If you're staying in tonight, you should tune into Radio 4 at 11pm to listen to the Pappy's Fun Club radio show! Pappy's are my favourite sketch group, extremely silly and playful, and are guaranteed to leave you in a state of delight so extreme you might need to run away to a deserted island, to get away from all the bad things in the world. That's the power of comedy!Radio 4, tonight, 11pm. Be there or be rubbish.
Here's my most recent Don't Ever Heckle column for Londonist, where I interview my favourite London comedians. This one is with Rich Sandling, the be-bearded film fan, and a fantastic comedian. Comment and recommend it on the Londonist site, and trick my editor into thinking that my writing is popular when it isn't!!
When I was about thirteen, I was starting to get into anime, and Japan in general. It all seemed so exciting. Japan was a country which I knew absolutely nothing about, and had never had any sort of impact on my life up until that age, so discovering all this new anime, music, movies, and a whole new language, was heaps of fun. The Paramount Channel started showing anime late at night, so I started staying up until ungodly hours waiting to watch shows like Cyber City Oedo, Project A-Ko and Dominion Tank Police. Aah, such memories! It was usually on around midnight, so while waiting for it to start, I'd also watch lots of American comedy. The Critic, Dr. Katz, Frasier, Due South, Sledge Hammer, It's Gary Shandling's Show, and a LOT of stand-up. This led me to start consuming comedy with such a gargantuan appetite.
I also read teletext a lot. The Paramount Channel and Nickelodeon's teletext were both written by the same chap, who went by the monicker of "Ed". The quantity of pages that this guy would knock out in a day was quite something. Ed made sure that every single episode of every show that his channels pumped out had a one-page synopsis, and if you pressed reveal, you could also see the series and episode number. For a geek in the days before the internets, this was very exciting stuff. On top of that, Paramount had a daily letters page called Mailbox, which was a bit like a chat room before the internet. It was updated daily with about thirty pages of correspondence, with the majority of people using pen-names, talking to other readers through the letters page. The turnover of copy on those sites was such that it would be perfectly possible to spend an hour a day on teletext (coupled with all the glorious stuff on Channel 4, like Digitizer, and Planet Sound (did I remember that name right?). In retrospect, of course my time would have been far better spent reading books, and playing in the sunshine. Yeah, it's easy to point it out now, but where were you at the time? Eating Pot Noodle out of a dog's mimsy, that's where. So clean up the mess in your own back garden!Nickelodeon teletext had a penpal service. I quite liked the idea of having pen friends. I wasn't hugely popular in school, so it seemed like a good way of having people to talk to without having to worry about them thinking I was a bit rubbish. So I sent off an advert. It was terribly generic. Something along the lines of "Hi! I'm Chris, a 13 y/o from Berkshire. I like music, basketball, computers and socialising. Let's be friends!", though possibly less interesting than that.
I was really excited when it appeared. The novelty of seeing something I've done on TV didn't wear off for a long time. I'd happily sit through ten pages of scrolling pages, just to see my penpal ad for five seconds at a time. It was a bit like that time when ITN filmed me playing Super Mario 3 in my bedroom after an interview they did with me about whether video games were addictive. I seem to remember saying "I don't think they're addictive. They help with my reflexes and education. I only play games for five hours a day!" Oh dear me. I also seem to recall Dominic Diamond mocking me when the news snapped back to the studio - and rightly so, too! But the footage from that interview got used on all the ITN subsidiary shows whenever they did a report on video games and needed a graphic. I found out about this when a girl came into school and told me that she'd seen me on The Big Breakfast that day. I thought she was testing my famous gullibility, until a few months later when I almost spat out my toast, as my stupid child face filled the screen. Who needs that when they're eating?! But it was still hugely exciting. Like being a celebrity, except without the fame, and lots of mockery from the ammunition that I had given the school Tough-Jacks.
Come to think of it, I should give that a bit of context, too. When I was nine, I won a competition that The Sun put on with Nintendo to see who was the best at games and that. Yes kneel before... The Nintendo Champion, 1992! All your admiration is perfectly correct, and that warm, moist sensation stirring between your thighs, that intense desire to pin me against a wall and screw me senseless, are natural. After all, I got the furthest into the first level of a speed run of Chip 'n' Dale: Rescue Rangers!!! Basically, I played loads of games and won, and in exchange, I got two weeks in Florida, a load of games, and I got to sit on Pat Sharp's lap. Sometimes I won in quite unfair circumstances - for example, the final round was a game of Dr Mario, a game which I was able to win because I owned it, and my opponent had never played. But who cares - I went to Florida!
