a friendship term, isn’t it? “Ahh, you (front bottom – Ed)!”

Murr: Let the Den of Geek record show that I have not said the c-word once.

Help yourself.

Q: You just said ‘the c-word’. Are you afraid to answer to the Den of Geek editor?

Murr: No. It’s an offensive word.

It’s not quite the same over here as in the US.

Murr: But bastard is a bad word over here.

Not on the scale of (front bottom – Ed).

(pause)

We have gone off road.

Sal: That was our intention.

Q: Do you know that Lorraine is quite hot in person?

Really?

Murr: Yeah, I’d take a run at her.

Sal: Dr. Hilary is no slouch himself.

Q: He’s well dressed.

Murr: He’s aging well.

Joe: Wait, he’s a guy?

Sal: So I’m told.

Murr: I told him to look at my buttocks, I had some marks, he said “Oh, that’s (medical condition I couldn’t make out that is apparently not serious).” Remember I got that from Spa Castle? He nailed it. A long time ago I went to a spa castle, which is like a castle of spas. It’s all hot tubs and things like that, it’s not very well maintained.

Q: (to Den of Geek) It’s exactly what you think it is.

Murr: Not very well maintained but it’s a touristy thing. I went and I got a rash from the spa.

Joe: It’s not touristy.

Murr: Sure it is.

Joe: No it’s not. No one comes to New York and says “We’ve got to check out Times Square and Spa Castle!”

Q: Maybe a sex tourism thing.

Joe: Yeah, he caught something from the water.

Q: Ted Water. No, the chlorine level was high.

(I can’t fish all the jokes out of my recording from this. They were all making them at the same time and laughing.)

Murr: It’s not a sex place, it’s a legit spa castle.

When people give you tips, when a challenge on the show is to get a tip, do you give the money back?

Murr: No.

Joe: We keep it.

Murr: I earned that money.

Joe: If people ask for it we take it back, but at the end of the day, we keep that money. One time we actually bought a lottery ticket for the crew. The first one at White Castle. We didn’t win.

Sal: I think that sometimes when people are very generous, we’ll make sure that they get it back. I think sometimes we forget. But at the end of a day of filming, when 50 people give a buck, they don’t want it back. (To Joe) But the other day you had 26 bucks, and you gave me 13.

Murr: We were filming two weeks ago and the challenge was, you had to leave a $5 bill on the floor. When a regular person picked up the $5 bill you had to run up to them and say “Excuse me. That’s not my bill. I know you just found it and it’s not mine, either. But, can you give it to me, here’s why.” And the guys give you a ridiculous reason. We pocketed some serious cash.

Q: I still have that burned $5.

The good-natured tone comes through on the show.

Q: THE WHAT?

THE SHOW IS REALLY GOOD NATURED, RIGHT?

Q: I’m kidding, I heard what you said.

(attempts to speak, laughs/gives up)

Sal: This is just us. We entertain each other all the time.

It’s very hurtful but I’m coping.

But, is that something you’re conscious of maintaining, or are you genuinely lovely?

Joe: Well we’re friends for real. I think that…

Q: I yelled at Joe on set the other day.

Joe: Yes.

Q: We’re not over that yet.

Joe: We’re still hitting that hard. I mean he’s never done it…

Q: In 6 years of making the show I’ve never…

Joe: … it caught everybody by surprise.

Murr: It was the first time ever that it wasn’t directed at me.

Sal: When we first started filming at the beginning we noticed that if people get angry and there’s tension, it defuses the comedy. And we’re like, well, we shouldn’t skew that way. We just want it to be funny.

Joe: We even say a lot of the times, we’ll put our own filter on. We’ll rein each other in when somebody’s out there. If we see somebody’s getting mad we’ll change the direction on purpose. Cause that’s not what our show is. It’s not getting people upset. It’s making each other laugh.

Q: And they need to sign to be on television, so it’s against our interests to anger them.

