One Lady Owner

Back from the Dead With A Film

2007-06-08T06:09:00.000Z

Minstrels: The Lute & The Fury

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Having totally ignored my resolution to post more in January this year, I thought I'd wait almost six months before putting anything else up onto this blog.

But I've been busy - as you can see.

I will return in another six months - possibly.

How Not To Talk To Tradesmen

2007-01-10T23:07:00.000Z

Happy 2007!

Why not shaft yourself this completely this year?

Invite a tradesman - perhaps a plasterer - into your home. Flap your wrists limply at the holes in the ceiling where you bullishly attempted to replace some ugly inset lights aeons ago – and where now only exist crumbly cavities in your plasterboard. Claim to know "nothing about DIY." Smile thinly as said tradesman sums your inadequacies in seconds and quotes a ridiculous price at you, and – your masculinity in shreds – nod numbly.

This is the way forward for the new year friends.

(It’s not much for the first post in two months – but one of my many resolutions this year is to get back to writing this more regularly. That and lose weight, do more writing, drink less, stop thinking about Dr Who, be less grumpy, forgive – all the usual. I realise – shockingly – I’ve posted 160 times on this blog. After such a number, it would be criminal to let my inherent laziness stop me sharing my petty irritations with the world. So, if anything, I intend to post a further 160 times about the guy in HMV who calls me "fella". I will get him. I will get him.)

Everyday is Like Sunday...

2006-11-21T08:15:00.000Z

... in Great Yarmouth out-of-season. It was a fact-finding mission, you see. But oh, the sights we saw. For example, outside of "Tickles" joke shop was a working model of a man vomiting into a bin:

Inside was a display case of "The Turds" - little smurf-like characters, but instead of being blue Belgians they were - well - shit. With faces. One wore a mortarboard and was called "Shit for Brains". Another sat at a computer - "Log On" etc etc. I started to take photos with my camera but the piereced youth at the counter hailed me:

"Oi mate, no photos of the turds."

"Right, okay" I said, busted.

"They're all copyright you see. Collector's editions."

"Right."

"Some of them is limited. If you come back here in three weeks some of those will be worth twenty quid."

Tickles has an entire wing dedicated to sex toys and amusing boob aprons. The interesting thing was that to get any innocent Christmas decorations - tinsel, lights etc - you had to walk through rack upon rack of pop-up penis pens and an inflatable woman called "Big Brenda".

But there was so much else to see and do. Well, I should qualify that. There is so much to see and do, but not during November:

One of my favourite shut bits of entertainment was "Fun World" - which as far as we could see consisted of some railings fencing off some benches:

But the odd attraction was still functioning. I've never been let down by a Sea Life Centre. And Amazonia, the land of reptiles, still had its doors open and allowed us to experience the live jungle - although the lack of animation in 21 year old alligator "Goliath" suggested that the "live" claim was possibly an exaggeration.

Bingo was pretty good fun too. Andrew and I were possibly the only two males in the joint - a decaying former cinema full of old ladies with fags hanging out of their mouths. I don't know what's going to happen to the Gala chain when the smoking ban comes in. You have to concentrate though - they call very fast. We were in for the afternoon marathon session and it felt like it. We even got into the collective tutting when someone won. I didn't win anything - but now I have one of those fat dabber pens and a possible gambling addiction, so I can't say I walked away totally empty-handed.

And the nightlife - what a nightlife. It was one thing to see the tics, hair-styles and scarring of the people of Great Yarmouth by daylight - quite another to see them lit by the flashing disco lights and glitter balls of "Long John Silvers" fun bar at the end of the pier. I now know where the phrase "meat market" comes from. It was literally like a butcher's counter at the end of a busy day. There should have been sawdust on the floor. Men whose lower jaws jutted out some distance in front of their skulls. Women whose chests and arses were dancing off about two metres from their owner's bodies. One skeletal girl with massive round glasses, dressed in a witch's dress and with a tattoo of a hawk on her neck, whizzed around in the centre of the dance floor as if in a trance. One guy in a leather jacket literally dragged her off by her hair - I hope she's still alive. I realised we had to get out of there when on the dancefloor a - and I use this term loosely - "lady" in a rugby top with arms like tree trunks - and possibly 40 years my senior - began jabbing me in the chest with her elbow and winking at me.

Don't think I'm sneering though - it was all excellent fun. I just got the feeling by Sunday that we had to get out of there before sundown or we would be stuck there forever. I probably would be forced to grow my hair Teddy Boy style and open a cut-price 50s rock and roll shop, with a sideline in collectable models of turds.

There are worse career options I suppose.

Death by Swindon

2006-11-15T08:13:00.000Z

Well. It would take an incident of almost monumental irritation for me to bring this blog out of the state of semi-permanent retirement circumstances have forced me to put it into - but falling asleep on the train and waking up in the middle of night in Swindon will do it just fine.

Life has just been ridiculously busy of late, and it's far easier to sit comatose in front of Holby City than it is to string three words together in the faint hope of being amusing. But as I wrenched the ipod from my ears and hastily brushed the sleep out of my eyes, I caught the sign of Didcot Parkway disappearing into the distance through the carriage window - and the familiar late-night feelings of rage and boiling frustration that fuel this blog came flooding back. There was only one way forward into the inky black night - and that was to Swindon.

The next half an hour was spent furiously phoning Swindon's glamorious Travel Taverns and Premier Inns in the hope of finding a room. I might as well have been asking for an elephant's ear on a bun. I think word must have quickly spread among the budget hoteliers of Wiltshire that some half-crazed man was trying to get a room at ten past midnight on a Tuesday, and they quickly all shut up shop. As the train pulled into the station a woman timidly approached me - "There is a Holiday Inn Express just there," she kindly offered, pointing out into the night. "Right! Right!" I muttered, "I mean, no rooms, it's incredible. This is the 21st century!" She smiled sympathetically, but clearly had her mobile primed to call the police in case I tried to eat her.

Anyway, the Swindon Holiday Inn Express was more difficult to get into than Fort Knox. I negotiated lifts, corridors, bells, and pass keys, all clearly put in my path as some Kafka-esque joke. When I eventually found the reception three hours later, the concierge was both helpful and charming - "No. No rooms for you."

"You mean you don't have one room free in this whole skyscraper?"

"No. You can have another drink?"

"What? What do you mean? No, I want a room!"

"I cannot do it sir."

I angrily went to the toilet to weigh up my options. The concierge made a great show of phoning other hotels - "WHAT? NO ROOMS? OH DEAR. THE GENTLEMEN MISSED HIS STOP. NO ROOMS? NEITHER WITH YOU OR ANYONE ELSE IN THE ENTIRETY OF SWINDON? IN THE WHOLE COUNTY? OH OK" - but I knew Swindon had already pulled up its drawbridge. At the late hour of 12.30am.

I made one valiant effort to persuade British Rail to put on a special train back to Reading for me - "Oooh no soirrr, next train b'aint be till foive in the morrrning" - But it was no good. As I pressed the £80 into the taxi driver's hand to drive me back up the M4 I could have cried.

This is hubris. I have spent the last few weekends, for professional reasons I can't really detail here, with a selection of cheerleaders from the United States of America. I have chaperoned and admired these young, pert, smiling dancing ladies and amused them with my floppy fringe and British self-depreciation. Naturally, an amount of signed swimsuit calendars and gales of tinkly American laughter can turn a man's (large square) head. Thus, as my patient and excellent wife has reminded me, Swindon serves me right.

Until this blog rises again.

Worst Indian Restaurant in London II

2006-09-14T05:52:00.000Z

Why do I never take my own advice? Never eat in an Indian restaurant in the West End.

I have actually eaten at this establishment quite a few times, but usually at a late hour and drunk and hungry enough not to care what I cram down my gullet. But this time Pete and I were fairly sober and the night was very much young.

We should have heeded the warning signs as soon as we came in - the place stunk of paint. The kind of smell that actually invades your food. I immediately asked to move tables (in case this was a location specific problem). The waiter's expression suggested I had insulted his mother. We moved tables. The paint smell was not a location specific problem.

I should have walked out as soon as I looked at the menu and saw that every dish was priced exactly the same. It doesn't matter what you order - it's all from the same vat!

I should have sent my meal back because I didn't order mutton in Bisto, yet for some reason that was what I was served. The tarka dall looked (and tasted) like something at the bottom of a plasterer's bucket. Which is quite possibly what it was, as throughout our dining experience a man in white overalls kept walking back and forth through the restaurant carrying armfuls of tools. There is nothing like the sight of a large hammer and a bandsaw to put you off your food.

The cherry (onion bhajee) on top of the cake (lassi?) came when some sort of holy man, in full holy man gear, entered the restaurant. The proprietor emerged from the back of restaurant and immediately fussed around him, pouring him booze, "Oh I am so honoured to have you here! It is wonderful to see you!"

The imperious Holy Man sat at the next table and the proprietor plonked himself in front of him, "What do you want? I'll get you anything you want!" The Holy Man gestured vaguely at the menu. His food appeared immediately and he set to it.

"The thing is," said the proprietor, at a loud volume, "This food is shit. You don't want this shit. You come to my house and I'll cook you something good! You can meet my two lovely girls." The Holy Man shrugged. "You'll like my lovely girls! They'll cook you something good. Not this shit."

The proprietor's mobile phone rang. He answered. His face turned purple. "Fucking express!" he screamed. "Fuck you! Fucking express!" The over-attentive teenage waiters looked embarrassed. The German tourists at another table looked shocked. The Holy Man didn't seem to notice, and chewed his bhuna. "No no! Listen to me! Fucking express! Fuck you! FUCK YOU EXPRESS!" And he slammed the phone shut. "It is an honour to have you," he said to the Holy Man.

For this experience, we paid TWENTY QUID EACH.

If you find yourself popping in for a curry at the Indian restaurant opposite Drury Lane Theatre - don't.

1, 2, 3 ... CLEAR!

2006-09-12T06:42:00.000Z

With a crack and a fizzle and a pair of humming defibrillators attached to my temples, I bring this largely inactive blog back to life. I haven't been posting due to many reasons - work, holidays, the summer - but largely because I thought a) "I can't be bothered" and b)"Who gives a toss?" However, appeals to my vanity from at least two people mean that Lazarus-like, this stupid blog is reborn. Anyway, it seems everyone is on Myspace now, which I don't really understand how to use. I thought I was cutting-edge with a blog, but now I'm nearly 30 and my time is gone. Anyway, I am scornful of such a transparent "look how popular I am" contest - I wouldn't get involved in such a thing. Here is my Myspace page.

Perhaps the most traumatic event of the summer was having to beat a large and rather beautiful jay to death with a cheeseboard. On holiday in Spain a small stray cat took a fancy to us, and each morning left a little offering on the villa doormat. It started with a mouse, moved up to a lizard - and on the third day a beautiful bird, traumatised, shaking and with its leg hanging off, was twitching on the veranda. It was never going to fly again and would have suffered a slow and lingering death - do you understand? I HAD NO OPTION.

I have seen my mother-in-law's husband - a hardy, country man - twist off a chicken's head without barely flicking an eyelid. Why then did my attempt to put the poor thing out of its misery turn into a scene from an 80's video nasty? I had to whack it three times. Stuff went up the wall. Oh God.

I like to think this mortifying event has been part of the cause of my writer's block, probably. Still, at least it's now off my chest and on to everyone else's. I am only glad that these wildlife offerings started appearing right at the very end of the holiday. We left after the bird. It seemed the tiny cat was capable of capturing and injuring creatures much larger than itself. Had we stayed any longer I might have had to stove in a Spanish baby or something.

Anyway, as tribute and to keep any animal protection organisations off my back, here is a picture of a jay in tribute:

Voicing an Alligator, Sweating Through a Suit

2006-08-01T06:22:00.000Z

Yikes, it's been busy. In the last week I have had to tell the same joke eight times in eight different accents, voice a cockney alligator and a slightly fey Big Bad Wolf for CBBC, and then hotfoot it down to the Kent "Garden of England" TM for two nights of really good giggery in sweltery hotel rooms in Royal Tunbridge Wells.

The gigs were cracking fun - I had a blast compering for Pete Gold and Nice Mum on Friday who were both on fire (literally, it was very hot), and then the following night with the wonderful Congress of Oddities, Matt Perret, Steve Oram, Nice Mum and miming internet viral Dave Armand, with me threaded inbetween like some sort of comedy netting. Here is a photo of Nice Mum and I being very ill-disciplined in a sketch:

Anyway it was great fun. And for an added touch, the gig was taking place in a slightly threadbare hotel, where in the adjoining wing a wedding was taking place. A wedding with a number of thick-necked men with tattoos and piercings and fat women wearing a lot of pink and orange (in Royal Tunbridge Wells? I know, it hardly seems credible.) As the comedy gig played on, the wedding turned nasty, and just as I came off stage near the end I saw out the window a bevy of suited male guests have a fight in the hotel carpark. Comedy and tragedy in one evening. You can't ask for more.

My thanks to everyone who came, all the brilliant acts, and also the very, very nice Sean and Andrea of Oliver Woo's Tailoring in Tunbridge Wells. They gave me a very, very nice suit to wear for Spafest, which looked ace and I am very grateful to them. Naturally, I have to go and have it dry cleaned because I sweated through the gigs like a pregnant nun, but I am very pleased with it. If you're in that area, and need custom made suits and shirts then get yourselves down there, oh yes. They cut 'em good (ignore my stupid face):

More Blog on the Radio

2006-07-14T15:37:00.000Z

Not that I've ever been one to blow my own trumpet (cue distant sound of the truth snapping) but the 'Blogger' sketch Andrew and I wrote for Bearded Ladies is "Pick of the Week" this Sunday on Radio 4 at 18.15.

No doubt Mr. Spielberg is on the blower from Hollywood as I type.

Oh, and I think I'm on the Today programme next Tuesday.

La, as they say, de-dah.

Blog on Radio

2006-07-12T06:35:00.000Z

In some sort of post-modern way, this blog (or the actual act of my now increasingly infrequent blogging) makes it to the radio on the new series of the Bearded Ladies. It's the first sketch in the new series (broadcast 11 July) and you can listen to the show again here. Six weeks of sketch fun so make sure you listen.

I am also supposed to be on the Today programme at some point this week talking about Tunbridge Wells. Not sure exactly when but if you listen keep an ear out. Luckily I didn't get grilled by John Humphrys directly as he strikes me as exactly the sort of "Disgusted" man who would be writing into his local council to complain about erections in his next-door neighbour's garden etc if he wasn't broadcasting his grumpiness onto the radio every day.

Pirates of the Carribean 2 last night. We had just eaten a huge meal before we went in, but luckily the film was more bloated than we were. If they'd cut it down to Johnny Depp vs Squid Face Man it would be great, but unfortunately the filmmakers seemed to be under impression that what we wanted to see after the first film was more of vaguely-animated stick insects Orlando and Keira. The ocean was drier than theose two. I don't want to see thin people like that on the cinema screen. This is supposed to be a blockbuster on the big screen - give me big things!

Pete Gold's New Show

2006-07-10T20:26:00.000Z

I strongly urge you that you go and see my colleague Pete Gold's new show at the Etcetera Theatre in Camden this week. It's got oodles of great new songs in it and it is on Thursday 13 (19h30), Friday 14 (21h30) and Saturday 15 (19h30). More details here.

Not only will you get a great show but you'll also get a *free* copy of his brilliant new album 'Hobbledehoy' which is fabulous especially as I helped write a few jokes for it.

What are you waiting for?

Sultry Weather

2006-07-05T07:04:00.000Z

This is the kind of heat that city riots break out in. Today in Reading I saw one youth push another. I returned home with tins of beans and chained the TV down.

It is like being on holiday though but without the fun and pleasure. On the tube yesterday - "they wouldn't transport animals in those conditions" etc - and even a fully-fledged goth had taken his shirt off. Long dyed hair, white face-paint, leather trousers, huge black boots - and pale, concave chest. The shirtless English male is an unpleasant sight at the best of times - especially when his make-up is dribbling down his neck.

Oddity of the day - on the wall outside my house someone has left four squares of chocolate arranged in a neat pattern.

Odd Gym Contrast

2006-06-30T07:00:00.000Z

In the upstairs exercise bit in my gym - (Yes! I've been going to a gym! An actual gym! I'm a member of a bloody gym! (Although I haven't been yet this week, I'm quite t-i-r-e-d...)) - they pump endless soft porn music videos onto the screens as you flail around on the running machine - videos usually involving women mud-wrestling, washing cars, chasing a man in bras (they are wearing the bras, not the man), gyrating around a pole, lounging by a swimming pool, or like a new one I've noticed recently - pressing themselves up against a photocopier. You are left wondering exactly which muscle they wish you to exercise.

However, go downstairs into the swimming pool and the throbbing dance tracks are replaced by the theme music for 'Schindler's List'.

10-4

2006-06-20T06:48:00.000Z

I am getting lax at updating this stupid blog because in the last two weeks my brother and I have decided to become 1970s style cops, thus:

To be honest, I find shooting guns, rolling around in slow-motion, driving massive cars into cardboard boxes and talking jive to women with really big hair a lot more satisfying than sitting in front of my computer - hence the lack of posting.

My name now is Officer Harry Blood, and William is JJ Hernandez, and if you step outta line we'll bust yo ass. Especially me, 'cos as the senior policeman I'm slightly more inclined to be corrupt to get results. Hence the neck brace where I beat a confession outta some perp.

Stay funky.