But back to the story. I wrote into the Penpals page, but didn't hear anything back for about four months, by which point I'd totally forgotten about it. Then one day a big fuck-off envelope fell through my door. I guess that Ed was so busy writing stuff that he didn't have time to sort the penpals bit out. But somehow my dull and lifeless ad had got about thirty replies! All from girls, too. I wrote back to almost ever single one of them. I remember one of them being so frightening that I could barely bring myself to read to the end, for fear that she would actually spring out of the page and shout things at me. Two of them forgot to put their address on, which for some reason made me feel guilty that I couldn't reply, rather than thinking that they were a bit dim. As for the rest, there was a whole mixture of people. Some were very trendy and popular, some were rock 'n' roll, some were shy and bookish, and some of the girls had other personalities! Imagine that, with your tiny mind! To begin with I wrote to all 28 of them. After a couple of mails, I stopped writing to a few, and some stopped writing to me, but for the best part of five months, I was in regular correspondence with about 20 girls, all by hand-written letter.
The problem was that, with so many pen-friends, it became difficult remembering who I had and hadn't written to. So I made a table, with columns for each penpal, and rows for "thinks I'd dun wot I wanted to tell people wot I'd dun". So when it came to write to someone, I'd look at the chart, see what I hadn't told them, and write about it, like a robot filing a report. You'd think that would take some of the fun out of a friendship, but for some reason, I liked it. I live for admin, apparently. Without trying to get too deep, it sort of makes sense. I was very shit as a child, so it's totally believable that I would write these letters not for the friendship, but just for something to do to fill the time. In that respect, the procedure was probably a joy. God, what a massive idiot I must have been as a kid!
There was about three exceptions to that, though. There were three girls whose letters I could not wait to receive, and were a joy to read. One of them was a Chinese (I think) girl who spoke fantastically good English. She always stood out because she'd made her own envelopes out of magazine pages, and she always told such exciting stories. It pains me to say that I can't remember a great deal about the content of our letters. I hope you'll understand that it was over twelve years ago, and I find it hard to remember what I ate for dinner last night, let alone the content of letters I sent and received as a kid. But getting her letters was always an immense pleasure. I forget who stopped writing to who, but like all the penpals I had, one stopped writing to another.
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Cut to yesterday, when I got home from work, to be greeted by an unusually high pile of mail, one of which was a hand-written letter, in a writing I didn't recognise. I opened it expecting it to be a reminder from the dentist. Turns out that it was the Chinese girl that I was pen pals with twelves years ago! She was sorting through some old boxes, saw my letter, and dropped me a line to see how I'm doing! What a sweet thing to do. I really hope that I've still got her letters. I have a heart-wrenching feeling that I threw a load of mail out in a stupid teenage fit of trying to reject my childhood. If I didn't do this, then they're in the attic. Fingers crossed! She's on Facebook and that, which gives me a very good motivation to sort out my Facebook, MySpace, and LiveJournal user info, all of which I have neglected for far too long, considering how much time I spend on-line.
Her letter was just what I needed after a ghastly day at work. Last night, I went to bed happy. :)
For karaoke fans - lyrics to Daft Punk's "Around the World."
Lol - someone has made a guide on how to interview Beck, on account of him supposedly being a Scientologist. It's a funny read. Please bear point two in mind:
"2. Beck is likely unaware of much of the "wog" world around him."
You've got to be aware of the wog.
I'm not that interested in visiting websites which take ad revenue from Scientologists. I'm a bit fussy like that.
I expect
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chococat will know it, but if anyone else can get their first, you'll have saved my sanity.(Edit: AHA! It's KC and the Sunshine Band, "Give It Up". Like all such realisations, it came ot me when I wasn't thinking about it. The sample suddenly appeared back in my head, along with the next bit of the tune where he sings "Everybody wants you...". Success!)
I got to sleep at about 9pm, and woke up about an hour ago. The whole night was spent fighting with temperature. It creeped into my dreams at one stage. I remember one dream which involved me being at Center Parcs, engaging in an activity which I'm going to find incredibly difficult to put into words. In real life, I couldn't get hot for more than ten seconds, because even the slightest gap in my duvet seemed to send a wave of cold air all around me. This was represented in the dream by me being outside on a sort of mud ride with six other people. This mud ride had only a certain amount of heat, and we were all fighting for it. I was half awake at the time, so it was more like a hypnagogic hallucination than a dream. Either way, here I am at 3.45am, entirely unable to sleep, and feeling just dreadful.
I shall update about the week's activies soon. But first, I shall read my blogs. Internet: prepare for a barage of comments!!
