See the Tree, How Big It’s grown
Category: Blogging

I only mentioned the squirrel killing on here as an aside, yet it looks like being a top bit of material to use for my show. I don't know why some bits work and some bits don't, but this rodentacide has what it takes.

I honestly wanted to do my best for the little perisher, but in my clumsy way made it worse. I also meant well in getting the kids out to watch, they get over-protected in their lives, certainly compared to when I was a child. When I grew up there was the combined benefits of rough pieces of ground and benign neglect, for us to learn pretty much everything. What my kids, and next door's watching from over the fence, learnt as I put the squirrel to sleep I'm not sure. That daddy is an idiot probably foremost. The little thing wouldn't die, that was the problem. Even with his head caved in his tail was still wagging.

I'm not lucky with rodents. A few years ago we had mice in the house, one of which I caught and released, Born Free style, down the road. Everyone moaned at me that it would just find its way back, so the next one I caught I put it to rest by holding its tail and slamming it against the utility room wall. I got roundly condemned, by the same people who had called me too soft for releasing the first one, for being cruel, so I washed my hands of the whole thing and got pest control in who put poison down.

Two days later there was a dead mouse in the bathroom and after a deal of screaming I was called in to remove the body. Now, when it comes to body disposal of a dead mouse in a bathroom and obvious solution suggests itself, or at least did to me, and I thought it would be dignified to give this little fellow a burial at sea. It always works for goldfish. I picked up his little body and gently launched, well dropped, him on his final journey. As soon as the dead mouse hit the water, he woke up, and started swimming. Everyone screamed, not only had he come back to life he was attempting to swim his way out of danger. It's ok with a spider but a mouse is just too much like a little person, at least while swimming, for it to be anything other than distressing for an onlooker.

Couple of flushes he was gone, but the memory lingered on, still does. We got a cat after that and never had a problem since.

1:17 AM - 4 Comments - 6 Kudos - Add Comment

A Smarter Investor
Category: Blogging

Those of you who read this blog will know that my plan is to move out of London next year to somewhere more central. This is for many reasons, including a hoped for reduction in driving hours for me, a better house for my wife, and all around better prospects for the children. We live not far from where the poor lad was stabbed at the bakery the other day, hardly a week goes by without something alarming happening to young people in these parts.

Anyway one of the potential places to move to was Leicestershire, though not Leicester itself. The reason for avoiding Leicester has, though, nothing to do with the fact that I wasn't arrested there.

I'd just done The Leicester Comedy Festival preview gala, at Demontford hall, to an audience of 1500, the most I've ever played to. I have told this story before, so apologies if it's old news, but as I walked down the hill from the gig three police persons, one PC two WPCs came toward me and we got into what I thought was one of those pavement dances where you go one way and they go that way, then go the other way and they go that way, sort of thing. I decided I'd carry on straight and go past but at that point I was grabbed from each side in what must have been a choreographed manouvre straight out of the police handbook. I was lifted off my feet, then set down quickly, whilst they said stuff I couldn't hear.

I have to admit I was waiting for them to burst out laughing in a kind of Jeremy Beadle way, he still had twelve days to live then, or to start taking their clothes off stripper-gramme style. None of this happened, though and their demeaner seemed serious. They told me, when they eventually realised I was deaf, that I was being detained on suspicion, but of what I didn't know. Elvis has taught me that you can't go on together with suspicious minds, and that eating deep fried cheeseburgers on the toilet is not good for you, but they were not about to release me, let me go.

Finally they said I matched the description of a youth, ha, a youth - I was 43 at the time, who had been seen smashing windows. I did match the description, male with a dark 'bomber' style jacket and a hoody underneath. Their quotes by the way on 'bomber', not mine, that was the way they said it, as though this was the clinching piece of evidence.

They asked me where I'd just come from. Now it has been said by others, and I can only reinforce their view, that if apprehended by the police it may harm your situation when asked what you do to mention the word comedian. For some reason this is seen as a direct challenge to their authority. Too late, I'd said it. Then they asked me if anyone could confirm that if neccessary. Indeed they could, 1500 of them and Steve Bennet the reviewer from website Chortle.com could also have added, for the benefit of the court, that in his opinion I just trundled out a load of old material, but a got a bit better as I went on.