Gig / Rudery

2006-06-06T06:42:00.000Z

Very fun gig at the Etcetera Theatre last night - it was the last Nice Mum Etc for a while which added a little piquancy to the proceedings (at least in my head it did - as I stood backstage with my face plastered in blue paint and spring onions taped to my fingers to perform some hastily assembled comedy conceit, I thought I would miss the opportunity to make a tit of myself in such a fashion.) Luckily the fantastic acts that were on - Nice Mum, Pete Gold and the Congress of Oddities - will all be performing at Spafest next month (along with lots of other top acts), so people should get themselves down to Tunbridge Wells and enjoy the delights of the elegant Georgian town and take advantage of lots of talented comics gurning for your pleasure. You can read the first issue of the silly newspaper what I have wrote to publicise the festival here - The Disgusted Times.

Other news - someone has drawn a huge 8-foot penis outside the posh building where I work. It is quite an extraordinary piece of graffiti - written in gravel on a very large scale - the lines are quite clean so someone has taken quite a lot of effort to construct it. It's been there for three days now and no-one has taken it upon themselves to remove it. In fact since Saturday, someone has added to the artwork by writing the word "fanny" in large capital letters. It is clearly a work in progress:

Commentary Track of the Pensionable

2006-05-31T05:45:00.000Z

We went to the cinema to see the sporadically amusing Britcom Confetti.

As the opening titles scrolled up the screen, a tiny, ancient old lady entered the cinema and began to slowly mount the central stairs.

"Oh I can't see a thing!" she proclaimed loudly.

"Come on Mum it's started! There are jokes in the first bit!" shouted her massively-haired daughter, pulling her along.

Naturally, they chose the seats next to me. I squeezed myself down the back of my seat to give them room to pass, trying desperately not to tut loudly as is my wont when people arrive late for a film. But the old lady was not convinced by the mile of space I had created for her to get by, "Tch! You've got legs haven't you?" she said accusingly.

Eventually her daughter sort of shoved her forward and they sat down, and for the next 100 minutes I was treated to a running commentary from the old lady, which rivalled Scorsese or Spielberg in terms of cinematic insight and knowledge.

"Daft," she said, when Stephen Mangan started fighting on a tennis court.

"Pff. Daft," she decided, when Robert Webb and Olivia Coleman appeared nude.

Two gay wedding planners? "Daft." Bad singing? "Daft." Bad nose jobs? "Daft."

The old lady's daughter, who was quite possibly some sort of mentalist and kept rushing in and out of the cinema (well, she did it once, and that was enough in my book), turned to her mother halfway through and shouted "You'll love this bit Mum it's very funny!"

The bit happened and the daughter, who previously had been breathing loudly rather than actually laughing, burst out with a sound like someone trying to push a turkey down a pipe. "Good eh?" she said.

Her mother paused, considered, then croaked her verdict in my direction out of the side of her mouth, "Huh. It's too daft to laugh."

I am the World Cup

2006-05-22T09:28:00.000Z

Because I know so much about football, I am the voice(s) of a World Cup game on the web. It's a diverting way to waste time in the office and you might win a telly or summat - you can play it here.

Pele. Maradonna. Ian Rush. Terry Fenwick. Sylvester Stallone in Escape to Victory. Etc.

Moz Alive

2006-05-18T06:39:00.000Z

The last time I saw Morrissey I was doing my A-Levels (February 1995!!) at Drury Lane. (I think the cast of Miss Saigon were having a night off.) There were lots of thin young men in the audience with requisite NHS specs and brillcremed quiffs.

11 years later, the audience's waists were a lot thicker and the quiffs and sideburns were flecked with grey (men and women ha ha). I was in good company. One drunken fan stood reeling at the venue entrance, his big hands flapping like a seal's flippers, "They won't let me in!" He was almost crying.

Back in 1995, Moz was arguably on the way out - court cases, end of record deals, off to America etc. I remember he cut the set short when people jumped onto the stage to grab at his vestments. This time he was "back" after a critically-lauded comeback (though the last two albums aren't that great) and he was, I have to admit, on excellent form. He must have been packing away the mung beans though, 'cos he's not the willowy bloke wrapped around the lampost I used to have up on my wall. "It's wet, it's Wednesday and it's Dreading," he quipped, and the band launched into a blistering set, which bought to life even some of the more average tracks on the last record. It was when he launched into "Girlfriend in a Coma" though that the crowd really started going for it - grown men weeping, girls with their arms aloft, mouthing each word etc. It was ace - the sound was great, and the venue intimate enough to be able to see the stage without reaching for one's opera glasses. They even had a gong!

The show reached a crescendo however with a scorching version of "How Soon is Now?" As the 46 year-old man moaned his way through his song about adolescent awkwardness, the lights whirled manically, the guitars went "whhharrgh" and suddenly Morrissey had removed his shirt and chucked it into the audience.

"Ooooooh!" went the Doctor.

"Oooooh!" I went (by accident, I'm not that obsessed with him anymore.)

He certainly didn't linger in the spotlight at that point though. Clearly one can have too many nut roasts.

Anyway Morrissey live is clearly a much better experience than Morrissey on record these days. We walked home in the rain (how Moz) very satisfied, singing merrily into the night "Oooh, life is a pigsty..."

I mean WHY? (AKA: They're selling hippie wigs in Woolworths, man.)

2006-05-17T09:41:00.000Z

The day after I buy the DVD to replace my well-worn VHS, this bit of news. I mean why? What's the point? (Though I'm not adverse to it becoming a musical. Uncle Monty with a chorus of dancing boys? Withnail's Hamlet soliloquy an uplifiting rap finale?)

I can't say I'm cock-a-hoop about this announcement either. Vinnie Jones as Sid James? I just can't see it. Cast me in it - it's a different matter.

Richard Dawkins, Are You Ready To Rock?

2006-05-12T07:23:00.000Z

Went to a reading/lecture by eminent biologist, evolutionary theorist and public intellectual Professor Richard Dawkins. The Doctor had got us tickets, as she is a big fan. I was less convinced, having promised post university never to sit through a lecture again, but I perked up considerably when Dawkins marched onto to stage with Lalla Ward aka Romana from Dr Who and Tom Baker's first wife (and now apparently Richard Dawkins's other half.)

It actually turned out to be a great evening and the academic version of a rock concert. We were up the front with all the Dawkins groupies who ooh-ed and aah-ed with each eloquent point and did satisfied little laughs whenever he made a joke (which signalled to the rest of the room "I got that reference, did you?") During question time, one bloke got up and went "Thank you Prof Dawkins I've agreed with all that you've said, but as a science teacher and a Christian..." - which set off audible mutiny in our row, particularly as the unfortunate man twittered on meaninglessly for five minutes, prompting the woman next to me to mutter loudly "GET to the POINT mate." Dawkins was the consummate showman "Can we have the house lights on please? It's question time and I want to see those hands in the air!" The evening only finished when a crowd-surfer in tweed was forcibly ejected from the hall.

On the way home I took a look at some of the bouncers outside the bars and wondered if we've evolved that much. Certainly my (previously quite elegant and house-bound)cat hasn't - if anything she has slipped back down civilisation's ladder. That evening for the first time she bought us in a dead mouse. Nature red in tooth and claw, you see.

Plagued by Demons

2006-05-08T20:08:00.000Z

My theory that Reading Central Post Office is actually one of the nine circles of Hell grows firmer with each experience. The endless queues of shuffling, wailing people, the skin-blistering heat, the fornicators, usurers and profligates cashing in their dole cheques or arguing about TV licenses. Today, like Dante's sinners, I met my own particular form of punishment - a mad tiny old midget lady (and if you follow this blog you'll know I'm a particular magnet for these sort of women.)

"Hey you!" she shouted at me. I fiddled with my ipod and pretended not to hear, but she was not to be deterred. Here I go again, I thought.

"Look at the bloody queue! Look at it!" The woman pointed angrily. She had an exceptionally hairy lip.

I looked at the counter two miles away and grimaced in a quite-possibly-patronising "Dear oh dear yes I know it's awful but what can you do?" fashion.

"Each time I come in here I get this fucking queue! I can't fucking believe it can you?"

I shook my head. I couldn't believe it, no.

"It's makes me want to fucking spit!" And she did. I turned on my heel and walked half a mile to the post office at the other end of town.

But I should have stayed. Because by mentioning this woman I am bound for some sort of demonic comeback. Last month I wrote about
Boonie. The Boonie statue, after being silent for so long, has suddenly, inexplicably, started talking. Well I say talking. More like growling. I was sitting down at my desk early Sunday morning when the toy suddenly makes an unintelligible growling sound. I could not translate - it was in some guttural Australian - but it scared the pants off me. It was like an ooutback Linda Blair in The Exorcist. The toy is (was) supposedly activated by some signal from the TV - but this was during a particular cricket match months ago and thousands and thousands of miles away on the other side of the globe. BUT BOONIE IS TALKING AGAIN.

Not only that. You may have read my review of Reading timewarp department store Jackson's window. The mournful but essentially unthreatening model of the boy with the plaster on his cheek that I wrote about has been replaced by the most baleful, evil-looking creation I have ever seen:

I invite you to compare her face to the one on the recent "Dawn of the Dead" remake poster:

It's the little girl who rips some guy to shreds in the first five minutes of the film. I am doomed. I don't know who is going to get me first - dummy throwback zombie girl, a plastic retired Australian cricketer or an enraged miniature pensioner. I AM AFRAID.

Apologies

2006-05-06T05:01:00.000Z

"You talk absolute rubbish," someone has anonymously commented on a 14-month old post, "Get a real job and then have an opinion." This could well be the motto for this blog, if not my life.

It's been a bit of an up-and-down kind of week. I think I may have been more emotionally scarred by the death of K9 (at which I blubbed like a tiny girl) than I realised. Yesterday I impulsively apologised to a man at work who I was thinking of making a subject of this blog. I have become increasingly irritated at always encountering him in the communal kitchen making up a complicated salad from tupperware boxes and tins of tuna, rather than just blowing six quid down Subway like everyone else. As I watched him today - fastidiously filtering his salad dressing and obsessively-compulsively rinsing out his beaker before actually putting any drink into it - I suddenly felt very mean and petty for even thinking about writing about this man. Just 'cos I'm too lazy to make the thrifty saving and healthier option of assembling a packed lunch - who am I to judge his routine? Guilt overwhelmed me and I blurted out a heartfelt apology - "Sorry!" Luckily in the slightly tense "we-work-in-the-same-building-but-that-does-not-mean-we-have-to-converse-with-each-other" atmosphere of the kitchen, I was able to cover this sudden emotional outburst with the suggestion I had overstepped my bounds by reaching over him for a teaspoon.

Not all apologies are accepted however. Last night we were in a restaurant and I accidentally careered into the opposite table's ice-bucket, spilling freezing-cold water over a man who seemed so tightly wound his belt-line was just under his nipples. I apologised profusely, but the bloke wasn't having any of it and just kept saying "Jesus Christ" under his breath, as if some hulking great galoof had just ruined his date by chucking ice in his lap and potentially freezing off his penis. I said sorry at least 17 times - awaiting a "Don't worry, it's alright, the bucket was in a silly place" - before the Doctor dragged me away. I said I thought the guy could have accepted my apology. "Get a real job and then have an opinion," said the world in response.

School Reunion

2006-05-01T11:30:00.000Z

Well. Well well.

It was like a classic night of my youth. Two hours semi-drunken chat with school friends and then a night out on the pavement not getting into Davinchi’s night club.

I was actually quite nervous about returning to Tunbridge Wells Grammar School for Boys if I’m honest. I did a reunion thing about four years ago where I told some hastily prepared gags to a room of 15 grey-haired men who shared very few of the same reference points as me and it had been a rather uncomfortable experience (“Anyone here remember Mr. Thomas? *No.* Anyone here remember Mr. Duncan? *Silence* I hate sport don’t you? *GET OUT.*)

But this time was going to be different. It was the 50th anniversary of the school’s foundation and things were going to be a little bit more *showbiz*. And it certainly was. 250-odd people turned up. Biggest crowd I have played in ages ha ha.

The evening began with a tour around the school which seemed to have 19 more buildings on the site than when I was there. Weirdly – rooms seemed larger than I remembered. But like a Vietnam vet returning to Saigon, I started to get flashbacks. They’d jazzed it all up with computers and whiteboards with artificial intelligence, but rooms smelt exactly the same. On whiff of the CDT and science labs (glue and gas) and it was 1990 and I was five stone lighter.

It was great seeing so many people – staff and schoolfriends. But why did teachers look exactly the same, while most lads I was at school with were either fatter or bald? (I include myself in that statement.) Do you make some Faustian pact when you enter the teaching profession? Clearly men and women who stand in front of children for a living have portraits in their attics.

My bit seemed to go well – it’s kind of difficult to do stuff in front of that mixed a crowd but people seemed to respond to what I was saying. I was introduced as the “only boy in the school’s history who sat on the headmaster’s knee in assembly.” What? Huh? I was rather thrown at that statement. (I think he was referring to the time when I stood in front of 400 adolescent boys and sung “Hey Big Spender”. It was an odd decision for a 13-year old boy who can’t kick a football to sing a showtune to his peers – how I laughed as the big boys shouted “Hey Big Bender” at me down the corridor. In fact, before I went on stage, I heard someone mutter “gay boy” – ahh me, just like old times. You can have sex with ladies, you can get married – doesn’t matter if you can’t throw a basketball.) The biggest laugh seemed to come when I mentioned our strange former music teacher – Mr Adkins – the man who liked to photograph us in our pants as we changed for drama. Who laughed the hardest at his name? Mr Barnard – the man who employed him. I was told after the gig – by a member of staff! - that I had been too lenient on my former headmaster and I should have laid into him more! I was always too much of a goody two-shoes (or “licker” as was the terminology in my day.)

Anyway, it was fun. I was quite embarrassed to see a teacher who I have previously described as dead in this blog was very much alive and kicking and attending the event. People were exchanging photos of all the children they now had. I smiled and nodded, but I was actually more concerned why every sodding boy who ever had a sporting achievement ever (and some kid who was once in a “Honey Nut Loops” commercial) were photographed and up on the school’s wall of fame - while I – and let’s not forget I played “Man in Café” in a Davina McCall sitcom in 2001 – was no-where to be seen. The least they can do is name the new biz-wow drama block after me. I was quite amazed that a school that was so sport-orientated when I was there is now applying for special status as an arts and humanities college. In my own conflicted and egotistical way, I like to think that’s all down to me. I’m not asking for much. Just perhaps a gold statue of me at the school entrance. Something like that.

Anyway, a classic Tunbridge Wells evening was rounded off, when after a quiet pint with two of my former teachers Mr. Greene and Mr Lakin (who clearly have made some sort of youth-preserving deal with Satan), I tried to rejoin my friends in Tunbridge Wells’s premier nightclub Davinchi’s. In my day it was a basement with a fluorescent potted plant. Now it’s some sort of super-club with restaurant, bar and heaving dancefloor. I had a jacket on, I looked smart. I was on my own – not with a bunch of drunk lads. I tried to enter the establishment.

A pile of meat in a Top Man suit put his hand out – “No mate, no. You’re not coming in.”

It took me a couple of seconds to catch on – “Sorry what?”

“You’re not coming in. You’re too drunk.”

“Er, I’m not. I can assure you I’m not.”

“You are. You’re pissed. Get lost.”

I really couldn’t quite believe it. I had had a day where I was made to feel – Z-list and fleeting as it actually is - that I had a tiny, miniscule modicum of macro-celebrity. I am the comedy face of the upcoming Tunbridge Wells comedy Spafest for Christ’s sake! But no, I was on the pavement – while all my mates were inside having a great time.

I just kind of stood there – reliving the occasion when I was 16 and tried to get into another T Wells club Buffalo Bill’s – the bouncer refused to let me in and I shouted at him “But I’m the aristocracy of Tunbridge Wells!” – but then it was fair enough, I deserved it, I was arseholed. But today – no – I was sober (sober enough), I was in a suit and I was nearly fucking 30. Thank God for a friend Nick Clarke – a guy who I haven’t seen for almost 10 years – who turned up, and stopped me from shouting at the top of my lungs “DON’T YOU KNOW WHO I AM?”

“Can you let him in please?” said Nick. “He’s fine – he’s with me – you know me.”

“No mate,” said Mr Thinks-he’s-Andy-Mcnab-‘cos-he’s-wearing-an-earpiece, waving a couple of 13 year old girls past the velvet rope, “He’s not coming in.”

In the end, I had to drag my friends Stuart and Sarah out of the club – and we just went home. All the chats I was looking forward to with people – denied. Couldn’t say goodbye to anyone.

So readers – I ask you - am I the kind of petty, vindictive person who’ll take the opportunity to diss Davinchi’s at every available opportunity in the public forums I control (this blog, the spoof newspaper I am currently writing that will be distributed around T Wells in the months up to the festival, upcoming local gigs, the Radio Kent interview I’m just about to go and do this afternoon etc etc?)

The answer is yes.

PS – If you were there, it was great to see you, come to a gig in the summer – let’s have a proper drink then (not in f-ing Davs!), and wasn’t it funny to see Mr “PE” Pratt there after he got busted for growing cannabis in his sauna? Yes!

Worst Indian Restaurant in London

2006-04-21T10:16:00.000Z

If you ever find yourself hungry on Cleveland St, just behind Great Portland St tube, I suggest you do not go into an establishment called Madras Nights.**

My co-writer and I, along with our producer/collaborator Ben (who complains that he is never mentioned in this blog, so there we go. Ben Walker – there I said it again) enjoyed – well I say enjoyed – a meal of gristle in gravy on a soggy bed of rice (the rice being bought out on the plate first - come on!)