The Monday before last was the 7th, and was the first Monday without an After School Club. I wasn't sad though, because I got to spend the evening with Fiona (
feebomon) who I hadn't seen in an eternity, give or take a few days. It was such a treat catching up with her. We met in a bar in Soho called Balans, and she brought my 40 days of sobriety crashing to a halt, as when I arrived she had a delicious fruity cocktail waiting for me. She's another comedy obsessive, which always leads to many conversations fuelled by excitement. For example, I'd recently watched all of Nighty Nighty, including all the DVD extras, and so we both talked about how much fun it would be to be friends with Julia Davis, because she's always bursting into fits of uncontrollable giggles during rehearsals. As we both live miles away we had to leave at a very unreasonable time, but it was okay, because...
The following Wednesday I met Fiona again! We went to see The Real Daniel O'Donnell Show, a comedy night I've wanted to go to for a long time, not only because I'd never heard a single bad word said about it, but also because one of the writers is Michael Legge, a chap I saw do a tremendous job of compering at the Amused Moose a few months ago. That's him in the picture on the right. It's a comedy night with a cast of about five regulars and a few guests, full of sketches, stand-up, pre-recorded sketches and music which is all created just for that night. Well, I've only been once so I don't know this for fact, but it certainly feels like it's written just for that show. It's a night run on love and excitement, a night for creativity and danger, and a night which I have every single intention of going to on a very regular basis. I also had the pleasure of meeting a friend of Fiona's called Catharine Rogers, who I soon learned was also The Opera Singer Lady that was on stage during Robin Ince's Book Club, which me and my friend Emma went to see in Edinburgh. I also met another friend of Fiona's whose name escapes me, and I feel utterly dreadful for the fact, but he was ever such a friendly man. He's recently started working for The Samaritans, and had some fascinating stories to tell about the training that they have to go through. We all stayed drinking at The Albany quite late, and all fell hopelessly in love with their chili rice puffs, which we bought in quantities which would make Brian Blessed blush.-----------------------
Last Monday (14th) I met with my friend James to go to Old Rope, a new material night near Oxford Circus. In a way, I think I enjoy new material nights more than actual comedy nights, because for a small price you get to see top comedians mucking about in a really relaxed, no-pressure atmosphere, and I prefer a laid back, shambolic approach to comedy far more than a super-slick professional evening. Robin Ince was down and had six pages of material, but had so much more to say that he only managed to get through one! He talked a lot about religious lunatics and the Daily Mail, which he said had been inspired by a book he'd recently read about the media. I had a chat with him in the interval, and it turned out that he was referring to Flat Earth News, a book which I heaped praise upon a short while back. Flat Earth News should act as a call to arms to anyone of sound mind, and comedians are able to actually act on that. We had a bit of a chat about The Skeptic's Guide to the Universe and Dawkins and other such lefty activities, which was nice.
The other acts were top, particularly Lady Carol, who wore an elegant black velvet dress, a black feather in her hair, and played a tiny ting guitar. Andrew O'Neill closed the evening with an extended set, and put on a glorious performance. Andrew convinced me to drink with him and his friends at the Crobar until a stupid time in the morning, at which point my friends Kate and Dave joined us. They run a new act night in Soho on Mondays, and frequently celebrate their success (and their night always is a success) by drinking until the sun rises.Kate and David let me stay round their gorgeous house in Stoke Newington through all of last week. I don't understand how houses which are so nice can exist so close to Dalston Kingsland train station. It's one of those things which never ceases to amaze me about London. One road can be full of litter, filth, and people living in abject poverty. Then you can turn round the corner, and you're at Liverpool Street train station. London is a constant mind-fuck. Anyway, this week I've essentially slept at theirs, gone straight to work and done a day's grafting, then had a shower in work, and gone out for the evening. It's a system which worked very well, except for Wednesday evening when I went out for a Londonist meet, drank until 1am, and decided to sneak into the office, and sleep at my desk. I went down to the staff room and dragged a bean bag up, and had a fantastic night's sleep. No-one knew, though some people strongly suspected because I'd forgotten to take the bean bag back down before people arrived. Whoops!
(The Londonist meet was, as always, great fun. I finally met Talia, the music editor who has a taste of music which I strongly align myself with. Synths, beeps and electropop heavy. I say names like Pay TV and Matinee Club to her, and she knows who I'm talking about!)