None of that seemed to cut any ice and still convinced I was the precocious, window smashing mastermind of old Leicester town, they then searched me, humiliatingly, in the street whilst half of leicester walked past having made their own judgement open someone who obviously must be guilty. It was cold as well. Finally I was allowed to put my clothes back on and I was handed a form telling me I was white. Surely they could have ascertained this while I was fully clothed? Anyway any lingering ethnic confusion I may have been suffering was now dispelled yet I was still suspect number one in the window smashing case. Then after about an hour of helping them with their enquiries, as quickly as they'd grabbed me, I was free to go.

This was the biggest insult of the lot. You see though it was insulting and humiliating to be stopped and searched, accused and intimidated, the thing that was strongest in my mind was the consolation that as bad as things were, THERE WAS A SHOW IN THIS. They'd just messed it up completely. Comedian gets arrested, that's publicity, column inches, and most definitely a show. Comedian nearly gets arrested, that's nothing. I really needed to be arrested, but nothing I could do would make them take me in. By now they'd bought in to the he's a comedian line, just when I didn't need it, and though I tried insulting them, and saying all coppers are twats and so on they just laughed and told me how funny i was. "See those windows over there, can I break those?" I said, "Ha, Ha, Ha, listen to this guy, he's hilarious."

So anyway, we looked at Leicestershire and it's very nice, so long as you don't get nearly arrested.

2:26 AM - 3 Comments - 6 Kudos - Add Comment

He kissed his boy as he lay sleeping and he Turned Around and Headed Home Again
Category: Blogging

It's hot, but who cares,I did thirty minutes at a new material night run by the great Stefano Paolini, and it went really well. I did cheat of course, ten minutes were from last years show or older, ten minutes were from stuff I'm already doing but haven't put in a full length show before, but ten minutes were genuinely freshly minted new bits.

It did help that the audience were all from the same company, and they recognised some of the office politics I talked about. The pedantry as an expression of the pain many office workers feel that their talents have gone to waste, and how that pain would be taken out on the poor sap who volunteered, by not hearing the question being asked, to organise buying the tea and coffee for the floor.

Doesn't he realise that tea drinkers should not have to endure sugar that has been contaminated by the coffee drinkers? "I have measured out my life in coffee spoons", and complaints about tasteless biscuits,and of course the office Grand National sweep, how can they not see that in the event of a void race there are four possibilities for what to do with the pound each given by the thirty five entrants, return the money individually (ten in favour), give the money to charity - such charity to be decided by some more pointless bickering and recrimination over the next few weeks (nine in favour)- award the money to the 'winner' of the void race (one in favour), or put the money on the lottery (the rest) but who could envisage that the last group would be rent by schism between those who thought lottery tickets and those saying scratchcard.

They were also painfully aware of the possibility that their job, unsatisfactory as it might be, could always be outsourced to a foreign land. Them Indians, staying over there, taking our jobs. My job was outsourced, I was offered redundancy and took it as I was going anyway and five grand was the least I deserved for not walking off with a photocopier.

I remember when the IT outsourcing to Southern India was announced the company made a very generous offer that anyone could keep their job on the same pay but would have to relocate, to Bangalore. There wasn't a rush, after all these were people who felt turmoil if skimmed milk was replaced by semi let alone starting a new life on the subcontinent. Had I not been headng for a new career I would have considered it, for what IT people in London were on you'd have been like a Maharaja in India. You could be carried to work by bearers, or have dusky maidens scatter rose petals in your path as you ride in on one of your elephants. Quite large poop-scoop bags but good anyway.

I can just imagine the guy that got my job. No actual work to do, but hundreds and hundreds of irate people ringing his call centre to demand why 'value' digestives had been bought and surely he knew they tasted like cardboard? Others calling in for an angry rant about how the horse crossing the line first should be declared the winner whatever the offcial result, or that War on Want were tossers and that Scope should have it instead as at least they were British, no offence.

I even managed to get the story about not being arrested in Leicester into almost-comedy. I'd forgotten all about it, but it fits right in.

I've a long way to go to get this together into a proper show but it's coming. I'm in Balham on Wednesday doing it all over again.