I wish I had the balls to complain – but like always – I smiled and said it was nice. It was not nice. No amount of curry powder can disguise veiny off cuts of month-old mutton.

Top tip which I will try and apply to my life in the future – if no-one is sitting in a restaurant in Central London on a Thursday (aka the new Friday) night then it is not a restaurant you should go into.

Perhaps the vast readership of this blog will heed my words and never patronise Madras Nights at any time in the future. Though it will take some effort to reduce no customers to less than no customers. But together, we can do it!!

**UPDATED - I found the receipt in my back pocket (I actually paid for such muck!) and it seems the restaurant is called Nisha. So I may be being unfair on Madras Nights (if there is one) on Cleveland St. But sod it, boycott that one too. Boycott imaginary restaurants.

ASDA Man

2006-04-20T06:51:00.000Z

Late night shopping in one of those gigantic Asdas that stretch on for miles - where stratocumulus seem to form when you try to squint to the opposite end of the store. Anyway, only a handful of shoppers trudging around at 10pm at night, when an old man's voice blares out over the tannoy (preceded by a lengthy throat clearing cough):

"Good evening ladies and gentlemen. Welcome to Asda. Hurry everyone, go on, because we've got some fantastic deals on .... (large pause, sound of shuffling papers) ... salads. That's right. Yes. We've reduced prices on... (another pause) ... Hang on, we're just finding out. (Pause, man voice's suddenly becomes very uncertain) Le-lettuce. Lettuce and stuffed marrows! No hang, on. (Pause, shuffle, cough). Not marrows. Peppers. Lovely stuffed peppers. I think. Yes! And other great deals... (Long glacial pause, the few shoppers stare up in the air bemused) ... On other great stuff. Salad..."

The man's voice tapered off. Everyone starts to move on - when suddenly, with the jolity and volume of a fairground barker:

"SO ROLL UP AND GIVE 'EM A TRY!"

More Shoes!

2006-04-19T18:38:00.000Z

A friend has bought to my attention a Flickr entry by her friend which documents an instance in London of the hanging shoe phenomenon.

What does it all mean? Although in this instance it's in Shoreditch, so it's probably some Hoxtonite Situationist Prank by teh Nathan Barleys.

The Shoes of Damocles

2006-04-19T08:46:00.000Z

Those shoes have been hanging over a telegraph wire at the top of my road for almost two weeks now. They have survived rain and high winds. I ponder them every day. I mean, they are quite large. They could almost be my shoes. This was't some prank by the kids in the playground across the road - these are adult shoes. Someone took the time to tie these laces together, fling 'em up into the air - and bingo. Was it a lark that got out of hand? A "that'll learn ya" last gesture of a domestic argument? Adult bullying? I just don't know.

Fact is, I have got superstitious about them now, and if they ever actually disappear I am worried some great fate will befall me. My fate hangs by a thread (shoelace).

Boonie

2006-04-13T05:36:00.000Z

I don't know very much about cricket except England won the world cup in 1966 (boom, as they say, boom.)

However in Australia recently I learnt all about legendary Auzzie player David "Boonie" Boon, who is revered not only for his batting skill but for apparently drinking 52 cans of beer on the flight between Sydney and London (not so hard - I had four pints of wicked strength cider and fell asleep on the train to Reading last night, so who's tougher?) Anyway, although they claimed it was for his sporting achievements rather than his drinking prowess, Victoria Bitter (VB) chose Boonie to spearhead their recent advertising campaign. Part of VB's promotion was to make thousands of little plastic Boonie figurines - you'd buy a beer and a little plastic Boonie. There was a cheerfully racist TV ad showing Bonnie swatting away a New Zealander (accompanied by a sheep and surprised baa) and a Pom (very fey man in policeman's helmet) to get to his little Boonie toy. Placed next to the TV when the cricket was on, the Boonie figure would apparently make little comments and speak to you as the match played - probably along the lines of "Time for a VB", "Drink more VB", "Have some VB or you're a poof", "Drink you morons! Drink!" etc.

Anyway, we made much of the Boonie toy's sinister potential when we were down under - "OBEY BOONIE OR DIE" - so it was quite a shock the other day to reach into the bottom of our laundry basket and discover a Bonnie statuette amongst the washing.

It was a relief to realise we hadn't been carrying around a six inch plastic toy in our undergarments (steady) since Australia and forgotten about it. Harriet's Auntie Jean had discreetly hidden Boonie in the house on her recent visit. So now Boonie (technically an illegal immigrant) sits beside my desk awaiting activation. Sadly, I don't the signal will travel thousands of miles across the globe, so I'll just finish by saying *DRINK MORE VB YOU POMMY POOFTAS*.

Morrissey's New Album

2006-04-06T07:23:00.000Z

Meh.

(UPDATED: I've been asked to qualify my "Meh" of disappointment - suffice to say the new album contains one fantastic track ('Life is A Pigsty') that is almost P J Harvey-ish and quite unlike anything else he's ever done, one quite good track ("Now I Am Born"), and the rest - well - "meh". Filler. I don't quite understand the orgasmic reviews in the press. I still love the man's style and am looking forward to seeing him live next month - but to be honest, he hasn't made one consistently great album since "Vauxhall and I". And I've been waiting, like a good fan, oh yes. Waiting for Moz-o.)

The Da Reading Code

2006-04-04T19:07:00.000Z

Consider if you will the first Egyptologists, as they prised open the great pyramids and tombs of that ancient civilisation, and gazed in bafflement and wonder at the rows and rows of hieroglyphics - mysterious, awe-inspiring and inscrutable. What dark secrets did they hide in those strange symbols and pictures? What messages were those long-dead people trying to impart to the races, tribes and people that followed them?

In the same spirit, I invite you to consider and decrypt the completely context-less murals that surround Reading Railway Station:

A jug-eared man being splurted by a midget's burger

A boy in a hole

A surprising dog in a post-box

A scolding in a hairdresser's

An eagle stealing a boy's lengthy hat

A free fashion makeover

A potentially disabling fall

The Distress of the Punk

Painting a dog on a society women's back

A Grandmother knitting a wing-mirror cosy to the consternation of a skinhead

A public schoolboy laying out newspaper

An unravelling jumper

Children sneering at a dog in sunglasses

And finally, and because the collection wouldn't make sense without it:

Laughing at the Bucketheads.

One day in the far-flung future, when we’ve blown each other up and Reading will buried deep underneath the rubble, some evolved species will dig the railway station up and stare at these murals with awe, wonder and quite possibly fear. Did 21st century people wear buckets on their heads? Why did they keep dogs in post-boxes and make them wear sunglasses? Their minds will only be able to boggle and madly speculate.

And as if to add to the strange plethora of signs and omens, on the way home today I saw at the end of my road a pair of brogues hanging high up on a telegraph wire, dangling against the setting sun:

If there is a book of Reading Revelations, I think the time of the prophesy is upon us.

Karaoke Sex Dungeon

2006-04-03T19:50:00.000Z

This weekend we celebrated our friend Louise's brithday at Lucky Voice Karaoke, the trendy basement bar in London's down-to-earth and inexpensive Soho, where you can hire a private room, get very drunk and force your friends to listen to your warbling renditions of popular music hits. As a spectacular show-off and extremely convinced of my own rock-star properties, I can personally think of no better night out - especially as there is a very ecletic mix of songs available to mutilate - including The Smiths, Talking Heads, XTC, and of course, Huey Lewis and the News.

It was a great and blurry night - although it has to be said it isn't quite the swish boutique it makes itself out to be on the website. Put is this way, put 10+ people in a tiny, unventilated room, get them steamingly drunk and shouting to The Kaiser Chiefs, and it can get quite messy. Plus, and there's no two ways about this, the dark corridors, private rooms and neon lights do give the place the air of that underground sex club in the "Lust" bit of Se7en. Still, a fantastic night out which I recommend, even if we did get told off for bringing too many people into the room. We were interupted mid-way through "Take Me Down to Paradise City" by the harrassed Auzzie waitress, who said "Two of you have to go. Sorry about that - but I have to be a Karaoke Nazi" - which brings a whole new perspective to National Socialism which I had not previously considered.

Hungry? Then try...

2006-03-26T21:44:00.000Z

Clearing out the photos from my phone, I found this one I took in Singapore which I had forgotten about. Blurry, but you should just be able to make out what the restaurant is called:

Fantastic name. Might skip the house speciality though.

Jacksons

2006-03-26T19:37:00.000Z

(The theme tune for this post, which I suggest you click and listen to while you read, is available here.)

Every day I walk past a shop which I have become unnaturally, possibly unhealthily, fascinated with.

Jacksons of Reading is a proper, old-fashioned outfitters and department store - and it is properly old fashioned. Brown wooden floors, glass-top counters, the 1970s fonts on the sale tickets, the ancient salespeople with tape-measures round their neck - it's 2006 and the place still has a hosiery department.

Anyway, Jackson's window displays are absolute fascinating. Rather haughty looking dummies - probably made in Corby in 1963 - wear the winter of discontent's latest fashions, topped off with a range of deeply unconvincing nylon wigs:

The alert Dr Who fans among you will spot that last picture is actually taken from Jon Pertwee's 1970 adventure Spearhead from Space, where showroom dummies (actually the Nestene-controlled Autons snort snort) "smash" through a department store window and start mowing down shoppers and Dixon of Dock Green style policemen. The scene was re-shot in the new series but it wasn't as scary as those original 1970 camel coats and wigs - and that is perhaps part of the reason I have become so fascinated with Jacksons. That, and the little dummy boy with the inexplicable plaster on his cheek:

Why? Why the plaster? Does the window dresser want to suggest the rough-and-tumble of childhood - the glancing blow from a fast bowl perhaps? Is the dummy so old it is has to be held together by elastoplasts? Or does the boy, a la Kim Cattrall in 1987 man shags doll rom-com Mannequin, come awake at night and get up to mischief - perhaps trying to half-inch Bazooka Bars from the tuck shop or some such?

I am tempted to go and ask the history of the little boy's injury, but that might make me look weird. Almost as weird as standing outside the shop in broad daylight taking photos of child dummies with my phone. Anyway, my love affair with Jackson's remains rather unrequited for the moment, as I have yet to properly set foot in the store. I ran in for two minutes once, but was glared at by their version of Captain Peacock, no doubt for my modern "jeans" and "training shoes", so I hopped out again. Perhaps this week I will give it a go - they apparently have a substantial hand-knitting and craft department in the basement.

(Postscript - perhaps Jacksons are not in such a time warp as I have made out - check out their website - where they declare, rather boastfully, "We have supplied, personalised rowing blazers to a school in New England in the US of A." Plus I am excited to discover that they still use a fully operational Lamson pneumatic tube system. I'm so there, as they probably wouldn't say in Jacksons.)

Nostalgic Oz and Music Waxing

2006-03-16T21:47:00.000Z

As winter kicks back in for the 19th time, I've sat staring out at the grey sky thinking about Australia, where they are currently enjoying temperatures of 30+, you can go for a swim in your lunchbreak and everyone finishes work about 4pm to go sailing.

One of my particular favourite memories is tooling along in a big automatic car on empty roads (my favourite kind of driving - no gears, no traffic) listening to Australia's alternative "youth" music station Triple J - (or as I mistakenly called it - to the ridicule of our hosts - "J. J. J.")

Triple J is a government sponsored radio station for "da kidz" - but instead of playing endless insipid RnB and Pop Idol knock-offs like Radio 1, or ruined by adverts and incessant Coldplay (XFM) - Triple J had a real John Peel vibe to it. Not only because the music it played was pleasingly off-beat and we didn't hear the same thing twice - but also the air of anoraky enthusiasm in the presenters - records played at the wrong speed, pauses after tracks, and the occasional swear-word which no-one ever felt the need to apologise for, unlike in England where someone only has to say "bum" before 6pm these days and everyone's saying sorry and flagellating. Oz is a laid-back place - and the DJs on Triple J were virtually horizontal : "That was - that was - actually I'm not sure who it was but wasn't it great? I love the drums in that track. So who's up for a party tonight?"

'Cos it's government-sponsored there are no ads of course (only about two people doing voice-overs over there, maybe I should emigrate), and even annoying stings and jingles are at a minimum. The only one I can remember - and this made me laugh 'cos it was so matter-of-fact and Auzzie - "Lot of music out there. Might as well play it." It took me back to when I used to do the late-shift at BT Directory Enquiries (heady days) and after an evening talking to kids mucking around in phone-boxes and nutters ringing you up call you a "bastard mother stabber", I used to love listening to John Peel in the car on the way home (thanks to him I think I was the only person in Tunbridge Wells to buy a copy of Half Man Half Biscuit's "Four Lads Who Shook the Wirral".) Triple J reminded me of that - but sunnier and you could listen as you drove in to the drive-in off license (!)

Ah well. Roll on the summer please.

Animal Tragic

2006-03-15T06:32:00.000Z

I'm sure all three regular readers of this blog would be interested to hear about the progress of Lola, our patchwork rescue whore cat. Apart from her refusal to grasp the basic mechanics of how a catflap works (if you push it, it will open), she is handsome, affectionate (she sits on my lap as I type this) and poos semi-neatly in a tray rather than behind the sofa (although I wish she'd now go outside and do her business - hence the catflap issue). She is a fine pet and I do like her.

But not enough to take her to a recording of a Radio 4 comedy show. I say this because last night, in the packed confines of the Drill Hall, some woman bought along her pet - a dog - to watch the Bearded Ladies. Before anyone starts, this was not a noble, proud guide dog and I'm having a go at the blind, no this was one of those ridiculous, pop-eyed, rat-like, lap-dog creatures that would not have survived evolution if mankind hadn't intervened ("Ho ho, that dog looks ridiculous - let's start pure-breeding it so its eyeballs go even more puffy and bloodshot and it can't walk without coughing", "Yes, do it, it would be funny, man rules over the animal kingdom ha ha ha.")

The Beards were just about to start recording when Charlotte noticed that there was something non-human watching them and commented. The rat-thing was held aloft by its Paris Hilton-like owner in the front row and the whole audience, more out of disgust than delight, went "Aaaaahhh." I am not particularly a cat over dog person - I like dogs fine, and have totally recovered from the trauma of watching my rubber ring ripped apart in front of me by a crazed Alsatian on a beach in Ibiza in 1983 - I was rather more irritated by the way the animal was brandished as an accessory. The poor thing was made to sit still in a theatre for an hour and a half while crowds of people made loud, hooting noises, which was probably quite distressing. No wonder during the retakes there was a sharp squelching noise, the front two rows convulsed, and Paris Hilton and her pet suddenly beat a hasty exit. A rather accurate critique of its owner, I feel. We didn't get to find out what the dog thought of the show.

I saw

2006-03-09T16:20:00.000Z

There's been quite a bit of stuff in the press recently about the gender wage gap, how women still aren't earning enough as men, terrible statistics about lack of women in the boardroom and so forth.

But today I saw a woman smoking a large cigar on the way to work. So you can't believe everything you read now can you?

Much Laughter

2006-03-07T07:18:00.000Z

We all need a laugh don't we?

On Friday I finally got round to seeing Justin Edwards as Jeremy Lion in "What's the Time Mr. Lion?" and by God he made me laugh. I haven't laughed so much and so hard in a comedy gig for ages - (comedy tends to become unfunny when you're trying to forge a career in it) - but in this show I actually, genuinely lost it (particularly when Jeremy re-enacts a fairytale with a briefcase full of booze - "Tesco Extra don't sell puppets.") This mirth-induced loss of control hasn't happened since Count Arthur Strong and Terry Titter in The Gilded Balloon in 2000. This comparison (might mean something to some of you if you are a comedy anorak like me) is my way of expressing just how good Justin is - disgustingly talented in fact - and if he is ever on near you I suggest you get there and weep big blobby tears of laughter like I did.

Everyone needs a laugh you see - especially tragic Ulrika Johnson - who the Dr. Wife and I saw poking around in Habitat the following day. I was going to stroll up and recommended Justin to Ms. Johnson, but her face was so thunderous I didn't think even Jeremy and "Beef Richards" (go see to find out) would cheer her up. Here's hoping she found a nice lamp or a bamboo steamer to improve her mood.

Cowardice

2006-03-03T14:15:00.000Z

Stomping round town in a particularly poisionous mood, suffering from my fourth bloody cold of the winter, music in, sneering at everyone and everything.

A gangly youth steps in front of me with the arse of his fashionable jeans hanging around the back of his kneecaps.

"Oh pull your bloody jeans up..." I thought.

At least I thought I thought. In one of those Simpsons "I said the loud bit quiet and the quiet bit loud" moments, I actually vocalised my grumpy opinion. Loudly.

The gangly youth turned round and stared.

Rather then having the courage of my convictions and go "Yeah - you should bloody pull 'em up - you look ridiculous, this is Berkshire not Compton!" - I flushed, and in a moment of cowardice, pretended what I had said were the lyrics to some song playing on my ipod. So I tried to follow up my comment with a tune - for some reason Slade popped into my head.

"Pull your bloody jeans up .... coz I luurrrve you" I offered, trying to be nonchalant.

The youth looked at me as if I just relieved myself on his Nike Air Maxes.

Luckily an escape route presented itself. I suddenly saw something terribly interesting in the window of Evans, and spent the next five minutes hiding among larger ladies' knickers.