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On Tuesday 15th, I met my friend Charlotte to catch up, and to go to some comedy. She runs a fantastic gig called the Funny Folk Cafe with her friend Jo, who sadly couldn't make it along. Charlotte and I bought a bottle of fairly expensive wine which ended up tasting like vinegar, but as with all terrible wine, became perfectly bearable once it has killed off half of the sensory apparatus of your mouth. It was great to catch up, and to know that things are positive with her.
There was only one comedy night in the listings which appealed to me, but luckily it appealed immensely. It was a gig in London Bridge called Falling Down With Laughter, and was full of sketch and character acts trying out new stuff. Almost all of it was solidly strong, but with a running time of just over three hours, and the fact that my bedtime the previous night was almost 4am, I don't mind confessing that I was almost falling asleep by the end of it. What a joy it was though! Pippa Evans was a personal favourite of mine, who performed two characters who I simply cannot do justice to with words. If I described them, you'd think I was insane, but if you saw them, you would howl with laughter. Joe Wilkinson teamed up with a friend to perform two sketches, which were funny in themselves, but made all the more funny by their ramshackle approach to "learning lines". Don't take that as a criticism; on the contrary, I could have watched an entire three hours of just them trying to remember their sketches!
The night was compered by a comedian with a quite thick French accent, who magically lost it when he performed in sketches as part of Cat of the Week. I think I was quite disappointed when I found out that he wasn't French, because I liked his voice. :) He was a really strong compere and a great performer. My mate Tiernan did a few sketches with his friends as part of the troupe Tea and Cake, which were really impressive. I won't say too much because I'm planning on seeing their Edinburgh preview, and no doubt I'll be heaping superlatives on it then. The Penny Dreadfuls closed the evening. I was familiar with their work from Radio 4, and they performed some really strong sketches to close the night. Sadly, my state of sleep deprivation had fallen to such extremes that I can't precisely recall the content of the sketches, but I laughed like a madman, and that's all that matters.
As we left, I said goodbye to Tiernan. As I did, his friend Lauren (also part of Tea and Cake) said to me "Where's your Michael Heseltine t-shirt?". And in doing so, Tuesday 15th April 2008 officially marks the first time that someone has quoted my stand-up at me! My immediate reflex was to play along, but also be modest, so I just said it was in the wash. But in my mind I was screaming "OM MY GOD OH MY GOD!!", so what I actually wanted to do was jump for joy, kiss her with Italian passion, buy everyone champagne and take the revolution out to the streets. Alas, I was too stunned to even make a comment about how she was quoting me. What a dick I am! Still, it had me smiling for the rest of the trip home.
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I've probably been up to more stuff besides this, but I fear I must dash now. Sophi is staying round mine today, so I'm going to pick her up from the station, and spend all day watching comedy. On Sunday I'm going to the ICA with Fiona to see the new Mark Heap and Tasmin Greig movie, with a Q & A which I'm sure will massage all my comedy geek glands (if you like Green Wing or Spaced, you should call the ICA to book tickets!). And then next week I'm off to Centre Parcs. Imagine that!
The trouble is that I have so many questions to ask comedians that I can't whittle it down to less than 2,000 words. So my always-lovely editor Lindsey suggested that the more London-centric questions should go up on Londonist, and the more comedy-obsessive questions could go in my own blog. So think of this as part two of the Londonist interview.It's a bit of a mish-mash of questions when taken out of context with the main interview, but I hope you enjoy reading it. :)
Why do you do stand-up? For the public's admiration? Their attention?
An enormous number of the things I've done in my life have been in order to gain the approval of women or immediate members of my family... but I don't think stand-up is one of them. I've always been a big comedy enthusiast, and a writer of stories and poems, and other things that terribly sensitive pale young boys do in their teenage years. It wasn't until that experience at university that I started to think that me actually saying those things could be entertaining. Entertaining, but also unusual. I'm a great believer in the innovative, musically, and in terms of the films I like, and in comedy too. I always looking for something new. I enjoy The Beatles, and watching Monty Python for the thousandth time, but I also go for it a bit of Einstürzende Neubauten and Wil Hodgson too. I like to keep it eclectic.
I suppose I do it because I really like being on stage. I mean, it's all relative because I'm such a miserable bastard. Although it really scares me a lot of the time, I do enjoy getting the response in that way. in a way it's like a sport. you go up there and you've got the bat in your hand, you've got to hit the ball and make people laugh. You're judged... unless you're a big name, you're judged by how you do on the night. And people don't care if you stormed it in Melton Mowbray on the 3rd Sunday in February in 2001, they just think you suck and they'll let you know. And that gives a good adrenalin rush. Oh, and the groupies as well, triple exclamation mark.
How did your that third gig with the BBC come about?