Murr: Sal physically assaulted me one day. But he backed off when I got in his face.

Joe: You whipped your coat at me and said “Your best friend just assaulted me!” and walked away into the night.

Murr: I stood my ground and he backed away like a scared child.

Q: And you stormed off set.

Joe: You stormed off set. You looked me in the eye…

Murr: I didn’t storm off set, we were done filming. I went home.

Sal: We’re with each other 24/7.

Joe: …“Your best friend assaulted me” and then you went to the Spa Castle.

Murr: I didn’t say that.

Joe: (theatrical but brilliant Murr impression) “Your best friend assaulted me.”

Q: Like when a parent is mad at their kid and they call it ‘your son’.

(lose room to laughter and funny bickering for a moment)

Murr: None of this is true.

Sal: We were on the road in Scarsdale, Arizona and we all went to a nightclub.

Murr: Scotsdale.

Sal: Scotsdale. We all went to a nightclub, and he went into another room on his own…

Murr: To get a lapdance.

Sal: …and there were like 20 people and we were like “Where’s Murray?”

Q: It was a strip club.

Joe: I guess Murray must have left….

Murr: I come out of a strip club in a foreign state…

(They are literally all trying to tell their own version of the story at the same time)

Murr: …they’re gone.

Sal: …he left without telling anyone. So we go across the street to eat something at Denny’s.

Joe: IHOP (International House Of Pancakes).

Murr: There was no Denny’s anywhere near there.

Q: It was across the street.

Murr: You took rickshaw to a Denny’s that was 5 miles away.

Q: It was literally across the street and a quarter mile to the left.

Sal: So we texted him and said we’re going to the Denny’s, we can’t find you. And then weeks later he pulled us aside on set and scolded us.

Murr: You did not text me.

Q: We didn’t text him. That was the problem.

Sal: Oh, you called us.

Murr: That was the whole argument. There was no text, no nothing, because nobody gave a shit about what was happening to Murr.

Sal: Cause we all have cell phones, he called us the second he came out and we said we’re at Denny’s.

What is your favourite Jason Statham movie?

Q: I mean, Crank. What am I, an asshole?

Murr: For sure.

Q: What am I, some sort of asshole?

Murr: Crank, and the sequel is really good too.

Sal: He was very funny in Spy. Although that’s not really his film.

Q: Why did you look disappointed when I said Crank?

No, that was my heart almost exploding with joy. Crank is his best film by a mile.

Q: Crank is amazing. And it’s got Dennis from It’s Always Sunny In Philadelphia in it.

Yes!

Q: In a tiny cameo. He dies in the sequel. Spoiler.

Murr: He was great in Spy, too.

Q: He has to keep his energy up or he dies.

Sal: I can’t even… just listening to it gets me exhausted.

Joe: I really loved him in Spy. I nosed him (Joe’s signature move is to covertly touch people with his nose. That description does not do it justice) in California when I moved there.

No!

Joe: Yeah, he was in a Coffee Bean in front of me and I nosed him. I was by myself. I just said, I have to take this opportunity. I nosed him and I backed away and he turned around.

Murr: It’s like, if someone gets nosed in the woods, and there’s no one around to see…

Joe: So he turned around and looked at me. After I had gotten away with it, I said “I’m a huge fan and I just wanted to say hey”.

Q: What was his name in Crank. Che…?

Chev Chelios.

Q: Chev Chelios! Oh god, that’s gonna make me want to watch that movie.

Murr: Yeah, me too.

Sal: Was there a Crank 2?

Joe: Yeah.

Sal: They get him again? And he has to crank himself again?

Q: No, no, they take his heart out, and he has a mechanical heart so he has to electrically charge himself. And he’s chasing down his own fucking heart.

Sal: Oh. That sounds amazing.

Q: It’s unbelievable.

Joe, Sal, Q and Murr, thank you very much!

New episodes of Impractical Jokers are shown on Comedy Central UK Mondays at 10pm.