So:

Babies - Blogs - Beards

2006-02-28T17:28:00.000Z

Went to a rather lovely baby naming ceremony at the weekend, for our friends Emma and Euan and their new daughter Iris. It was a Humanist ceremony, like our wedding, and it was warm and joyful and made my ovaries twitch for a while. But I've got a cat now, so that negates a baby for the moment. Especially because of the amount the cat eats - she might well devour little Swift-Marshall Jnr and then there would be some sort cat-baby-neglect scandal, and that's the last thing the good people of Reading want at the moment. They are still trying to get over the bad PR of imprisoning Oscar Wilde.

ANYWAY it was a great day, and I particularly liked the way sound-engineer Euan managed to slip in some highly subversive tracks into his Naming Day soundtrack. Thus we were treated to the sight of Emma opening lots of cute little baby presents - teddies, bibs, grows etc – to the sound of "Firestarter" by The Prodigy. There were even ruder, louder tracks after that but by that point I think Granny had had enough champagne and was oblivious.

Today I have wasted time by fiddling with this blog and adding a few bits and links - links I probably should have reciprocated a long time ago (in fact I'm probably still missing some now) - but what can I say? I am shabby. Go waste more of your working day checking other people’s ridiculous internet blogs, sites and ramblings. I dunno. I could have written two sitcoms this afternoon, probably.

PS - Remiss again. I should be drawing your attention to recordings of the new series of Bearded Ladies, which is currently being taped for Radio 4 and features material wot we have writ. There are remaining dates on 14, 21, 28 March and 7 April, 7.45pm at the Drill Hall in London and you can book your free tickets here.

More Violent Women

2006-02-27T08:59:00.000Z

I don't know what it is about me that attracts tiny leaping psycho women (see January 30 2005). Perhaps I exude some sort of pheromone that enrages toxic she-midgets, I dunno.

Anyway, standing innocently in Reading town centre on Saturday afternoon looking into a shop window, when suddenly a herd of Vicky Pollards run - head-first - into me. Let's be clear. They ran into me. I didn't lose my balance and totter into them. I was standing stock-still - had been for a minute or two - and they had ample opportunity to clock me and change their path. They did not - instead they chose to plough straight into me.

I barely had time to register what was happening - I saw a flash of the inside of their upper eyelids, where their hair had been scraped back so hard their faces were being pulled off their skulls. Then they had steamed on past.

"Prick!" one shouted over her shoulder. "You f**king prick! Why don't you just f**k off you f**king c**t?"

Naturally my rapier-like comedian's wit deserted me and all I could manage was an ineffectual exhale of amusement and exasperation.

"I'll f**king do you!" was the 3ft tall, 13 year old's parting shot as they went off to go and get pregnant or take crack or something.

It was at that point that I was suddenly filled with a boiling, soaring rage, where I wanted to run after them, grab the child's neck in my massive shovel of a right hand, press her up against the wall, and then with my left, and in one swift movement, twist her horrible little chav head off and chuck it into the gutter, spraying blood over her petrified, pram-faced watching friends.

I ask you, ladies and gentlemen, does this make me the criminal? Would that have been a crime? According to the law, possibly yes. But the moral victory would have been mine. And the Daily Mail would have paid me millions for my story.

However, a few days later, I realise that I am guiltily enjoying the Girls Aloud track "Biology" on my Ipod - Girls Aloud, and Cheryl "Nightclub Assault" Tweedy in particular, are the patron saints of lairy female teenage violence. Thus by downloading this track I have implicitly fuelled the binge-drinking, hair-pulling, track-suited generation of fighting girls, and I deserve everything that's coming to me. I'll probably be found dead in Broad Street Mall with a large gold hoop earring stuck in my eye.

Monster

2006-02-24T12:37:00.000Z

There are moments in life when I feel like a monster. This happened twice last night:

1) At the Odditorium comedy gig, as I covered myself with fake blood, took to the stage, shouted, and then harassed a small girl in the audience with my long tongue.

2) When after said gig, a collection of us ne'er-do-well comedians partied on into another bar, where workers from local offices, inhibitions clearly boozed away, were trying to sexy samba with each other. The clientele and staff looked like normally-proportioned people from the outside. Once I walked in however it was clear that this was a Lilliputian-only joint. I was the tallest and widest bloke in there - and it was one of those occasions, probably because there was a dance floor, that I just really felt it. When I walked through the samba-ing crowds, it was like King Kong swatting at planes. The pint in my hand seemed to be the size of a bucket, while the little people were sipping cocktails out of thimbles.

Today perhaps I shall run amuck and go and destroy Tokyo or Manhattan or something. ROAAAARRRRR!

A Milestone (of sorts)

2006-02-21T20:10:00.000Z

Today, ridiculously, at the ripe old age of 29 and a month, I drove on a motorway on my own - for the first time ever.

I have driven on a motorway before of course. I'm not a complete tiny girl. But, until now, it has always been in the company of someone else (a father, a wife) to be there and make alarmed noises at my (rather ethereal) lane-changing technique.

But today - I got into my (I say my) snot-coloured car and drove all the way from my (I say my) house all the way down the M4 (well, four junctions of it) to Egham*. I have glamour in my life people. Gla-mour.

I don't think I realised that this was my first solo motorway sojourn 'till I was thundering along at a respectable 70mph, sandwiched between the huge lorries on my left and the fast cars on my right. I was rather thrilled. Driving, like sport, maths and money-management, is one of those things that I have joked about my own lack of skill in for so long now it has become a self-fulfilling prophesy. It was therefore something of a personal triumph to have gone out and realise that I can actually drive and there isn't actually anything wrong with my driving.

Parking, manoeuvring and managing multi-storey car parks without sobbing, swearing or turning to Jesus is another matter. One day of car-related triumph at a time please.

* Egham is famous for two things. Royal Holloway University and the National Front. I saw neither of these things there, which just goes to show how interesting Egham actually is. It was also f**king cold.

** GIG! Doing anything this Thursday? Of course not! So come to see the Congress of Oddities host Live at the Odditorium at Lowdown at The Albany. They are freaks and they are funny, and I will be on doing some hastily assembled comedy along with a lot of other interesting and talented acts I imagine. It starts at 8pm and is always very popular.

Reading's Own Patchwork Whore Cat

2006-02-13T21:43:00.000Z

A new arrival in the family.

Lola is a three-year old (ish) feline who has come to live in our house after we received an intense psychological profiling from the Cat Rescue Association.

("Some people breed kittens..." said Mrs. Rescue, leaning towards us.

"Aah that's nice," we said.

"To feed them to boa constrictors!" and she rapped the table.)

Anyway, Lola is a rather cocky individual, who after half-an-hour's cowering, now struts around the house like she bloody owns the joint. At the risk of this blog turning into one of those weird cat lover websites - (if that's your thing check out Irish Drinking Songs for Cat Lovers, Cat Lovers Against the Bomb or Pet Fashions) - she is rather special. Although I am increasingly of the opinion she was - in her former life - some sort of cat-whore. She was on the streets for a while, and so at the slightest provocation - the rattling of food tray or the hint of a stroke - she will roll over onto her back and show your her bits. This is compounded by the fact parts of her are bare of fur after spaying and injections - so insert your own shaven pussy joke here 'cos I won't do it for you.* Here is a picture of her enjoying herself:

She had no name when she came to us - but Lola, who as the song goes, was a showgirl, was obviously a good fit.

Anyway - we find her rather entrancing, so expect me to go increasingly down the path of weirdness - I'll set up the cat with her own blog, take pictures of her dressed as an Edwardian merchant, or write one of those godawful cat humour books that clog up the shelves in Waterstones. Someone writes that stuff - it might as well be me.

* I am genuinely sorry for that joke.

Shuffle of the Day today:
"(Baby Baby) Can I Invade Your Country?" - Sparks (off their new "Hello Young Lovers album - get it - they are so brilliantly odd)
"Love Your Money" - Daisy Chainsaw (remember them mid-90s indiepunk fans?)
"Clasp Hands" - The Fall
Come on!!

More Toilets

2006-02-08T07:53:00.000Z

Apologies for a second toilet-centric blog, but after a gig on Monday night with brown-shirted rudemouths Nice Mum (I'm not Nice Mum's actual mum, but one shouldn't smoke and the other needs to cut his hair), there was an incident.

I understand that bursting women in crowded clubs may need to make use of the gents because the queue is too long in the ladies. I don't think there's any excuse on a Monday night in a empty pub with a clientele of about seven. I didn't know what to do with myself mid-flow when a pierced Camden-ite woman (trying to pull off a Siouxsie Sioux but looking more like a punk Janette Krankie) tottered into the toilet for a conversation with an Andrew Eldritch from the Sisters of Mercy look-alike. Bloody Camden, I tell you. Why couldn't she have the grace, dignity and élan of the Reading woman I saw on the way home that night? She didn't presume to intrude a male space - she was simply pissing in the doorway of a furniture shop. "Alright mate," she called to me as she pulled up her knickers. Friendly and thoughtful, see?

Toilet Regression

2006-02-03T15:57:00.000Z

In June last year I was able to blog my happy surprise that the loos in comedy venue The Hen and Chickens had been marvellously improved. It's my sad duty to inform that half a year later they have regressed back to their "worst-toilet-in-London" state. Great comedy there always (in the venue that is, not the toilet (unless you've been eating funny food I suppose - custard pies or Peporami) - last night I saw two of the Hollow Men - eel-faced Nick Tanner and miming internet virus David Armand in their show "Between the Frames" - very funny, catch it if you can), but the toilets - oh dearie me. Sadly back to one star.

And because I forgot to do this yesterday:
The Shuffle Run
Get Confused - Fischerspooner
The Good Times Are Killing Me - Modest Mouse
The Nutrocker - Bumble B and the Stingers (cue mimed 50s rock-and-roll piano-pounding fantasy to bemusement of tired commuters on train)

The Witching (Lunch)Hour

2006-02-02T15:02:00.000Z

There’s nothing like a walk around Maidenhead town centre on a grey Thursday afternoon to make you realise the abject futility of life.

To escape the encroaching feelings of doom, helplessness and woe, I ducked into an eatery called “The Baguette Shop” to escape the bitter bloody cold and purchase, well, a baguette.

Inside it seemed the shop was entirely staffed by a massive coterie of rather hard-faced East European women. Their numbers were in inverse proportion to the actual number of customers in the shop – i.e. about 15 of them and one of me. Some slouched behind the counter, examining their sharp nails – another group were huddled round a table, clearly on a break, hissing and muttering.

I approached the counter.

“Can I have a Thai chicken please?”

My sandwich-maker shrugged and roller her eyes. “Ffff. Baguette?”

“Err – yes.”

She rolled her eyes again.

“Vight or brine?”

“I’m sorry?”

“Vight or brine? DER BREAD!!”

“I’ll have brown please.”

A third sigh and she set about her task. “You vant sal-AD?”

I looked at the rather limp bowls of cucumber and tomato. “Just lettuce please. Thank you.”

I turned away for two seconds to grab a packet of crisps. When I turned back my Slavic sandwich-maker was stuffing my baguette full of soggy cucumber.

“No! No! Just lettuce - please,” I said, trying to be polite and Hugh Grant-ish.

All 15 East European girls tutted at once. Vladina the Impaler rolled her eyes, “I thought you vant sal-AD. That’s why I put in sal-AD.”

She then dispensed my baguette with no flourish whatsoever and took my money.

I turned to leave – but it was so freezing cold outside, and Maidenhead was so miserable, I thought I’d rather take my chances with the Brides of Dracula and sat down at a table.

The lunching women opposite regarded me with suspicion. Either that, or they were weighing up how many weeks bloodfeasting they could get out of a big fella like me. I began to feel rather unnerved. There’s nothing more miserable than dining on your own. What do you? Stare intently at your food? Pretend to text someone whilst stuffing your mouth with Thai Chicken? Whistle?

So I did what I always do in these circumstances - grab something to read. Usually I read the menu, but since that wasn’t on offer, I grabbed the nearest thing to hand – some magazine in a tourist information rack.

Which turned out to “Berkshire Women” – according to its front page blurb the journal for the “Sexy Woman Out On the Town in Maidenhead, Reading, Langley and Slough.”

The baguette-making succubi’s pencil-thin eyebrows rose as one. Someone gave an imperious titter. For the next five minutes I had to feign interest in articles about permanent eye-shadow and where to get exotic underwear for the larger-busted woman in the Bracknell region (actually I didn’t have to feign interest in that part). All this with the undead eyes of the baguette vampirellas boring into by back. I think I read the same advert recommending me to get my plastic surgery done in South Africa six times.

It soon became clear that I was going to end up giving myself indigestion eating in this condition. I decided to risk eating my sandwich outside with the shopping mall zombies, than risk another minute with Maidenhead she-vampires. I legged it.

As I flung open the door, one Nazi-blonde caught my eye and smiled sweetly.

“Goodnight.”

Aagh!

Birthday, Spanish Ham, i-poddery, Roper

2006-01-31T07:09:00.000Z

Well, that's it. The last birthday of my twenties - gone. Done. Dusted. I enter my thirtieth year. Soon I will be thirty. Thirty. Still, one consolation - I know people who are older than me.

Anyways - I had an excellent birthday - drank wine and ate tapas with friends 'cos that's the kind of thing you do when you're nearly thirty. Still managed to get drunk though, so there's fire in my belly yet. My friend Tim cooked an amazing feast - including one of those proper Spanish hams (complete with piggy trotter) that hang in a cradle and you carve off little strips at a time.

Delicious - and gigantic. Tim and Louise are going to be living off this pig leg for months. Possibly a year. It's going to become their little piggy child - it is about the size of a small infant. They may have to consider enrolling it at school, were it will learn basic English and Maths (Spanish it will obviously be top of the class). But each day, a little bit more of it is going to be carved away. And the teachers will notice. And social services will be called. And Tim and Louise will go to prison. Sad, but that's the way it is.

The fantastic Doctor - who had no need to get me anything considering how she has bought me (us) a wedding, house and honeymoon in the last six months - treated me to an i-pod. God knows I don't deserve one - but woooooooooooooweeeeeeeeeee I love it. I know I'm coming a bit late to the i-pod party, but it is a beautiful thing and completely satisfies the High Fidelity, music nerd aspect of my character, what with the playlists and the shuffle function. I bloody love the shuffle function. You just don't know what's coming next!! So, in the style of a smug journalist who writes for The Observer monthly music supplement, I am going to initiate a new feature in this blog - The Shuffle Run - where I will list three random tunes that my i-pod has shuffled together - thus proving what a breathtakingly eclectic taste in music I have. So, on the train back from London last night a particularly satisfying run of three was:

Under Pressure - Queen & David Bowie
Haiti - The Arcade Fire
Architecture and Morality and Ted and Alice (live) - Half Man Half Biscuit

Woah! That was a goody. Feel free to post Shuffle Runs of your own.

Also - may I suggest that you go and see a comedy show called Peccadillo Circus which is by comedian and fox Lizzie Roper? I saw it last night and it is fantastic - Lizzie has interviewed a wealth of people about their sex lives, and she performs the results live (the interviews being played into her ear through an i-pod - ah! i-pod!) The results are both hilarious and oddly touching. It's on at the Etcetera Theatre, Camden - the next date is 24 April, which seems like a long time away but the show I saw was completely sold-out so you will want to get in there early. It is worth the admission price for a line about Hitler alone. So go!! Go I tell you!!! Or I'll send the Spanish pig leg boy child after you.

Marriage Vignette

2006-01-26T10:52:00.000Z

"Wifey. Dearest. If I wake you up because I'm snoring, can I just ask that you poke me gently in the ribs? Only, when you shout at me, I then can't back to sleep."

"Yes. But you're snoring. That wakes me up. And if I poke you, you'll only start snoring again and then you'll wake me up again. And thus the vicious domestic circle is complete."

On a related matter, I had a really disturbing dream last night where I had to change the wheel on Stephen Fry's taxi cab. Not only was I attempting to use a jack made of rubber, Fry was getting in a right stress with me as I had no idea what I was doing. When I pointed out, somewhat homophobically, that as a gay man he didn't know what to do either, he threw a copy of his autobiography at me.

Thank God I'm using this electronic forum to write about something really important.

One Year On

2006-01-25T18:54:00.000Z

I realise, give or take a few days, that this blog is a year old. How ridiculous. I feel sort of proud, like it's taken a few steps or learnt how to use the toilet or something.

What a year. Quite a lot rather fantastic stuff has happened - I'm a lucky so-and-so.

I wonder what to do next?

The Whale Has Apologised to It's Constitutents

2006-01-25T09:54:00.000Z

I've never really sat down and watched rolling news for any length of time, but on Saturday night it was being pumped - soundlessly - into a bar, where we were enjoying a drink or three.

The main news, of course, was the plight of the Thames whale. But as we were drinking, the news about Mark Oaten, the rent boy shagging Lib Dem MP hit. As the evening pleasantly and boozily unfolded, images of the unfortunate, flapping cetacean (oh yeah, I can use the internet) were spliced together with pictures of a balding, middle-aged man looking guilty. Clearly a slow-news night, the channel hopped back and forth between the two stories until it was no longer clear where one tragedy began and the other ended.

With booze goggles on, it began to seem that perhaps Mark Oaten had turned belly-up and floated down the Thames, while the a whale had resigned from front bench politics. Perhaps because it had been caught in a compromising position with Flipper. Anyway, it certainly bought a whole new meaning to the phrase "Free Willy".

Ithankyou.

Comparison

2006-01-18T07:16:00.000Z

At the risk of being an Austra-bore - but it's a valid grumpy comparison to make...