I did a tape to audition before I'd ever done a gig in my mate's home studio, and after that I did my first ever proper gig at Pear Shaped, which was fun. The next gig was the BBC audition, and then after that it was the show for radio. So... yeah, it was a very fast baptism, but like all of these things, you can do well in a competition early on, and you imagine that you'll always be great, but you do actually need to learn your trade. And you're always learning. Even just as you think you've got it worked out... and I'm sure that people who have been going for ten or twenty years will affirm this. Sometimes I'll go "Yeah, I've just worked out that little bit of technique, I've got that mastered", but then you watch someone who has really been around like Nick Revell or Stewart Lee, and just realise how much of a craft it is. I've talked to Nick Revell about this. He's been going for close to thirty years, and he's a consummate technician, but he'll be the first to admit that he's still learning how to achieve the kind of results that he wants to. Because we all have things that we want to make happen on stage, and we all want to know how to execute that perfectly, just like
Nick Cave is always striving to make the perfect song.
You've done other work with the BBC, tell us about that.
There was 28 Acts in 28 Minutes, which was wicked. It's such a strange environment. We had the world's smallest dressing room. I think the girl's was larger than ours, it was mainly blokes on the show I was on. And it was a real equalling out of peers. There was newer acts like me and Arnab Chanda, up to big hoary old stand-ups like Jeff Green and Stewart Lee. And grand darlings of the theatre, like Martin Jarvis and John Sessions. All of us crammed in! The weirdest bit was when I was sitting around having a drink, and I'd left my notebook on one side. And Martin Jarvis walked over, and in the voice which I completely vividly remember from the Just William stories of my youth, started reading my set aloud to himself. That was one those "I've made it ma!" moments.
I'd definitely like to do more radio. Possibly even TV. Or, y'know, movies. Or whatever new art form they invent. I'm happy to be in LaserSmell. And so do all toher comedians. All comedians are awful, feckless, ass-kissing whores! But that's fine. You have to be realistic about it. We will do anything for fame, adulation, love, and most importantly money. The vast majority of opportunities for comedians are connected to advertising, whether it's doing adverts themselves, or shows which essentially amount to adverts, like E4. I don't think I'm a very E4 act, so I'm happy to slag them off.
How many gigs have you done?
Umm...
It's at least four, isn't it?
I'd say it's verging in double figures. Oh no, don't print that, they might take it seriously! Actually, i've absolutely no idea. Well, well north of 200. It's been a busy time. But after a while they do start to blur. You go to a gig and you think "I've been here before!" and then you realise that it's just a very similar function room. I do love pubs though, pubs are great. And you get to see so many interesting pubs. I don't nice gastropubby ones, I mean the sort that have old men with pipes and nicotine-stained fingers watching racing on a tiny portable in the corner of the room, with a barman that sucks his teeth when you ask for a lager which he has to change the barrel for. If you go out of London, there are some great gigs like that. There's a relatively new gig in Norwich called The Salt Box. It's a wonderful room with a telly and a surly looking antipodean lady behind the bar, and the room where the comedy is looks like the sort of room where mops and buckets would normally be kept, with just a few rows of seats, but it's a fantastic night. I really enjoyed it.
You mentioned that you weren't into stand-up much as a kid. Did you like comedy at all?
Oh yeah, I loved comedy. I was obsessed by it. Comedy, Doctor Who and Britpop, in descending order of artistic value. I loved watching Python, Not Only But Also... I used to write to Peter Cook when I was about 11 telling him that he was the most amazing person in my life. And he never responded because he was, y'know, dying of drink. He had other priorities, so I don't think badly of him. But it was a strange thing of a child of that age to be doing. Kids should be out playing football, sniffing glue, and getting your fingers in girl's tops.
So I was obsessed with comedy. I'd spend hours watching Blackadder, Alan Partridge, Fist of Fun... but there was nothing connecting that to stand-up. I always thought of stand-up as being either a bit like Mike Reid, or a bit like someone haranguing you. And I enjoyed Lee and Herring's live show, but I did once watch one of them doing solo stand-up, and it seemed weird to me. Perhaps because I was young and my ego wasn't very well developed, so sitting for an hour watching a single person speaking at you is strange. And I've noticed this when I do uni gigs, that kids can find it quite weird focusing on someone in that kind of way.
So I never got into stand-up. I saw Josie Long do a few gigs at university, and when I moved to London I saw a few shows with my girlfriend at the time who was very into it, but I was never a big stand-up goer. My current girlfriend thinks that I have mild autism, in that I quite like knowing what I'm going to get before I get it. So in Edinburgh I saw Wil Hodgson four times because I think he's a genius, and I love watching the mechanics of it. But the idea of seeing a show with four or five acts where I don't know what they're going to be like, or even knowing their names, was a bit too much of a leap for me.