2:16 PM - 2 Comments - 6 Kudos - Add Comment

I’m on Trisha

Yes folks, looks like I made it. I'm being interviewed by the one and only Trisha Goddard on City Talk Radio, to be broadcast Sunday evening between 8 and 10PM. You can listen online here. Wow, Trisha.

I've got lots to tell her about, how I'm currently living the dream at Lymm Truckstop Travelodge off the M6, having messed up my accommodation for the weekend in Liverpool and having to take what was available. The view of the lorries is stunning. It's not that bad and anyway after driving for seven hours yesterday in the sticky heat I was glad of anywhere. After my gig at Baby Blue in the Albert Dock tonight, I shall climb in the Clio and do the two hundred and twenty miles home so I can be there for the boy's football tomorrow morning.

I'm also on puppy minding duties when I get home, though Milo has been easy to look after so far. He's got the hang of going outside to poo, though there has been a couple of little mishaps on the wee side but he's a quick learner. He knows now that tea is hot and that Dot, the cat, is not to be messed with. Jake seems to have really taken to the little fellow and they now rival the WWE for wrestling spectculars, though in their wrestling it isn't all fake.

Jake and Milo

Dot is a dirty street fighting cat, gone feral now as she was dissatisfied with the care we provided for her. I went to put stuff in the composter the other day and got the shock of my life to discover a seriously injured squirrel lying on the grass. Now either Dot or Jake had got it, but you can see from how fat Jake is it is unlikely to have been him. The squirrel was a real pest, had already destroyed two bird feeders, the second one was branded as squirrel proof and looked heavily armed, like a sort of nut Alcatraz, but this proved no problem whilst the squirrel was in full health. I'm not saying the squirrel deserved it but I'm not taken in by all that fluffy tail rubbish either.

Anyway the poor thing was lying there, only able to move its eyelid. I thought perhaps it could write it's memoirs, like the guy in The Diving Bell and The Butterfly, but instead of that I hit it over the head with a shovel to put it out of it's misery. I got the boys to watch it, too, as this is the sort of thing they need to know about. Full burial honours were then observed as I flung it over the fence.

I'm sure trisha will make a big deal of it.

2:20 AM - 10 Comments - 12 Kudos - Add Comment

someone help me, help me please

Short blog this as I'm permanently busy at the moment. What a stupid idea to get another dog, especially a puppy. Jake isn't keen, though I think he secretly likes him. Milo is his name, he's nice when he's asleep.


Gigs in Gloucester tonight, Plymouth tomorrow, Frome Thursday on tour with james, Liverpool on Friday and Saturday. Phew.

5:10 AM - 8 Comments - 10 Kudos - Add Comment

A Marvellous Night for a Moondance
Category: Blogging

In order to arrive in Stoke, where I am, for eight thirty, as I was told, it was necessary to leave home at five pm. The problem with that is that since my wife has coped single handed whilst I've been away in Northern Ireland, more of that later, I thought we could have a takeaway tonight, but the Chinese doesn't open til five, therefore for me tonight alas, no tea.

1:18 PM - 2 Comments - 4 Kudos - Add Comment

Self Preservation is What’s really Going On Today
Category: Blogging

A couple of good days gigging and getting started on my show. I mentioned before I shall be appealing to the wisdom of the only people who know about these things, seventies soul artistes. I've got Gladys Knight and Curtis Mayfield on my side, though Gloria Gaynor is sticking to her rather intransigent position. I'm also having trouble with Candi Staton, viz:


"What's the sense in sharing this one and only life

Shut it, woman.

"Ending up, just another lost and lonely wife

Look there's two sides to every story

"You count up the years, and they will be filled with tears, oooh

Who asked you?

"Love only breaks up, to start over again

Fuck Off

"You'll get the babies, but you won't have your man

How is it any of your business?

"While he is busy loving every woman that he can, huh huh

I deny that completely.


Giving people ideas, that. I'm off to Armagh right now, this minute, so I shall sign off til the next time.

3:09 AM - 1 Comments - 2 Kudos - Add Comment

How do you write an Edinburgh Show?

How can anyone just sit down and write a whole hour of a new show, from scratch, out of nothing, that in three month's time has to be ready for public consumption? I can't remember how I did it last year, or the year before, but I'm sure it wasn't as hard as this.