***

An Australian Pub (in Australia that is - not The Walkabout on Shepherd's Bush Green)

Us: Can we sit here?

Them: Sure mate, sit wherever you like. I'll bring your drinks to you. And have some monkey nuts. For free.

Us: Wow thanks!

***

At the Sante Fe Bar, a faux Mexican bar on the concrete waterfront of the Oracle Shopping Centre, Reading. Note: Bar is largely empty.

Us: Alright to sit here? (Gesturing at table.)

Them: Urrm. Err. Well I just have to check with the kitchen.

Us: The kitchen?

Them: Well, we like to keep this table for people who eat.

Us: But there's all those other tables? (Gesturing at the 20 other empty tables.)

Them: Yeah, but I will have to check.

Five minutes later.

Them: Yeah, that's okay on this occasion.

Us: Thanks. (We have already sat down.)

We order some food, but it's not enough so we decide to order some more.

Us: Can we order some stuffed pitta? I know it's on the lunch menu, but we really fancy it.

Them: Umm. Err. I not actually a waiter. I'll ask my colleague to serve you.

Us: Riiight.

New Them: Yes.

Us: Can we order some stuffed pitta?

New Them: But that's on the lunch menu.

Us: We will pay for it. You would like our business wouldn't you?

New Them: I'll have to check with the kitchen.

Ten minutes later.

New Them: No, we can't do that. We're too busy. (A tumbleweed rolls through the room.) I'll take your glasses away though.

Us: Right. Okay. Can we order a new round of drinks then?

New Them: Er, no I'm a waiter.

Us: What?

New Them: I only do food orders.

Us: But we've been eating food.

New Them: Not in the restaurant. You've been eating in the bar.

Us: Eh? (To Old Them) Can you bring us some drinks then?

Them: No. I'm not a waiter.

Us: But she said she can't take drinks orders!

Them: I'm front of house.

Etcetera, etcetera, till we all give up and throw ourselves into Reading canal.

***

I'm on the first imaginary plane outta here.

Back

2006-01-17T07:14:00.000Z

Australia? Yeah. It's okay. Sunshine. Miles and miles of unspoilt, sandy-white beaches. Warm seas teeming with marine life. Sky that goes on forever. Knock-your-eyes-out sunsets. Clean cities with fantastic restaurants, parks and markets. Huge houses in gleaming suburbs with immaculate gardens and barbies constantly on the go. Beach-houses and boats. Drive-in off licences!! A general feeling of space and relaxation. Yeah, Australia's alright.

There's always a difference between going on holiday and living in a place of course, but I am seriously considering up-sticking (in a kind of dream way). True, I'd have to learn to convincingly talk about cricket (we won the Ashes! was about all I could generally muster) but that's certainly easier than learning another language. Plus I could drive into an off-license. They have drive-in off-licenses. DRIVE into an OFF-LICENSE, do you see?

I should have blogged when I was out there really, because the Dr and I did manage to get ourselves into a serious of *hilarious* scrapes and incidents. I have written it all down, so perhaps when sitting in an office in Reading pretending to temp during the cold, boring months ahead I might think back and spin out the bit when I was breathalysed by the Australian Police (drive-in off-licenses! Endless wineries!!). Or when Harriet sunburnt the top of her feet and we had to pack her feet in an esky for a week (Australian for cool box, yeah I got the lingo mate. And thongs go between your toes not up your bum-crack.) Or Uncle Bob's collection of heavy-weaponry in his bunker. Or when my nipple got ripped off on the Tunnel of Terror. Or when little Cousin Jordan punched me in the balls. Or the night spent in the car when our caravan mysteriously locked itself from the inside. Or my inability not to go camp whenever several Ozzie blokes came to solve our seemingly endless series of mechanical problems (Crikey! That's a big tool! etc) Or when Nelson shat on my shoulder. Or when a tiny girl called Zoe pissed off a school of dolphins with her rendition of 'Jingle Bells'. Or when I saw Zoe's mum's boob by mistake. Or D'Vine - the worst restaurant I have ever eaten in. Or Boonie - the cricketer who is a national hero because he once drank 53 beers on a plane. Or the Russian Mafioso and the "two spoons" incident. Or eminent eye-surgeon Cousin David – showing us his amazing yo-yo tricks in the morning, and then how to do a cataract operation in the afternoon. Or when we went across Hindmarsh Bridge and entered the vagina of Australia. Or our day on the boat with a homicide detective. Not to mention Singapore and the Pig's Organ Soup.

Oh, it's all too much - I'm merely skimming the surface. Suffice to say, a big, big thank you to everyone who looked after us out there - I know a lot of them read this stupid blog.

I promised I would say a big hello on this to our cousin STEPHEN SCOTT 'cos I promised I would. I have even forgiven him for the loss of my nipple on that waterslide 'cos he told all his friends that I was famous. So hello Stephen.

Right. Real life beckons.

Oz Off

2005-12-13T09:39:00.000Z

Britain may have conspired to give me the bloody lurgy before I leave, but a runny nose and sore throat won't stop me leaving for Australia tomorrow. I believe the journey takes about three days and I arrive a month before I left or something, but I cannot wait. Turkey sandwiches on the beach - fantastic.

I may blog from the other side of the world, I may not. I will have to weigh up diving among tropical reefs in an aquamarine sea with sitting in front of a computer. I wonder which one I will choose.

Have fantastic Christmasses, New Years and see you in 2006.

No Santa, NOOOOOO!!!

2005-12-05T22:37:00.000Z

It's kind of easy to take the piss out of Slough.

John Betjemin did it. Ricky Gervais did it (poet laureates both).

Some bandwagon-hopping meeja types who live off of Daddy's trust funds and therefore can take the mick out of people who don't live in Chiswick recently did it in Making Slough Happy on the Beeb.

And now I'm doing it (which technically makes me no better than the people in the paragraph above, but there we go).

However you wouldn't feel terribly well-disposed to the place if you were stamping around it in the freezing cold, being misdirected by men in donkey jackets while the sun sets at about 1.30 in the afternoon. And I had an ingrowing toenail.

Anyway - it seemed it wasn't just me that was getting depressed by Slough. Saint Nick himself had had enough of the pebble-dashed shopping malls and endless bus station:

I imagine Slough Borough Council would claim that those Santas were supposed to be scaling the carpark. Not what it looks like to me. Those Santas are hanging themselves. Poke around that multistorey and you'll find Rudolph in a Ford Cortina with a length of hose tied to the exhaust and all the windows closed, probably.

On a merrier note, I've worked out how I can take and transfer pictures on my new mobile phone!

The Word of Moz

2005-12-01T10:17:00.000Z

A dream fufilled.

This week, for about 30 seconds on Radio 1 in the middle of the night, I was Morrissey on the national airwaves. On Danny Robbins One Click Comedy Show. (I think you can listen again till about 1am Friday morning!)

In Danny's regular "Musical Therapy" session, I phoned in pretending to be Morrissey to offer a student in Portsmouth career advice.

There is nowhere left to go now, career-wise.

A Close Shave

2005-11-28T21:49:00.000Z

On a train to Royal Tunbridge Wells today to talk about comedy (where else would you go?)

A man - who was a very fat man - struggled onto the train. From a plastic bag the size of Middlesex, he produced a huge canister that looked like something the late Princess Diana would have campaigned against. He plonked the massive article on his lap, and stared at it in awe, like when they open the briefcase in Pulp Fiction.

"Shall I open it?" he asked his diminutive companion.

She nodded.

"It's gonna blow our heads off isn't it?" he said.

"Yeah!" she agreed, with a strange gleam in her eye. “Blow them right off.”

I began to feel uncomfortable. Was this corpulent man some sort of guns and ammo nut? Had he got his sweaty paws on an unexploded piece of WW2 history and was planning some sort of mad suicide pact? Was he to prove his love to his midget lady friend by blowing up a load of commuters in a siding near Orpington? Was this it? Was this THE END?!?!?

No.

In actual fact, the landmine turned out to be a Status Quo boxset.

A close shave, I think you’ll agree.

Big Mother Wunderbar

2005-11-24T22:34:00.000Z

The day after my wedding - physically crippled but emotionally NOURISHED - my wife and I, and a few friends who were still functioning, stumbled out of the venue to the nearest pub - in this case, a boozer called The Shelley Arms in Broadbridge Heath, West Sussex.

Now - it's not the most glamorous boozer in the world. It's one of those home counties’ village bars, where the interestingly-bearded men and love-handled women who clean the houses and prune the hedges go to, while their employers go to The Boar Sausages on a Rocket Leaf Salad up the road - ANYWAY there was a considerable gang of us there on Sunday 11 September.

I don't know if he was the owner or an employee or what - but a small man with tinted glasses insisted we buy some raffle tickets.

Now - I love charity - four years ago I did a show where the proceeds went to Shelter so you can't say I don't care - but this guy was insistent and interrupting.

"I'm sorry mate," said my friend Tim, "But we're kind of in post-wedding mood here."

"Oh really?" lisped the man. "Who's the bride?"

Harriet raised her hand.

"Congrats!" spat our man, and went in for several kisses that, if I were a fighting man, I would have acted upon. He shook me limply by the hand to acknowledge my role in the proceedings and thrust out his sodden raffle book.

"So you'll all be in the mood for helping disadvantaged (something-or-others) then?"

Some of us - susceptible to bullying - paid up. I paid. Best Man Graham (probably to get rid of the man – he just wanted to sleep) paid. And eel-faced hilarious Hollow Man comedian Nick Tanner bought a few.

Yesterday, Tanner rings me.

“You know that raffle in the pub after your wedding? Well I’ve won second prize.”

I could not believe it.

“That’s right. I’ve got a weekend driving around in a top of the range BMW for a weekend. I had a premonition I'd win, so I kept the tickets.”

Really?

“Yeah. He claims I have to be over 30, but we’ll sort that out. And I got a few points on me license the other day after a speeding incident in Southend – but IT’S ALL FINE.”

“Great!” I said “so we’ll spend the weekend tooling around in a big car then?”

“Yeah,” replied Tanner after a pause, “If I don’t meet a bird first.”

So – if you have boobies, and you meet a hilarious sketch comedian who offers you the world and a big luxury German car for a limited period – don’t believe him. IT’S MINE YOU BITCH.

Train O' Fame

2005-11-23T10:00:00.000Z

What glamour! What glitz!

Sitting among the slightly drunk, pasty-eating commuters on the 10.15 to Bristol Temple Meads last night - like a normal person in standard class and everything - was Mr Gold Blend himself - Anthony Stewart Head.

Not only that, a few seats up was Perrier Newcomer 2004 Will Hodgson (a pink-mohicaned comic from Chippenham). Obviously, they were both quite awed to be in the same carriage as "Man in Cafe" from the badly-received 2001 Davina McCall sitcom Sam's Game, but they did their best to hide it.

But Stewart Head particularly is a big star - what with him as the PM in Little Britain and everything - and the commuters of the 10.15 were doing their best to be nonchalant. But once we got through Slough and the tickets had been checked, the floodgates opened.

"You're that actor," said an IT nerd triumphantly, tapping into his laptop with a flourish.

"Yes, I am," said Mr Stewart Head graciously.

"I knew it!" said the nerd. "I was going to say it. And now I have!"

"Yes," said the star of huge hit American TV show Buffy The Vampire Slayer.

"Can I just ask you," said a floppy-haired young man sitting opposite him, "to look through this version of Othello I'm in at the moment."

All credit to the man I had seen dancing in his pants in front of David Wailliams the night before (and whose name I had weirdly seen that very evening in HMV - apparently he's released an album?!?) - he took the fop's script and began reading it.

I, frankly, was squirming with embarrassment for him. I know what it's like. Three years ago I was recognised by a girl in a pub in Covent Garden ("Can I just say I saw you in a gig last night? Did you? Yes! Great! Bye then. Bye.") So I know what a chore it is to be accosted when you're trying to go about your daily business.

But to my annoyance, Mr. Stewart Head not only read the fop's script, but gave him advice and entertained him all the way to Reading with theatrical anecdotes. I wanted to talk to him about being in Buffy and his upcoming role in the new Dr Who (with K9 and everything!) HOW DARE he think talking to another unnecessary posh drama student about Shakespeare was more important than talking to me.

I not saying I then tried to convince the 50-year old bloke sitting next to me to pretend to recognise me from my work on children's TV and ask for my autograph in the vain hope that Mr. Stewart Head might recognise a fellow professional. I am not saying that at all. That would be ridiculous.

But these bloody celebrities. They forget it's us what put them there.

The Wailing Wall (of Women)

2005-11-16T08:30:00.000Z

The Doctor treated me to a very pleasant meal last night, then the pictures. Naturally, it was her choice. Because usually I am a film fascist, and demand we go and see stuff like 'Mystery Men', rather than anything with Julia Roberts in. And because she was paying, and I am freelance *cough* unemployed.

So we went to see 'In Her Shoes'. Of course, it's a chick flick of the highest magnitude (sister/mother fall-out/redemption? Check. Career/life balance problems? Check. Love found in an unlikely place leading to marriage? Check. Dog walking? Check. Shoe fetishism? Check.) - but it has a really good director and two appealing leads. So in we went.

I have not been in such a packed cinema since I saw 'The Matrix' in Hammersmith years ago (when my friend Malcolm and I got stuck in a cinema of surly teenage commentators - "Look at dat man fly. It is not possible dat he could do those moves man"). It was absolutely rammed in there - full of couples (sheepish-looking men like me getting payback for forcing their other halves to watch the entire Godfather Trilogy) and gangs of women on an after-work treat.

And it's an entertaining film. It pushes every feel-good button in the book without making you want to choke yourself and everyone else in the cinema on your own vomit (hello 'Love, Actually'). Cleverly, the director has catered for the legions of men led protesting to this film by endless and gratuitous shots of Cameron Diaz dancing around in a bikini or her bra (the outfits! That woman must get through a lot of tit-tape). But it's good fun - right up to the last, life-affirming shot of the improbable but racially-harmonious wedding (gentile marries Jew to a reggae band).

But what I wasn't prepared for was the copious weeping in the cinema. It was biblical. The tears began to stream down as the third-act redemption began. 200 Reading women gasped as the boyfriend turned up to rescue Toni Collette, 200 Reading women sighed when the Dad apologised to Shirley MacLaine for ignoring her after his mentally ill wife's death, 200 Reading women sniffed as dyslexic Cameron read an ee cumming's wedding poem for Toni. I turned to the Doctor - is this actually happening? Yes, she replied, blowing her nose.

When the lights went up at the end, a legion of red-eyed women began shuffling down the stairs, dissecting the movie - the female equivalent of a post-match analysis:

"Toni realised through Shirley that she needed Cameron to complete her."

"Yeah, and it brought them both closer to their mum through the grandmother they never knew they had."

"Yeah! Let's get a mini-cab home."

What a night. What emotion. I think I may go into dog-walking. (Or wedding-planning. Or personal shopping.) It's all out there.

Night/Dawn/Day/Land of The Toddlers 2

2005-11-14T10:45:00.000Z

Barely a couple of days later and a sequel.

I was walking past the nursery again (walking past okay? Not hanging around!) It was a very blustery day, and leaves and debris were flying around in the wind. A huge plastic bag was being buffeted along the street, twisting up in the air.

The kids were out again - kicking a ball around in the dusk. Suddenly, a tiny boy with a massive hairstyle - a full-blown mid-80s Aerosmith mega barnet - caught sight of the airborne plastic sack. His arm stretched out and he began to scream.

"PLASTIC BAG!"

His little mates turned stared, their arms all went out - and as one they charged the fence.

"PLASTIC BAG! PLASTIC BAG! PLASTIC BAG-AH!!"

I began to run. Even the bag looked frightened.

How Not to Further Your Career

2005-11-11T11:34:00.000Z

Phone rings.

There's a young, chirpy, commerical radio station manager at the other end.

"Hey Nick. How's it going? I got your email."

"Oh, great."

"We haven't got any slots as such at the moment, but we'd love to get you in with the morning crew and do a bit of banter. Are you local then?"

"No, no, I've just moved here - but that sounds like a great plan."

"Yeah, we thought you could come in - muck about. See what happens. Do you gig in Reading then?"

"Well, not yet, mainly London, but that sounds great. I could come in and give a newcomer's comedy view of Reading..."

Massive pause. In the distance, a old church bell tolls. A vulture flaps out of the sky and settles on my windowsill.

Me: "Er, are you still there?"

"Yes. So, erm anyway, we'll be in touch."

Phone down.

Cyber-Squeal

2005-11-10T17:15:00.000Z

I've tried to contain myself, but...

Weeeeeee!

I especially like the cyber-trousers. They are flared - a naval, bell-bottom stride to ease movement when taking over and cyber-converting the universe.

I wish I got my agent to put me forward for a cyberman - being 6'5" and all. However, in that tin costume and my tendancy to feel hot in sub-zero temperatures, I may have boiled away to nothing. They would have opened me up, and there would be nothing inside but a pile of goo and organs - EXACTLY AS IT'S SUPPOSED TO BE.

Church of Bush

2005-11-10T14:32:00.000Z

It's been quite a week of Kate Bush in our house - what with her new album just out and the Doctor being utterly and completely obsessed with her.

The jury's still out on her new CD - but one little rumour about her sent the Doctor flying into an incandesent rage today.

Breezy, brazen, rugby player-shagging teenage hussy/angel Charlotte Church is apprently going to release a cover of "The Man With The Child In His Eyes."