Is it still?
Umm.. I don't tend to go out to watch much live comedy when I'm not performing. I'll watch someone I know doing an hour long show, but it's harder when you're involved in the process to divorce yourself and be a true punter, because you're aware of technique, of structure and endings. Whether that spoils the experiences or makes it richer I don't know, but I wouldn't rule either out.
It's probably best not to think about it too much!
I think too much about everything. Absolutely everything. I get into the sort of situation where I think "Shall I pick up the phone? I might end up talking for a while... Is he going to ask me how gigs have been going, am I doing a show near him..." it could even be someone I like a lot. I can't be dealing with it. I'd rather sit on the sofa and stare into space. I think I am quite a peculiar person.
It's something that I've become a bit worried about recently, the idea of becoming a comedian means that you end up fucking up your life, and becoming more and more inward looking. All stand-ups are prone to becoming quite introspective... for me, that introspection is quite dangerous, because I'm not a very psychologically strong person. I rely a lot on friends to sustain me. And of course for the love of the general public!
I think that's standard issue for comics though. I think I can think of two people who are genuinely normal, level-headed people.
Carl Donnoly?
...three people.
Talking about Holly Walsh, you did Edinburgh with her last year. How was that?
Fascinating. You start to seem like a grizzled bassist talking about Woodstock. "Edinburgh is a cruel mistress." It can be really fun, it can be utterly shattering, sometimes in the same week, sometimes in the same day. We did it as a showcase with Caroline Clifford and Caroline Mabey, and the four of us were doing it as an experience to see what an Edinburgh show was like, what it was like to be on stage every day. We were very lucky in that we drew big and appreciative crowds. We had friends who were struggling to get two people in, but fortunately we didn't have that, so that was great. There were times when none of us were speaking to each other, and others when we were all the best of mates, so that was weird.
I learned an enormous amount, though more afterwards. At the time I was so focused on what I was doing, and there's no stimulus to write because you're always performing and there's so many other acts and shows to see, but in the months after I made a lot of interesting choices about what I'm doing. I'm always trying to get better, as is everyone. Peter Kay is always trying to get better. I think he's awful, but I know he's always working to get better. Not better from my point of view, but I doubt he ares much about that. I doubt he's going to be weaving in more references to the the 1980s Birmingham jazz-indie group Felt, which would definitely put him right up my street. But I doubt he'll start saying "Felt - what were they all about?! Remember their Forever Breathes the Lonely Word album? That was crazy!" That'd be interesting to me, but probably not too interesting to other crowds.
If I do Edinburgh this year I won't be doing an hour long show, because I want to do a REALLY good one. So my focus is on making sure that it can live up to the best of what I can do. I'm planning it already but it won't be ready for this summer.
Compared to reports by The Independent, does anyone else feel that the BBC report is rather pro-China? Or perhaps it's neutral and the Indie article is so anti-China that the BBC just seem to not be neutral. Either way, it's interesting to see two Western outlets take such different approaches to the same story.
An absolutely shocking video where a community support officer pushes a civilian, and then tries to bully him into thinking that he is breaking the law.
The PCSO's number on his shoulder is C W 7166. Watch out for this man, and be very careful of him. He is a danger and a menace to anyone concerned with peace and freedom.
Put this into your own blog, and tell others to do the same. Let's make this go viral, so that the whole of London knows who this man is. Unless you're worried that he'll come round to your house and try to arrest you.
"...The patient, a 43-year-old man, was brought into the Accident and Emergency Department following an overdose. He had tried to kill himself because he was afraid he was going to be "locked up". However, this fear was secondary to a paranoid system at the heart of which was the hypochondriacal delusion that he was "mentally ill".
He was seen by the duty psychiatrist and by the consultant psychiatrist on call, neither of whom were in any doubt that he was deluded. Indeed, both were ready on the strength of their diagnosis to admit him as an involuntary patient.
Yet had their diagnosis depended on the falsity of the patient's belief, as in the standard definition, they would have been presented with a paradox: if the patient's belief that he was mentally ill was false, then (by the standard definition) he could have been deluded, but this would have made his belief true after all.
Equally, if his belief was true, then he was not deluded (by the standard definition), but this would have made his belief false after all. By the standard definition of delusion, then, his belief, is false, was true and, if true, was false."