I do know my idea is a good one. Should I still be doing stand-up? A few of the people I've suggested it to have looked at me like I was crazy, like it was such a bizarre notion to even entertain, that I should no longer entertain, but as I explained it to them it makes more sense.

My wife has suggested I should give it up, not out of spite but through logic, in fact when everything is weighed up on a factual basis I agree with her, except for the giving up bit.

I used to work in IT, something most of you will have heard me mention many times already. It was well paid, I've never made as much out of comedy, and I used to finish work and be home just after six, and stay there. Nowadays I'm working often six nights a week, away from home every other weekend, and when I am at home, tired out. I love it, though.

I love the on-stage bit, off stage it can be a pain in the arse, comedy. The bit on stage is so intense, and mostly as this year has been an amazing year of good gigs it has been an intensity of enjoyment. The intensity goes for the bad gigs, too, they can be intensely painful, and the OK ones are intensely OK, but as you get better in this game the deaths come around less often, and don't hurt as much when you know you're good. In any case, it's good to be reminded now and again, that making people laugh can be a hard business, and if you don't get scared you're not doing it right.

I never got scared working in IT, except when the kettle broke down.

The pain in the arse comes from having caused your body to fill every blood vessel with adrenaline, and been the master of a room full of perhaps two hundred people, you end up sitting in a car for three hours driving home, to a house where everyone is long asleep, and even if they were up wouldn't really have much interest in how great your gig was. Worse than that is lying in bed at The Ibis, dog-tired but not sleepy, hoping to fast-forward to tomorrow.

The alternatives include going out drinking, which I don't do. I haven't drunk alcohol since before Dan was born and his seventh birthday is next month. I wasn't an alcoholic but I felt drink taking more of a hold than I felt comfortable with, so I stopped. I've seen many very good comics mess themselves up with drink, and I think that that could have been my story, too. If was was any good then which I wasn't. I found myself having a drink before I went on just to feel relaxed, and then having to have a few after to either celebrate or, more often, commiserate. If I was driving I had what I hoped was under the limit, then made up for lost time when I got home. My wife doesn't drink and so I'd have a couple of bottles of wine on my own. When I found myself driving around one midnight looking for an off-license still open, not really knowing why I was doing it, I stopped. I mean I drove on but stopped drinking.

A month later, by mistake, someone bought me a half of lager, but as I'd given up drinking pints but had made no such decision about halves as I'd never drunk them before. I tried a bit and it was just horrible. I used to think I drank for the taste but I realised it wasn't true. I drank for the drunk.

Just hanging around chatting isn't for me either, I can't keep up with conversations, and even talking to one person gives me a headache after a while, with all the concentration. I have tried to make an effort to be a bit more sociable, but it's hard work this relaxing business. Plus I drink water, sometimes fizzy if I'm pushing the boat out, and after a while I feel like I'm drowning in it.

I'm not complaining, though, when it's going well, that half an hour on stage makes up for everything. A couple of times in the weekend gone by I reached a point on stage when I was just right in, just doing it without thinking about it, being in the moment. I know that because I thought it and told myself to stop thinking and get back to doing. I've never done any other activity where i felt i was so right in doing it. Against all the logic that says I should be doing something else, this is the clincher.

If I can find some jokes to go with this I'll be ok.

5:52 PM - 14 Comments - 15 Kudos - Add Comment

Aint Got No/I Got Free WiFi
Category: Blogging

I apologise unreservedly to National Express East Coast for ever suggesting they ran a low class operation for pikey track-suit wearers on their trains. That's National Express Buses, and I acknowledge my mistake.

The trains are fine, this one has free wifi and electricity, and I'm not having to use the mobile phone data card to connect, which means I stay on as the train goes outside of a town. The East Coast route looks lovely today, the north sea is just away to my right, on the other side of some sheep and in this spring sunshine looks inviting, though I know it would be freezing. It's freezing in August, for God's sake.

In about ten minutes the train will cross the Mason Dixon line, and we'll be back in England, and not only that but we'll be there before the first class types at the back of the train. Take that executives.