"It's disgusting," hissed Harriet. "How can they allow this? She's a bloody kid."

Kate Bush was 13 when she wrote that song.

"Yes, but she didn't release it till she was about 17! That Welsh Tart isn't fit to sing it! She's not even in the same league. I won't allow it. I'll boycott anything Church does."

I said I wasn't quite sure how this would affect Miss Church's career, seeing as my wife has never actually bought anything Church has produced. But Harriet had a better idea (and I quote directly):

"I'll write to newspapers about her. I'll implicate her in misdemeanours."

Bingo! So if over the next couple of weeks you may find that Miss C Church has something to do with Avian Flu, international terrorism or gang-war*, you didn't hear it from us.

*Technically law-fans, these crimes are a little bit more than misdemeanours, but there's no telling how far Harriet will go in her Anti-Church campaign. One of the first things she (the anti-war, pacifist intellectual) said on hearing this rumour was "If she does that I'll punch her face in." Fact.

Night/Dawn/Day/Land of the Toddlers

2005-11-10T14:10:00.000Z

As I was strolling past the nursery at the end of my road yesterday afternoon (that's children, not houseplants, and I wasn't hanging about it or anything so don't get funny), I witnessed an incident that was both amusing and faintly frightening.

A policecar parked up some distance, but in sight of, the nursery gates. Two policeman got out.

In the nursery playground, a little toddler's head turned slowly at the sound of the car. Suddenly she caught sight of them. She raised out her little hand and pointed.

"Policeman!" she screamed.

The other little kids in the playground turned, as one. Their arms and voices rose in unison.

"Policeman!" they shouted.

Suddenly a mangle of little bodies and faces were pressed, straining at the nursery gates. It was like a scene from a zombie film, where stray arms and limbs claw through the barricades to get at the heroes.

"Policeman! Policeman! Policeman!!"

The policeman in question looked a bit perturbed. They clearly didn't know how to respond to the children of George A. Romero Infants. I swear one copper's fingers hoovered nervously over his gun-belt.

The children got shriller and louder - though some of the boys shouted so hard their little voices broke 10 years too early, and they starting kind of barking.

"POLICEMAN! POLICEMAN! POOOOLLLICE MAN!!"

It was kindergarten blood lust, and various teachers and parents had to come out and start peeling toddlers away from the fencing - "Get out! Get out while you still can!!"

(I made that last bit up, obviously. But they have very high fences around that nursery. To keep people out? OR TO KEEP THEM IN? You decide....)

I Am A Lady

2005-11-08T18:00:00.000Z

As I sat in the brightly-painted reception of a temp agency this afternoon, listening dully to sound of my bar falling and the chatter of perma-tanned recruitment consultants discussing their “rustic coppery” hair extensions, I took to reading my passport (you have to take your passport in to register as a temp these days, in case you are Al Qaeda).

I suddenly noticed that my Australian visa, which I have in anticipation of our honeymoon Down Under next month, states that I am female.

Is this prophetic? Perhaps in comparison to sheep-shearing, string-vest wearing Auzzie outback blokes I am a woman. Perhaps they won't let me in. Perhaps Crocodile Dundee and Joe Mangel in Customs will take me off to a windowless room: “You’re one weird looking Shelia mate. Strip off and put this crop top and tights on.”

It will be like Priscilla, Queen of the Desert, but real.

wwwwoooOOOOOOOhhhhh! x 2

2005-11-07T18:45:00.000Z

More spooky happenings.

It seems that the family who moved into our old house two years ago have been in touch with my Mum, to ask if there was any "paranormal history" to the house.

Their daughter, who sleeps in a bedroom at the top of the house where my brother and I grew up, has been plauged by unpleasant, suffocating smells, drastic changes in temperature, and inexplicable lights turning off-and-on.

The situation is so bad, they are apparently calling in a priest!

wwwoooOOOOOOhhhhhh, indeed.

My brother and I have discussed at length, and neither of us had any problems or encounters. Odd smells, yes, but that's what happens to teenage boys.

I am intrigued and want to get involved. I may have to bring in Yvette Fielding from TV's Most Haunted (who I once saw drop a box in Tunbridge Wells in 1990 - COINCIDENCE? YOU DECIDE!)

Thing is, when I think back on it, it's possible to spin out all sorts of ghostly theories. The house was rather gloomy when we first moved in. I had cried to my teacher in London claiming I didn't want to live in a "haunted" house, so he gave me a silly picture-book about ghosts to try and pull me out of it before I left. There were strange, freaky drawings on the walls of the upstairs bedrooms, where the kids who had lived there beforehand had stuck random pictures from magazines onto the walls and coloured in their eyes. One of our au pairs (who slept one night in the "haunted" room) claimed to hear voices from the wardrobe and fled back to Denmark. We used to get plagues of flies in the top room over the summer. The house was above a doctor's surgery so it's highly likely people would have died there.

On the other hand, it was a bright, sunny house, and we never had any paranormal problems whatsoever.* So who knows what's going on? I am antcipating an email where the priest goes in and absolutely nothing happens. But we shall see - STAY TUNED MORTALS.

* Apart from when Will and I saw a red-eyed, drooling dog in the corridor. And slime came out of the taps. And I could suddenly start speaking in Latin backwards. And our Dad burst through the door with an axe like Jack Nicholson in The Shining. But otherwise nothing else.

wooooOOOOOOhhhhhh!

2005-11-04T09:11:00.000Z

Halloween this week and I was prepared. Local urchins are tough down this way, so I went to the 99p shop (my new retail Mecca) and armed myself with toffees and fruit drops. No eggs or loo-roll on the doorstep for me.

In the end, it was largely toddlers in 'Scream' masks accompanied by their mothers. They came thick and fast - and even though I knew at one stage it was trick or treaters at the doorstep, I still managed to jump when I opened the door to three identical tiny vampires.

"God! You're scary!" I said.

"Not as scary as I am," said the pram-faced mother.

Catherine Summers, Aged 10

2005-11-01T08:00:00.000Z

A little girl from Biggleswade has written to me asking for a signed photo to auction to raise money for her marching band.

I feel both extremely flattered and acutely fraudulent. Unless she is a big fan of my stint on Nickleodeon almost a year ago (unlikely), I suspect she's simply trawling through the internet looking for people with the merest whiff of celebrity to write to. And since it's very possible to big yourself up on the net....

Anyway, I managed to suppress my natural urge to send her a glossy 10 x 8" and my autobiography, and have instead sent her a apologetic note that I'm not famous enough and a fiver.

But from now on, like all celebrities, I have a charity of choice - the Equinox Marching Band, Biggleswade.

Have you ever...?

2005-10-31T19:24:00.000Z

Told the person you work for to f**k off?

Since I have a tendancy towards cowardice, it's not something I ever envisaged myself doing. However last week I told an employer "to stick their fucking pompous head up their fucking arse." Woh!

I was massively provoked - ('by mistake', the official line) - but it did feel kinda liberating to stick it to the man. (Although I do want the man's money.)

I hope this doesn't set a precedent.

"Nick, can you stack those shelves a bit more quickly please?"

"Stick your pompous fucking head up your fucking pompous arse!"

How self-righteous I will feel as I roll around in the gutter.

'Fetch me ma shotgun, Martha...'

2005-10-25T17:35:00.000Z

... for I need to take aim at bloody leafleters.

Almost four weeks of 'freelance' work and I am starting to get a bit twitchy. Trying to get fingers in various pies takes time, and I am now starting to get into a slightly paranoid place. I do feel mostly busy - there's always something I need to do - but there are periods where I phase out, stare and contemplate a damp patch on the wall. Any noise outside in the street and I am on my feet peering through slatted blinds. I jump up at the sound of the letterbox - maybe it's a cheque!! - but no it's another sodding leaflet for Dharka Spice Bengal Takeaway on the Oxford Road. Pizza, Chinese, Double Glazing, Estate Agents, Keep-Fit, free Newspapers, soft furnishing stores - and bloody Lidl supermarket!! Lidl pushes leaflets through my door every single day. Next time they come I will open the door and tell them I don't WANT 3-for-1 chili-con-carne in a can. Probably in my pants. With a manic stare.

Weighty Issues

2005-10-19T00:01:00.000Z

They say TV puts pounds on you.

Bloody hell, in my case it puts on about 9 stone. I had the narcissitic pleasure / abject horror of seeing myself on screen twice last week - in a short film and a corporate video I had recently made. Who was that sideburned zepplin on screen? It wasn't me that's for sure. Clearly some sort of wide-angled lens had been used in both instances.

After the short film screening, pleasantly lubricated, I had a little incident on the train back - a little incident that if I am not careful is going to become a nasty habit i.e. falling asleep and completely missing my stop. I awoke at Reading, realised I had to get off the train and bolted. "Yuuurrr go on mate" shouted some prick in a football top after me.

I got to the door but it was locked. I banged on the window and shouted at the guard. He stared back as the engine started up and the train began to roll out of the station. I swear he waved as I left.

I flung myself into another carriage fuming. It was about one in the morning and a cold night on some platform in god-knows-where stretched out before me. After an age we arrived at somewhere called Didcot Parkway (I know, I don't know where that is either).

The Driver's smooth yet utterly sarcastic voice slid out the speakers "Didcot Parkway - this is Didcot Parkway. If you missed Reading - well you can get out here and catch the last train back - ho ho ho." (The laugh was imaginary on my part.)

Needless to say, I was the only sorry individual trodging back across the platforms.

Thing is, the same thing nearly happened again on Monday. London-Cambridge - just enough time to have a quick zizz and wake up in time. Not so London-Reading. I'll have to put a sign round me neck or something. If I have a neck left. Doesn't look like I have one on the TV. Oh, the vanity.

ASBO

2005-10-12T10:54:00.000Z

Further to last post, I realise via a scan of the local papers, that the lesbian catcaller from the post below is actually quite famous in Reading town. It seems she is attained local celebrity as the first "beggar" (This is Reading's terminology, not mine) to be slapped with an ASBO by the Berkshire police.

What other celebs will I bump into next?

Gigs

2005-10-11T17:40:00.000Z

Nice Mum Etc was great last week - next one is November 7 so put that in your diary.

I would also like to recommend m' colleague, Pete Gold's show - Plucking Funny - which had its first night last night and was ace. He's on at the Etc Theatre Camden at 8pm for the next two Mondays and he's selling out, (in the no tickets left sense, not in the Ben Elton sense) so get yourselves booking.

When I was blogging in Cambridge I wrote (moaned) a lot about late-night trains. Well the late-night trains back to Reading are a whole new world. It's a shorter journey, but by jingo they are still crammed with incident. The smell of pasty and desperation is the same as any late-night train, but you get a whole new set of people who can roll of the train at one in the morning and carry on drinking. In Cambridge, you walked out the station past 11 and the town was deserted. In Reading, no matter what day of the week, there are always townie drinkers - usually Ben Sherman-shirted blokes who are holding onto their skinny girlfriend's arms just that bit too tight. It is a real novelty to suddenly live in a place where the bars don't shut at 11pm. I have to say I haven't yet been tempted to visit The Purple Turtle or Reflex the 80s Bar at 1am on a Monday morning, but that time may come. (We have actually been out to Reflex - on a Saturday night by God! We drank jugs of "Sex on the Beach" - although I am convinced it was actually Sunny Delight and amphetamines.)

It's not just at night though - Reading is a strange and magnificent place in the day. Today I think I saw the first lesbian catcall. A woman walked down the street and a gust of wind lifted her skirt up. A lady of - shall we say - reduced means, was sitting on the pavement and shouted:

"Phwoarrr! I saw right up your skirt then love!"

The unfortunate object of attention blinked and hurried off down the road.

The catcaller shouted after her: "Right up I saw luv! RIGHT UP!"

Oops

2005-10-10T18:01:00.000Z

Blimey. I didn't realise I'd be so busy being freelance *cough* unemployed. No sitting in my pants on the sofa in the afternoon watching 'Loose Women' for me. ('Loose Women' is a daytime ITV female-led discussion show by the way, not some sort of adult nookie-fest thank you - I am a married man now.)

Anyway, a week of incident has sped by and I've barely had time to blog it up.

The weekend before last it was my friend Alex's stag weekend. It was a pleasure to go on a stag where for a change I wasn't organising it, or indeed having to dress up as a schoolgirl and parade around. Our first activity was go-karting (or possibly sand-buggying - tearing around the Sussex countryside in a smoke-belching machines anyway). The place was run by a wiry little man, who clearly had a little-man chip on his shoulder and was determined to show he wasn't going to stand for any stag tomfoolery.

"Do I smell booze?" he demanded. "I better not smell any booze or you are off. O-F-F."

Anyway, after a lengthy instruction session, we were racing. I was fine the first time round. But then we swapped carts and I managed to cause an incident. Now I maintain that the brakes on the yellow cart were dodgy. Sure, I may have been approaching the pit-stop quite fast and in my panic I may have been pressing the accelerator and brake at the same time - but I still say the kart was dodgy ("There is no problem with the kart!" Mr. Wiry was to insist).

So I managed to plough into the pitstop, send the barriers flying and nearly run over and break the legs of the stag. "NO! NO! NO!!" screamed Mr. Wiry. Luckily, a large telegraph pole rose up to stop me.

"GET OUT!" screamed Mr.Wiry. "GET OUT AND EVERYONE STOP!"

"I'm really sorry," I said, huge bruises already starting to spread up my left side. "But I think there was a problem with..."

"YOU DO NOT LISTEN! LOOK WHAT YOU'VE DONE!"

Of course, everyone else was laughing now. Mr. Wiry whipped round: "THIS AIN'T FUNNY!" - which of course only made it worse. Everyone tried to zip up and look contrite. I tried to be apologise, but was given the sort of public dressing down that immediately transported me back - I was 13 years old and standing on a windswept football pitch.

"YOU DO NOT TRY DO YOU? I TOLD YOU WHAT TO DO AND YOU STILL COULD NOT DO IT! WHY DON'T YOU LISTEN? NOW I'M GOING TO HAVE TO PUNISH ALL OF YOU."

For approximately 15 minutes Mr. Wiry made a song and dance about rebuilding the pitstop (a pole and bit of fence in the ground). Even his teenage assitant rolled his eyes. We started racing again, and mercifully I managed not to inflame his wrath further.

"I've had deaf girls," concluded Mr. Wiry to the group while I was back on the track, "who listen better than him."

Nice Mum Flyer

2005-09-30T15:10:00.000Z

This is a flyer for the gig on Monday. I post it here so you can look at Nice Mum's childish faces.

Wedding Present Experimentation Can Go Wrong

2005-09-29T19:04:00.000Z

As you can see.

PS - Am doing some new stuff at Nice Mum Etc this coming Monday - so new I haven't even written it yet. Anyway, loads of great acts, 8pm at the Etc Theatre, Camden London. COME!!

PPS - It's also where you will also see my colleague Pete Gold - and I should like to plug here his upcoming solo-show Pete Gold: Plucking Funny, which is on 10, 17 and 24 October, again at the Etcetera. Not only is Pete a lovely and geniunely nice man, he is also very funny, especially as I have helped him write and put together a few bits of his show. And I've got to go and buy his f-ing props. Actually, strike that comment about him being a nice man, the man's a bloody slavedriver. And I made him what he is today blah blah blah.

DIY vs Discipline

2005-09-28T08:02:00.000Z

Ah, contentment. The enemy of invention.

I should be knuckling down and taking advantage of not being tied to an office job and get cracking on a new show, more scripts, new projects, some bloody jokes for a gig next week etc etc. Instead, I am enjoying the tasks of house husbandry too much and finding displacement activity in every nook and cranny of this new home - ooh the chairs need felt circles on the bottom of them, ooh the doorbell doesn't work must find out why, ooh what does this wire do in the corner of the loft, and so forth.

My CDT teacher, Mr. Fowler, will be spinning in his grave (I think he is actually dead) but I - the pupil he bollocked for a complete lack of any kind of practical ability or application - have taken to DIY and the joys of owning a toolbox suddenly and very ardently. I have been to B&Q THREE TIMES in the last week. I now have a composting bin, a rubber mallet and electronic sander. I've gone mad. It's totally against my image as a whomping great nancy-boy theatrical, but it's like a lot of things I have discovered in life - if I have the instructions, set out clearly in a slim manual, I can do it. It may not be instinctive, but if I can be bothered I can pick it up. Plus - I think I have got rather addicited to the sense of achievement - yes I made that shoe-rack/wired that telephone extension/sanded, polished and oiled that blanket box ALL BY MYSELF. In other words, I have discovered yet another way to show off - it's why I got into cooking (and DIY, like cooking, seems a hell of a lot easier than learning a musical instrument/another language/keeping fit).

Give me three years, a handful of City and Guilds, and perhaps I could become the UK's DIY comedian - like Tim Allen and Home Improvement in the States.

Actually, that's a terrible idea.

But if you want comedy and a trade, our roofer who came last week was pretty funny. A cheery, scrawny guy called Tony with blonde highlights who scrambled up onto the roof and burst into high-pitched renditions of Sting while he worked. Only occasionally something up there would go wrong and he'd burst into a volley of swearing, thus:

'Just a castaway, an island lost at sea-oh,
Another lonely day, with no-one here but me..."

Bang.

'FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK SHIT FUCK.'

Pause.

'I'll send an SOS to the world,
I'll send an SOS to the world...'

Class

2005-09-27T21:23:00.000Z

Slouching my way around Morrisons (nee Safeways).

A middle-manager was commentating pointlessly to a clearly very-bored teenager filling the fish counter.