I absolutely love the idea of it being impossible to tell whether someone who declares themselves to be "mentally ill" is actually mentally ill.
http://londonist.com/2008/03/dont_ever_I convinced the guys at Londonist to let me interview other comics on the circuit whose act really excites me. Here's the first one, with After School Club regular Gerry Howell. I had lots to ask him - what it feels like to be compared to Eddie Izzard, what he thinks about other genres of comedy, the writing process, what inspires him... the interview lasted 45 minutes, and as you all know, I'm terrible at editing my own work. When I went to sleep last night I'd managed to get it down to 5,000 words, and I didn't want to delete any of it! But I managed it. I had a lot of fun writing it, I hope you'll enjoy it too!
For those of you who don't know him, here's the man doing what he does best - drinking goose fat (doing stand-up):
March 17th may go down in history for many things. Off the top of my head: the day we invented wine, the day that Margaret Thatcher bought her first can of Irn-Bru, the day that the whole of Shropshire "gave up the ghost", and the day that Geoff Capes tied a load of aubergines to his neighbour's cat - these are but four of at least five events that the British associate with this day.Perhaps, in a few generations time, historians will also talk of the last After School Club in such reverential terms. I shouldn't have thought so, though. Don't get me wrong, it was a great evening of nonsense, but no matter how you look at it, even the best of comedy nights could never compare to Geoff Capes tying veg to a cat.
I suppose what I'm really trying to say is this - hello!
The last After School Club was a grand old time, and you're very kind to ask about it. I deliberately didn't advertise it anywhere, because so many regulars said that they were coming down that it didn't seem necessary. At the very last minute I started to consider whether this was a strictly wise idea, as by 8.15 it was rather empty - but as always, everyone piled in at the last minute, and we ended up with a lovely big audience, almost all of whom had been before. The Londonist table boasted an array of eight bloggers; the goths table also had about eight people, each secretly putting a curse on everyone else to turn them into frogs at midnight; and a whole bunch of other's too, including
kettle_whistle, who I hadn't seen in at least two years. A top audience, you'll surely agree. Actually, I found myself telling some people that I had listed it but that the listings magazines had forgotten. This was a complete lie, and I have no idea why I said it, other than as a get-out clause in case no-one came. Do you ever find yourself telling a lie without meaning to be malicious, but then being so embarrassed about the lie that you can't just say "I don't know why I said that, it wasn't true"? I used to do it a lot as a kid, though hardly ever nowadays. Perhaps that's for another blog entry though. :)My new material was mixed. Inspiration always tends to hit me on the Monday morning into work, but sadly that day in work was absolutely mental, and I didn't get much of a chance to learn it or tidy it up, so the delivery and structure was a bit rough. I was happy with most of it though. I made up some stuff about potatoes growing out of the ears of kids who don't wash, and how Jamie Oliver was going to make a show where he teaches us how to cook the potatoes in an organic bangers and mash. Then it went on to talk about battery farmed children who were forced to grow potatoes... yeah, I know it sounds rubbish when it's written down, but it got laughs on the night. Trust me!! Later on, I tried doing a bit about having to always go down to Ikea to buy a replacement Frankenstein's Monster, but that didn't go as well. Until I started talking about how he malfunctioned, and started bumming kids. That seemed to get a very big laugh. It's definitely art, the comedy that I do.
I was afraid that I wouldn't have much new material so I booked a very packed line-up. Nat Luurtsema and Gerry Howell were both as wonderful and skilled as they always are. Gerry is so stream-of-consciousness that I think I could watch him gig for five hours and not feel bored. Danielle Ward did a longer set to close the first half, and was utterly perfect for it. She covers a lot of dark topics in her act, so The Goths were moist with excitement throughout the whole of her set. I've never seen Danielle be anything other than amazing. If there is any justice in this world, she will be a millionaire by the end of the month, as audiences re-mortgage their homes to give her all their money as but a small token of their appreciation. But alas, there isn't any justice in this world - so for the foreseeable future, most audiences will probably hold onto their houses and cash. Selfish bastards. But I digress - Trevor Lock headlined, and like last time his set was almost entirely ad-libbed (or at least, he completely gave the impression of being so), and went down well. He tends to do best when people interact with him, but as the audience were all regulars, they were quite conscious of the fact that they're not allowed to heckle. The last time he was down, there were a few new people and a couple of drunks who weren't heckling, but were happy to talk with him. This time, people didn't really say much. But by the end, Trevor had drawn enough out of people to ad-lib his way through a very strong closing set. In my opinion, it was the perfect way for the club to end - experimental, surreal, interesting, weird and fun. Trevor, Danielle, Nat and Gerry: if you are reading this, I cannot thank you enough. You were spot on. :)For the drawing competition, I asked people to draw what they would do on Monday's now that there was no more comedy. A lot of people drew pictures of themselves wanking. One person drew a picture of them watching me wanking. And a couple of other people drew pictures of them dressing like me, and getting hair like mine. I am still unsure whether to be flattered or deeply frightened. One person drew themselves with an erection, charging at the arse of a gran who had drowned herself in the bath. I think this was a reference to some material from earlier, because if not, whoever drew it needs to sit down and have a long, hard think about their life.
I was a little bit sad that people didn't stay out until 4am in celebration, but it is a bit too much to expect of people on a Monday night. Most people stayed until the pub closed though, which was good enough for me. My ego was thoroughly massaged by people complimenting the evening and the run of the club, and regulars who told me exactly why they kept coming back. A few people recently have told me how, as they've been coming from the beginning, they've watched me progress as a comic, and how much more confident I am compared to my first evening. It's very touching to know that people have noticed me improving, and to even know that I actually HAVE improved. :) I definitely think that compering my own club had an effect on my normal stand-up, too. At The After School Club, I'm used to 80% of the audience knowing who I am, and so I can be confident and upbeat, and talk to the whole audience as if they were an old friend. I like to think that I now take the same approach with normal audiences, treating them with a natural friendliness. Like the Dean Martin of comedy, except more smooth, handsome and charming. Obviously.
I don't think it's sunk in that it's all over now. I've not yet fully comprehended and accepted that, with perhaps the very occasional gig, I have now actually given up stand-up until I move back to London. Maybe it'll hit me in a month's time, when I have a small stack of brand new material and nowhere to use it, or when I've written my tenth page of topical material which I can't use because it ain't topical no more. I'm fine at the moment, but I do think that in the following weeks, I might start to feel a bit sad. It's to be expected. I'll do my best to keep my chin up, work hard, save save save, and get back to London.
When I was writing the semi-regular A Comedian Blogs column for Londonist, I wrote that I could never imagine my life without stand-up. Once you start, and do it properly, it becomes so important, and so deeply entrenched in who you are, that by taking it away, you're removing a part of yourself. Some people don't understand just how much emotional energy we comedians invest in this peculiar little hobby of ours. We may only perform for five or ten minutes a night, but we'll be working in almost every minute of our spare time, writing, re-writing, practicing, studying. We're often out at comedy clubs, but so frequently we watch them not for enjoyment, but to deconstruct, to see what they're doing, to work out whether the tricks of the trade are universal or distinct to the individual, learning from every performance we watch. And one day, suddenly transforms from an occasional hobby: it becomes your life. Every thought we have is followed by "is there a joke in that?". Every time we make someone laugh, we try to work out how to replicate that situation on stage. It becomes a reflex. And soon enough, we find ourselves having no problem with stopping a conversation with a friend in a restaurant to take notes after saying or thinking of something funny.
You need to be slightly broke in the mind to start doing comedy in the first place, but when the bug really sets in, it completely fucks you up. Nat told me a few months ago that she tripped over in her flat, and hurt her leg, almost to the point of tears. And her very first reaction was to grab her notepad, because she'd just had a funny thought about it. Another comic, who shall remain nameless and genderless, told me that they'd recently acquired a partner, and while it was nice, they hadn't written any new material in a month. As soon as they split, the ideas came flooding back. So now they're pretty much avoiding relationships, for the sake of comedy. For some comedians, wallowing in pain is the best source of material. Can you imagine that in any other industry? Imagine a builder who never goes to the doctor even when he breaks his bones, claiming that it helps him to build. Or a doctor who doesn't allow himself to eat anything healthy, so he can diagnose patients better. You'd quite rightly think they were mental. But somehow, when a comedian either doesn't allow themselves pleasure, or actively seeks out emotional pain in the name of comedy, it's perfectly normal. We are all broken, each and every one of us. No doubt this is why I found the lifestyle so easy to adopt, and the company so amiable to keep!
I know for sure that I could never give it up for good. I'm an amateur, and my rambling, bumbling, forgetful, shambolic style probably means that I'll remain so for a fairly long time. But don't do comedy to get famous with ambitions of fame. I do it because I love doing it. I love comedy. So even though I'm taking a significant break, I will return. These words still hold absolutely true: I can not imagine a life without stand-up comedy.
To all of you who have ever come down to The After School Club, and especially to those of you who kept coming back, fortnight after fortnight: thank you. It's easy for a load of comics to come together and talk nonsense, but finding a group of people who are so friendly, patient, lovely and willing to listen is rare indeed.
xx