"Yes, yes, very good Paul. Three boxes of prawns on the front two rows, then two on the back. That's very good. That's a very good display technique. That's classy. That's why were a cut above Tesco's you see. Class."

Berkshire Conspiracy

2005-09-26T22:03:00.000Z

Feeling your way around a new town can be a disconcerting business.

It seems every third person in Berkshire has one of those bluetooth things in their ears. I don't recall ever seeing one in Cambridge - now back down south of the Watford Gap it seems everyone is plugged in. It's like The Tripods, when they pulled back the ears of the 'capped' people and there was a little circuit thing controlling them.

If any of you meet me in the next couple of weeks and I have a bluetooth in my ear, then I have been 'got'.

MOVED, MARRIED & BACK!

2005-09-22T09:26:00.000Z

Blimey. I haven't posted for a month. And what a month.

I'm not quite sure how we did it all in three weeks now I look back on it. We've bought a house, moved all our crap (and by God, what a lot of crap) from genteel Cambridge to 'Keepin' it Real' Reading, we've carried a lot of extremely heavy boxes, I've chucked in my day job and any form of regular income, we've bought a car - I'm actually on the road again for the first time in almost 10 years (be afraid), I've plumbed a washing machine, constructed a lot of cheap furniture, mowed a lawn, we've made more arts, craft, cards and decorations than at any time since primary school, and oh yes - after twelve years together, Harriet and I got married.

I'm sure it's something every bride and groom says - and forgive me if I sound like a smug married already - but the whole weekend was perfect. Fantastic weather, beautiful location, extremely generous friends and family, a roasted pig - what more could you ask for? It was too wonderful and - considering I spend most of my life trying to be funny, cynical and poised about everything - rather emotional. Big girl's blouse that I am, I was on the verge of blubbing for about two days - like some huge transvestite Gwynneth Paltrow (albeit a very well-dressed one).

Considering our first brush with council bureacracy re marriage was awkward (see
Bureaucratic Oaths here), it seems West Sussex officials are just as jumped up as their Cambridge colleagues. We arrived at Chichester registry office on the Friday, suited and booted (in the Doctor's case a lovely green dress) and full of excitement. A lady put us into a sideroom and said we would be called for. Ten minutes passed. The previous wedding couple came out of the office and posed - I noticed some of our guests get caught up in photos of the wrong wedding as they tried to get in. Another ten minutes passed. Should something be happening we wondered? Suddenly a large woman in beige burst through the door.

"What are you doing in here? You're not supposed to be in here!"

"We were told to come in here..."

The woman's face went red: "No! No! This is my office! You're not supposed to be in here - come on, come on."

Yes, it was Basil Fawlty in a dumpy registrar's form. It became quite clear she hadn't read our form with our requirements and any of our readings on. She got quite angry about the readings thing, and told us if there was any religion in them she'd have to stop the ceremony.

"But that's the whole point," said the Doctor. "We didn't want a religious ceremony - why would we have religion in the readings?"

The Registrar went a deeper shade of crimson and shoved us towards the door. "Here comes the Bride," she announced to the guests as we both walked in together (as requested). I got a fit of giggles as we entered - partly due to the ridiculous woman, partly due to nerves, and partly because we'd chosen the theme tune to Carry On Camping to walk into. The Registrar glowered at us from the corner. Her final coup-de-grace was to announce us at Mr & Mrs Swift - which we're not (and told her before we weren't - Harriet is keeping her own name.)

BUT! All that silliness didn't matter one jot. It was still extremely wonderful - particularly when Pete and Andy realised they didn't have any confetti to chuck at us, raced to the next-door shop, where some unscrupulous shopkeeper sold them a very expensive bag of it. Which turned out to be pot-pourri. So we were pine fresh for the rest of the evening.

We then had a fantastic meal in a lovely country pub in the South Downs. Everyone was so happy - (we stayed out in the garden till really late) - that the owner seemed almost tearful when we left and came out into the carpark to wave us goodbye.

I was worried on Saturday morning that hangovers were going to waylay us for the big Saturday ceremony. But Dr Theatre/Nuptials sorted us out. As our guests starting filling up the marquee, the adrenaline kicked in and again we got extremely nervous. I was a 1000 times more petrified than I have ever been standing backstage before a gig - this was real life. But Angela, our celebrant, was excellent and took charge of the situation. I think people were worried that a Humanist ceremony was going to be a lecture or some weird ritual (things that I had worried about myself) but it was (I hope) simple, affecting and direct - and without any of the mumbo-jumbo that gets in the way. Ham and I had had a hand in writing the script and I think that came through...

SO - we partied on. The food, booze, speeches, music, PEOPLE were all excellent. From the first pre-band CD track - through the 3 live sets the band played and my confused (drunk) rendition of 'Take Me To The River' - till about three in the morning the dance floor was rammed. It was a long day but everyone was up for it. The energy was incredible and I could go on for ages and ages about how it was the best time of my life - but I shall simple direct those who are interested to the photos and conlude that I am an extremely happy and lucky man.

Now - I have internet access back, I'm doing some gigs in the upcoming months, and I have time on my hands in what is so far proving to be one of the strangest, weirdness-packed towns in the country (trust me, what I've seen in Reading Argos in the last week is a sitcom all in itself). I shall be blogging back with a vengance.

Blog of Note

2005-08-26T21:25:00.000Z

Up to my neck in boxes as we start our move back down past the Watford Gap but wanted to take a moment to draw attention to my friend Patrick's blog The Freedom Blog. Patrick is what I believe is called "An American" from the "United States of America", who has been living in London for four years, but has now returned to his motherland. I suggest you check out his blog because:

a) He will be writing about his possibly lengthy and certainly amusing period of adjustment back to a country where they can't spell the word "colour", elect chimps and bad film stars to high office, and seem not to have a self-loathing attitude to their national identity (I know - weird).

b) He's a fine individual who has attended virtually every show I have put on in the last 3 years. For this - and for bringing loads of new people to watch me - I shall always be very grateful. (Makes it sound like I'm retiring or something - I'm not - but I shall certainly miss Patrick and his gang in the future - so the only answer is to go out to Chicago and do strange, esoteric sketches about vicars, dwarves and Mungos there.)

Enjoy.

Chav Wedding

2005-08-24T15:04:00.000Z

Yes, yes, "chavs" are an easy topic and the refuge of the lazy comedian, but as I am being rather lazy about comedy at the moment, I thought I'd post this up as it amuses me - particularly as it is now only 2 weeks to my own nuptials.

Someone sent us this, along with a bunch of other shots - but this group portrait is the masterpiece. Naturally, we intend to follow these fashion patterns on our own big day. It's his "fresh outta prison" look that I intend to emulate.

More Stag

2005-08-18T08:15:00.000Z

Where to begin? There was so much funny incident and pure comedy that I don't know if I'm going be able to distill it all into one pithy blog - four days later and I'm still laughing - but we had such a fantastic time and my best man Graham did an excellent job.

We started on the Friday with a packed day out in London town - taking in a proper wet-shave at a Mayfair barber, shooting zombies and hillbillies at the Trocodero (which was absolutely deserted - not even one French schoolchild with a multi-coloured rucksack), The London Dungeon, Vinopolis (a mini-Sideways moment), Chinatown and then *ahem* a famous gentlemen's club (think bad hair and very young girlfriends). It was perfect.

Highlights:

In Trumpers, my Barber found out I was on my stag, leant over and whispered discreetly in my ear:

"Going for a lapdance are we sir?"

"Well, er, maybe," I spluttered, "It's up to my Best Man."

"I see," he nodded sagely, "Here's my tip."

His face six inches from mine, he started pulling orgasmic expressions, rolling his eyes and sighing. I looked back a bit afraid - the man was mid-shave and holding a cutthroat razor. He reached a climax and then - "You love me don't you?" He paused triumphantly. "I then pull my cheeky smile thus - and they are so charmed they give me a dance for free." He resumed with the blade. "Never fails."

***

In London Dungeon Graham and I loom over all the squat German tourists on a day out. Therefore we are naturally picked on by all the actors in each chamber. As a performer (i.e. show-off) I kind of dread this because I know how difficult it is to do audience interaction stuff - and I never know whether to keep my head down and mumble or go "LA! YOU PICKED ME! WELL DONE - I'M FUNNY!" However when I was dragged up into the dock in a recreation of a 18th century court, and had to pretend to be a transvestite prostitute and a French spy, I couldn't resist. "Are you a French spy?" they asked. "Oui," I said (razor-sharp eh? but it threw 'em off script.) The effect was complete when they asked me to hold my hands up and admit I was a whoopsy - and as I did so I revealed two little handbangs hanging off my wrist full of complimentary skin lotions from the barber. I was judged guilty.

***

In another part of the Dungeon - a big black guy, acting the part of a 19th century pimp, jumped out of an alcove to scare us.

"ARNOLD SCHWARZENEGGER!" screamed a little boy.

"No," snarled the actor, "wrong colour."

"Oh," said the boy. "Whoopi Goldberg?"

***

It was a brilliant day and we got home at four in the morning. Couple of hours sleep and then up again and I was bundled into Graham's car (not in the boot - although that was threatened)heading north. Picking up my brother and Nick "Hollow Man" Tanner on the way, there was much ribald banter - which, being post-lad, we would point out it was ribald banter after we had done it, so as not to suggest we were sexist, unreconstructed blokes - even though we actually were. You see?

We approached the outskirts of Nottingham, and drove into an industrial estate, past football pitches and golf courses. Of course, everyone knows I'm not a sportsman, so cue hilarious commentary "What time's tee-off?", "You can be in goal" etc. But then we reach a field full of inflatable castles, rubber suits and foam machines, and we're in time for a big game of "It's A Knockout".

Grrrr - (almost) all the team

There were about 10 other stag and hen groups taking part - and they all seemed a lot more focused and driven then our motley bunch. But everyone got on straight away - there was something bonding about a lot of us still being in jeans and posh shirts when most of the other teams were in football shirts - but we psyched ourselves up and got in the zone - and then were addressed by our host.

Oh what a man - both holiday rep and Bernard Manning rolled into one fat suit.

"Now listen," he said, as the first drops of rain started to fall, "If I do or say anything this afternoon that offends your sexuality, your religion, your sex, your beliefs, your race - remember it's not meant. I am a c**t, but if any of you kids finds me out in Nottingham tonight - and I know you'll all be out - then come up to me, call me a c**t, and I'll buy you a bottle of champagne. But you won't find me, 'cos I drink in the poshest bars."

We joked that we didn't realise Wetherspoons had an executive lounge.

And then we were off - scrabbling over foamy inflatables, dressing up as vaguely anti-semtic giants and chucking sponges at each other:

But by God - did it begin to piss it down. Spots of rain turned into a downpour, and although it was managable at first, it then became deathly cold and hysteria began to set in. The afternoon clicked up a gear when my friend Ashley began to dance in the sheet rain. He was dressed as a penguin.

In the end rain stopped play - although three hardy players in our team (Pete, Adam and Stuart) competed to the bitter end. The rest of us, girls' blouses that we are, retired to the changing room before the pneumonia began.

And then it was off to the hotel to begin drinking. But the dressing-up didn't stop there, oh no. Once we were all gathered in the bar, Graham produced my outfit for the evening. He knows me very well - I protested loudly for two seconds - and then moaned that there wasn't make-up to complete the look:

And as floods coursed down Nottingham High Street, we were off into the night. First stop - "Hooters" - a restaurant - big in the US, but the only one in the UK (a Nottingham claim to fame) - where you are served steaks and barbecue wings by big-busted waitresses in orange shorts and tan tights. Graham does know me so well. He knows I love tan tights - ha ha!!

A constant stream of big jugs (steady) of beer did their work. Weirdly, the clientele all seemed to be exclusively male - perhaps the only place I have been to where there is a queue for the male toilets and not for the female. The lack of women was clearly affecting one Geordie bloke with tattooed knuckles - "What are you doing tonight pet?" he asked me.

Everyone was on cracking form. At one point a whistle was blown and some bloke was put up on a stool for some sort of stag intiation thing.

"IT'S A HANGING!" yelled Dave.

The guy was then made to swallow a pint of beer to the cheers of his fellow stags.

"Listen," I said drunkenly to anyone who would listen, "I don't mind dressing up and all that but I am not doing anything like that.

Half-an-hour later I was standing on a stool in a Hooter's T-shirt about to have a downing competition against some other guy. I was not happy about it - (I think, I can't really remember at that stage). But the whistle blew - and I went for it.

I don't think I actually finished before him - but I was the undisputed winner because my opponent immediately started vomiting into a beer jug. My team roared and the opposing stag team looked like they had been punched in the face. Of course, I immediately spoiled the male moment by squealing "I WON! I WON! I ACTUALLY WON A SPORTING EVENT!!"

The rest of the evening is a fantastic blur of drinking and dancing. I not usually a fan of Pitcher and Piano-type bars, but there was one in Nottingham that is actually a converted cathedral. 17 redbull-and-vodkas, followed by 17 flaming sambukas, and we were in the centre of the cathedral, arms around each other dancing badly, camply and joyously. God knows what we were dancing to - it didn't matter - people gravitated towards us 'cos they wanted to be part of our sweaty gang. What a fantastic evening.

Phew - I could write more - but that's probably enough for now. Suffice to say - it's set me up properly for the big day. Thanks to my friends and especially Graham.

And remember, if I insult you one day in the future - it's not meant.

Stag

2005-08-15T10:28:00.000Z

There's just too much fun to report on. It was one of the best weekends in me life - and once I've recovered the use of my motor neurone system (2016?) then I will report back in detail. Suffice to say - this picture sums a lot up.

The Weekend Starts Here

2005-08-11T14:42:00.000Z

On a Thursday? Yes, because my stag weekend starts in 3 hours.

Tomorrow my best man and I intend to sample the sort of delights London offers (London Dungeon, Vinopolis etc) that you never actually sample when you live there. We begin in the morning with a proper wet shave (a la Sweeney Todd, but hopefully without the beheading, pie-stuffing and operetta) in a posh Mayfair barber. I have 4 days growth in anticipation. Then for Saturday - well I don't really know - but I'm sure it will involve lamb dansak and booze.

Then on the Saturday - well, I know nothing - only lots of cryptic comments like "Wear supportive pants", "Are you insured?" and more ominously "You going to get it in the a*&!"

I'll post afterwards - and when I'm out of A&E.

Youth

2005-08-09T15:52:00.000Z

There's me moaning about ageing this morning - this afternoon I will rant about youth.

I've just spotted two "kidz" snogging in my office car-park. This is an enclosed cortyard, with loads of big glass windows looking down onto it - and two foreign language students - brightly coloured pac-a-macs and identical rucksacks squarely in place - were horizontal on our building steps snogging forensically. Clearly they had slipped off from a boring tour of King's College ("and this was where they filmed Chariots of Fire") and sneaked in here for a bit of teenage tonsil tickling. Kids! Today! Especially foreign ones!! Outrageous!!!

I remarked how outrageous it was to my colleague as I got out the digital camera to photograph them. (In the interests of putting them on this blog you understand). Sadly the camera had run out of battery, so you'll have to take my word for it.

But believe me readers, I stood and watched them outraged till they finished, I can assure you.

Age

2005-08-09T11:09:00.000Z

Time eh?

For five minutes today I considered buying a nasal hair trimmer (£4.99 on ebay, if you're interested.)

Marriage, mortgage - it's all happening rather quickly. I'll be getting rickets next.

Never mind - this coming stag weekend I will no doubt get so drunk I'll be sick on a park bench just like when I was 14.

I'm looking forward to it!!!

Rings Around the World

2005-08-05T07:45:00.000Z

I'm not a jewellery man. Never worn a ring, bracelet or chain, and I have a 1950's Drill Sergant's view about men with earrings. I did experiment with an ankh (an Egyptian fertility symbol of course) on a leather strap for half-an-hour when I was 13 - but this was because I was staying with my cool London friend James. He was a Goth then and whenever I came to stay we virtually lived in Kensington Indoor Market (don't look for it, it's no longer there). I was keen to fit in with his moody London friends and be able to talk about the Sisters of Mercy convincingly, so thought I should have some sort of adornment. But the ankh went in the bin when I got back to the safety of Tunbridge Wells.

But otherwise, I've barely even looked in a jeweller's window. So it was with some difficulty that the Doctor finally got me to the shops to look at rings yesterday. One ring looks very much like the other to me - but we eventually found one that I shall get on with when I enter married life. Of course, this was preceeded by me trying several on, which I could then not get back over my neanderthal-sized knuckles - cue lots of straining and mild panic as I try to pull the damn thing off.

"What size are you?" said the sales assistant suspiciously.

I waved my cumberland-sausage sized fingers at her, "I don't know!"

She prouduced a long silver stick and a bunch of metal rings on a swab, which looked more like a medieval torture instrument than a measuring device. Was she going to punish me for not knowing my ring size? It seemed unfair.

She slipped several rings over my finger. "Hmm," she grunted, as if her worst suspicions were confirmed, "You're a Y. I'll have to phone around."

On one hand I felt guilty about the inconvenience my fingers had caused. On the other hand - I'm almost off the scale!

Buses and Gypsy Bashing

2005-08-02T07:21:00.000Z

Meeja jobs are like buses. Nothing for ages then two turn up at once. On the same day. Lawks. One was for public consumption, and so now if you listen to things like Capital and Virgin Radio (I don't), then from the end of the week you will hear Pete and I as West Country farmers discussing the merits of the Pizza Hut buffet. I am the older (ha!), grumpy (true) one.

I have been very lax at updating this blog of late because the Doctor and I have five weeks left to organise our wedding and we're in the final, torturous negotiations of purchasing a house. It all seems faintly unreal - today for example I have to get into an involved discussion about portaloos, while the Doctor talks to a man about a roof. These may not make for the most interesting type of blog event, so apologies if things are sporadic.

However, if it's incident you're after - this weekend my Auntie and I got involved in a lengthy anecdote from a pine-furniture salesman who told us how to get revenge on a gypsy.

"Stole my rottweiler puppy didn't they? The bloke rings up - '£3000 or the dog is dead.' 'Fine,' I say, 'Keep him' - 'cos you can't give in to those people. 'Course my little Emma is in floods, but I'm not gonna give those gippos an inch. They ring up again '£2000 or he's going through the mincer.' No way, I say, no way. Gypsy bastards."

My Aunt and I nod and mumble.

"So the price keeps coming down. £1000, £900. Then a couple of weeks later he rings up again: 'Gimme £500 then, or I'm gonna put him in dog fights.' 'Okay', I say, 'okay - £500 it is'. So we arrange a pick-up place. Now I used to be a doorman - and all my mates are doormen - so we squeeze five of us in a mini-bus and we go and say hello. You can't get the law involved you see - not for stuff like this. So we arrive - grab the dog - and take our gypsy mate for a ride. And explain a few things."

Wo-hoo! West Sussex! It's like the Wild West!! Of course, my Aunt and I's inner-Daily Mail reader went into excited overdrive with a raw tale like that.

So watch out dog-nappers. You do not mess with a man who can sell you an attractive pine bookcase.

Back to Reality

2005-07-27T14:58:00.000Z

Three days ago I was quaffing red wine and enjoying fine cheeses on a French veranda as the sun set over the vineyards and sunflower fields.

Now I’m back at my desk, the sky is leaden grey and some builder with his arsecrack showing has just smeared glue all over my window frame – and the fumes are starting to addle my brains.

Ljcnjlndcljknzdcnxmklazklxlxmklsxa aefhjsjhf

I can tell life is back to normal as last night I went into London for an audition, a comedy show, and then a drunken and uncomfortable train ride home. I heartily recommend DJ Danny if you’re going on to Edinburgh this summer – it’s a really fun hour with some bangin' tunes.

My Best Man is also starting to scare me with Stag Plans. If after 14 August I post no more, it is because I am either a) in prison, b) in rehab, or c) dead.

Vive!!

2005-07-15T16:39:00.000Z

I wasn't going to write anything at the moment 'cos I'm on holiday, however it transpires I have a deadline to work to while I'm here, so I thought a bit of the old blogging might get the creative juices going - and plus there's simply too much French fun to be reported on.

July 14 is Bastille Day. I was here at La Maison des Lys this time last year, so I felt almost an old hand - and were it not for the fact that I cannot speak a word of the language, I would have been up at the bar with the old French farmers - drinking pastis, gesticulating and making lewd comments to and about the rather saucy, and ever-so-slightly hairy, barmaid.

Everyone gets up early as they begin demonstrating antique farming machinery. The village square is full of old tractors, cars, and outside the church - a massive threshing machine. Various men in waistcoats and moustaches buzz around it, fiddling with belts and levers, until someone gives the signal - and bang - massive hammers start smacking down, smoke belches and straw goes flying. As a lily-livered townie, it's actually quite frightening, but not for these hardy men of the soil. One monsieur, risking having his limbs ripped off by this contraption - jumps into the heart of it and with his feet pounds down the straw and helps the machine make its first bale - comme ça:

My particular favorite Bastille Day activity is a pleasant ride around the village fortifications – on a cart pulled by oxen – two of the biggest animals I have ever seen in my life. They are walking slabs of steak, absolutely enormous, with steam rising off them and massive muscles grinding underneath their skin – and yet because they have little veils over their eyes to keep the flies off they seem oddly feminine. Coquettish, even. Anyway, my aunt and I went for a ride on the cart, which was decorated with the lino we used to have in our kitchen (it’s all in the details you see). These are the two little flirts – I mean powerful working farm animals:

The evening’s activities were of professional interest for me because the village was treated to the “comédie rural” stylings of husband and wife double-act ‘Lollo et Lollotte’. Now, let’s be honest, the French aren’t particularly known for their sense of humour, are they? Jaques Tati – and that’s about it. I was joking beforehand about how there would be lots of comedic props, shrieking and bad clowning/mime (who says that sounds like a One Lady Owner show? Get out!) - but I was absolutely right. I have no idea what Lollo and Lollotte – presumably a French kind of Mr and Mrs Jethro – were going on about, but absolutely no-one in the 200 strong crowd was laughing. Each gag, each shrieked “ooh la la!”, each amusing prop, each loud fart effect (of which there were many) was greeted by a bemused silence. They pulled one bloke up on the stage, talked to him for about a minute – (him not responding in the slightest) – then pushed him back into his seat again. The only real reaction from the crowd (one of genuine disgust) came in some sort of hospital sketch when Lollo took his trousers off, turned round, and had shitty marks all over the back of his pants. Perhaps even in deepest, agricultural Le Gers, the French work very hard at looking like they don’t give a merde.

(I envied Lollo and Lollotte their entourage mind – t-shirted roadies, a truck, really good lighting rig etc. That’s the French Government subsidizing the arts, there. Certainly beats struggling on the tube to the Canal Café with a sackful of wigs in your lap, I can tell you.)

After one particularly baffling volley of fart noises, I asked a French lady for a translation about what the hell was going on. She shrugged, unimpressed, “He say that the noise that come out of the low end, can come out the mouth too.” The French – a nation a philosophers – even in their comedy.

Pity Da Fool (Me)

2005-07-12T00:49:00.000Z

It must have been Foolish Behaviour Day yesterday.

1. A meeting in London with a large multinational coroporation who have employed me to write and perform in sketches for their conference videos. A big and lucrative gig. My fourth word in greeting to them? "Testicles" (in reference to a large piece of incomprehensible corporate art hanging from the celing.)

2. Talking to a friend of a friend in a bar who has been very ill and has courageously pulled through a terrible illness. They mentioned they had been feeling depressed.

ME: "Yeah, well, depression... I don't really believe in all that. Self-imposed I reckon. Some people just make it up. It's all in the mind."

THEM: "No. It's the side effects of all the drugs I've had to take."

I am one of these.

Ah well. Off to France tomorrow where my inability with the language means I may offend less people.

The Doctor is determined, much to my despair, to loose inches around her bust to fit into her wedding dress. I am opposed to this because I do not wish to be deprived of the opening gag in my speech ("There were two things that first attracted me to Harriet...")

However, she is setting a good example because I need to deflate my spare tyre to look sharp for the nuptials. Unfortunately I forsee that fine French cheeses and a rose wine drip might not allow this in the next days.

So I'll start when I get back. Honest.

Compare and Contrast

2005-07-10T13:34:00.000Z

My mother walked into the newsagent in the tiny rural French village where she lives on Thursday. The girl behind the counter asks her how she is, and if everyone in her family is okay after the bombs - then bursts into tears.

Yesterday there was a French market in Cambridge, with a fair and fireworks and a circus. We walked around it late last night, just as the stalls were packing up. I witnessed a bunch of teenage tosspots berating the two rather attractive French women running a delicatessen stall - "Olympics eh? We won eh? La Olympics ha ha ha!"

I shouldn't draw any grand conclusions out of this - the press and blogs are packed with stories of Londoners helping each other, being more respectful etc etc - and these were just drunk young provincial tossers. I'm sure the French women sent them packing with a "baise-toi" or two - but it was certainly depressing (and embarrassing) to see. Maybe when I get to France next week and I am berated by a Frenchman for a) winning the Olympics ('cos I texted my support oh yes) and b) having my government support the Iraq War thereby making us a target for terrorism (a bollocks argument) - then I will loose all my faith in humanity.

We shall see.

Get Out Now

2005-07-08T17:14:00.000Z

It takes a terrorist attack to reveal the true closeted nature of certain academics in this instituion.

We're holding a conference for a gaggle of architectual historians - all of whom look like spectacle-wearing HB pencils. Today I saw the leading HB get agitated because some of their speakers could not - thanks to those fundamentalist wankers - get to Cambridge to deliver their papers on Medieval Byzantine shrines.

"Those bombs," she proclaimed loudly, "Are a terrible inconvenience."

Thank god we're moving out in a month.

London

2005-07-08T08:00:00.000Z

It's jarring to go from the fantastic - Live 8, the Olympics etc - to horror in a matter of hours.

I hope that everyone was safe after yesterday and that all your friends and loved ones are okay.

London is the best city in the world.

Pick Me Up

2005-07-05T07:31:00.000Z

Four rather solid, if not heavy, summer nights visiting the naughty pint-shaped mistress of strong contential lager can leave you twitchy.

It was the headline on the front of 'Pick Me Up' magazine at the till in Sainsbury's that set me off:

"Chimp rips off my hubby's testicles."

I think it was the word "hubby" in that context that did it (not to mention the picture of a chimp baring teeth). The poor guy behind the till looked alarmed as I collapsed into uncontrollable snorts of laughter.

"Do you need any help?" he asked - not referring to my shopping.

"No, no, I'm fine," I lied, "It's just.... the magazine."

I gestured vaguely.

"Do you want to buy it?" he asked seriously. "It is my last one."

"Not today thanks," I said. I stuffed my purchases into a bag and fled.

Carriage of Doom

2005-06-30T08:48:00.000Z

It's been some time since I posted a train story. But this one was apocalyptic.

The train sped across the flat Hertfordshire countryside in the eye of a raging storm. Thunder rolled and lightening flashed, prompting shrieks from all my co-passengers whenever the sky lit up. As the pastry crust from the pasty I didn't actually need hardened around my arteries, I realised I was in the coach (from or to) hell. Jammed in and sweating with me were a chattering bunch of Japanese tourists, some sort of group outing for the Hagrid look-a-like society (massive West Country men with loads of hair and Hawkwind t-shirts), some young Downs Syndrome kid who kept running up and down the aisle and shouting at people, and worst of all, a bunch of Cambridge drunks. You could could tell they were Cambridge drunks because they manged to be both a) nosily pissed and b) bilingual. Then we all were booted off at Royston and rammed into buses, and arrived at our destination seemingly a month after we actually set out.

Just as well the trip into town to see Bearded Ladies recording was worth it then. The Ladies were ace, and some really good sketches in there (including our hilarious sofa bed sketch - which naturally was the most complicated in terms of sound - make 'em work I say.) In the record I managed to plunk myself down next to handsome celebrity and star of Green Wing and Tomb Raider, Julian Rhind-Tutt. I had hoped that by sitting next to him some of his celebrity would rub off on me - unfortunately on my other side was a very odd man who noisily drunk a pint of Guiness and spent the whole evening studiously taking pictures of the ladies with his mobile phone. If there was any rubbing off last night, I think he was the one doing it.

Bureaucratic Oaths

2005-06-29T08:15:00.000Z

The Doctor and I went to give notice of our marriage to the County Council. Things started going wrong almost immediately when we drove into the carpark and several men in luminous tabards delighted in telling us exactly where we couldn't park.

Undeterred, we went into the registry and sat among the plastic potted plants and waited to be seen. For half an hour. Eventually we approached a woman with tightly permed hair and tighly pursed lips.

"Excuse me, we have an appointment at 11.30."

The woman's eyes narrowed, "Impossible. I've just had my 11.30."

"No, I rang up and booked last week."

The woman resentfully opened her diary.

"Well, I have you crossed out on Monday."

"I know - we changed it to the Tuesday."

"Are you sure you didn't change it to next Tuesday? Or the Tuesday after?"

"No! Definitely today."

The woman's lips went grey. "I see," she said, and slammed the diary shut, "Well bang goes my lunchbreak."

And so the scene was set for one of the most awkward twenty minutes encounters I've ever had to sit through. With hackles raised on both sides, we went through Kafka-esuqe questioning with a woman who had to ask whether there was a 'h' in Chichester. It was extremely difficult to keep a straight face when the furious woman asked if we might be brother and sister. I immediately had the 'Dueling Banjos' music from Deliverance run through my head - and the way the woman eyeballed me suggested that she knew what I was thinking and was not amused.

"Have a pleasant day" she managed as we left. "But remember to hand in the correct forms."

Yee-ha!!

Beards at the Beeb

2005-06-25T10:36:00.000Z

I should say now that recording begins next week (Wednesday in fact) for the new series of Bearded Ladies, which includes sketches what I have wrote.

They're recording evenings at The Drill Hall, London's premier Lesbi-Gay Theatre (guaranteed one production of Entertaining Mr. Sloane per week), and you can book tickets through the BBC's website here.

The Beards are great and I shall be there laughing at them - especially when our stuff comes on ha ha.

So come along too. That is an order.

Late Night Sin

2005-06-24T10:13:00.000Z

Last night, I toddled off on my bicycle to treat myself to a late-night screening at the spanking new leisure-park down the road (multi-screen cinema, bowling, Nando's, Subway - it's like stepping into the future.) Decided on watching Sin City - a) because it's the kind of violent film I could never persuade the Doctor to go to and b) 'cos the cinema's air-conditioned.

I purchase my packet of fruit gums and large lemonade and to my delight it looks as if I'm going to be the only person in the 120 seat cinema. I don't mind going to the flicks on my own - I quite like it - so I settle in happily. The film's been released for a bit, it's May week so all the students are toffing around with their DJs and Balls, and so I reckon I'm going to be enjoying my own private screening. The projectionist obviously thinks so too, and for his - or my - amusement, he starts putting the local business ads that precede the trailers in the wrong way.

Then bang. The doors fly open, and into the cinema run two female youths. Oh Christ.

"You are such a bay-itch!"

"Shut up! Facking hell it's cold in here!"

The girls are clearly not over 18 and are dressed (or not very dressed actually) in finest chav-ery - hair scraped back, belts as skirts, earrings the size of hula-hoops (not the crisps).

I sink into my seat - I really don't want to spend an evening trying to watch a film with two Vicky Pollards in the back row. Their presence has automatically made me feel (and look) like some dirty old man weirdo for being on my own in the cinema. I try to remain nonchalant, as if I haven't even seen them come in (nonchalant meaning of course grabbing a handful of fruit gums and trying to chew too many at once.)

Naturally they run around a bit first before they decide to choose their seats. One sits right in the front row in the centre, while the other sits in the exact spot at the back.

"Move your head your bay-itch I can't see the screen!"

"Shut up you c*nt. I'm the c*nt of Chesterton!" (!?!?)

I am a dead man. I try and will myself to melt away - (normally not a problem) - but the air-conditioning in this theatre is just too good. I don't have to wait long.

"'Ere look that bloke's on his own." (Here we go...) "'Scuse me?"

I turn round and try to affect an untouchable, imperious glare - like the Fonz.

"Yeah?"

"Why are you on your own?"

A million excuses whirl around my head. Whatever I say will impact the next three hours and decide whether I'll survive this screening without being torn apart by these teenage velociraptors. Or whether I might just get away with a bit of popcorn aimed at the back of the head.

"Because.... My.... Girlfriend... (Damn! Should have said wife... No! Girlfriend's good. They understand what they are!) is.... in... (Think! Think! The truth! The truth will work!) York...? (Excellent - confuse 'em with a place outside their immediate location.)"

It seems to work. In fact they almost seem sympathetic – so I’m not a weird dirty mac (shorts actually) man. “Aaah.” Phew. But then: “What’s this film like then?”

I pause to consider. Do they want a detailed review, letting them know it’s sourced on several graphic novels by Frank Miller? That it’s entirely digitally constructed and packed with Ruyon-esque dialogue? That it’s probably the most extreme expression of comic-noir to hit cinema screens?

No. Instead I’ll try and pretend I’m hard. “It’s very violent” I say, putting a weird emphasis on the last word. Yeah, don’t mess with me ladies. I’ve fought South London crack whores, I imply.

They turn away – unimpressed – and start a burping competition.

Well, thank God another couple came into the cinema. Shortly followed by the girls’ baseball capped boyfriends – who seemed to actually want to watch the film (well it was full of beatings, guns, naked ladies and genital mutilation.) They made noises throughout but I was able to ignore them.

Because I was more annoyed as just when the opening titles scrolled up two Goths with massive hair came and sat right in front of me and took their shoes off.

Jesus.

AUTOFUTUR

2005-06-22T20:38:00.000Z

Sitting in my pants in the sweltering heat, lager in hand (you can have that image for free readers) listening to the new Kraftwerk live album.

It is excellent. Or if you prefer: Es ist ausgezeichnet.

I mean, you can only really tell it's live because they put cheering inbetween tracks - (I doubt 50+ year-old Ralf and Florian and whoever the two new ones are put down their computers and decide to crowd surf) - but it's a cracking set, with all the best songs. People even sing along to the lyrics - "VE ARE ZE ROBOTS."

It takes me happily back to the Kraftwerk spoof band we used to do in Fit To Burst - Autofutur. Red shirts, slicked down hair and little black ties:

"In ze future sere vill be no men."

"In the future sere vill be no women."

"In the future sere vill only be - UNISEX."

I loved doing Autofutur. Perhaps we'll have to reform them now Kraftwerk are releasing records again. They could go on the road with a selction of their uncannily predictive songs - "Electric Grid" (The Internet), "Strudel Synthetique" (The Findus Crispy Pancake) and "Angry 2nd Home Owners" (Wind Farms).