I have olives, to go with my wifi, as for once I thought ahead and bought food before I got on the train. Olives, a pasta salad and some pineapple, which all cost about £6 in Sainsbury's. Had I spent the same money on the train I could barely have afforded a cup of tea and a doughnut.

I've had a great trip, Scotland was lovely, but I missed being home more than ever before. At least I have a couple of nights off now. I was a bit tired last night, doing The Edinburgh Stand, and whilst it was a good one it wasn't the highs of the previous few nights. The weekend has given me some ideas for my Edinburgh show, which I'm glad of, and I remembered something that still makes me laugh, when I changed the voice on my wife's SatNav to Afrikaans. It was the first alternative in the alphabetic list of options I brought up by mistake, and was too good to miss. "In fifty feet turn Left, white cars only, bleck cars turn right."

Earlier, waiting for the train at Waverley, I was approached by another passenger who said she'd seen me on stage on Saturday in Glasgow. She'd really enjoyed the show, though I think she went away thinking I wasn't nearly as funny in real life. One consolation of being so unfamous is being anonymity, normally.

We've crossed the border, leaving Caledonia behind, saying goodbye to the highlands til next month. I'll be sad not to have the option of Gaelic language movies on TV for a while, you see I grew up in a time before DVDs and the internet when a film on telly with subtitles was about the only chance of seeing a lady get her kit off. Even the Gaelic ones I can't watch without harbouring the hope that though Morag is wearing six layers of Harris tweed she'll be getting it all off once she gets back to the croft.

5:07 AM - 3 Comments - 8 Kudos - Add Comment

TW3
Category: Movies, TV, Celebrities

I spent some time yesterday trying to get the staff at the Ibis to turn the tv over to Sky Sports One for the never to be repeated Chelsea v Man United match. They couldn't work it properly, to be honest they were fuckwits, and could only come up with rugby on Sky Sports Two. I gave up and went to The Novotel next door.

The Novotel bar, whilst pleasant, was no place to watch the match, none of the other patrons were even facing the tv, so when near the end of the game something happened that might have been Chelsea getting a penalty, but without being able to hear the commentary, asking them what had happened was a waste of time. "Has he given a penalty?", "I don't know, Is it football?"

Straight from there I strolled the quarter mile or so to Cineworld for El Orfanato.

*************Caution May Contain Spoilers For Anyone Planning to See This Spanish Horror Film Where She Dies of an Overdose and Joins Her Child and her Friends from The Orphanage on The Other Side***************

One of those lovely films that weave alternative narratives round the same events yet still remain coherant. The woman at the centre of it, after having her child disappear in mysterious circumstances, goes off on a sort of paranormal happy hour, her husband meanwhile thinking it's all a load of bollocks. Then there's the third viewpoint, of someone who's just watched Chelsea beat Man U and is not taking it seriously enough, because the woman looks exactly like Kate McCann and the husband is the image of comedy promoter Ian Franklin.

Then there's the mysterious bit about the cave next to the beach which is in it quite a lot at the start and then forgotten about. I noticed the film was made con le participation of The Principality of Asturias, so their quid pro quo must have been to get a bit of their scenery in, because it made me want to go there. The con le participations go on longer than the adverts before the film and i wouldn't have been surprised to see Northern Rock amongst the benefactors.

Actually one of the adverts really troubled me as well, this sort of Nazi guy with a scar drives around in a shiny silver car doing vaguely teutonic strutting things on his way to Berlin. When he get there it's finally revealed that the car is in fact a Citroen and the tag line is something like, Unmistakably German - Made in France. But surely the thing about a Citroen is, or should be, that it's a French car that is unmistakably french, soft, low sprung suspension, elegant lines etc. If you want a German car why not get a Mercedes, or a Mini Cooper?

Anyway back to the film, it turns out the mother locked the boy in a cupboard, or might have done, Kate and Ian never thought to look there you see because for contractual reasons she thought he must be in the cave, and the 'special children' they were going to look after never get mentioned again after the scene where the boy goes missing. Perhaps they went to live in the cave as guests of the Principality of Asturias, or perhaps had the film been made Con Le Participation of whatever is Spanish for Mencap they might have had a bigger part. Anyway she dies but she doesn't really and she's reunited with the child and her mates from The Orphanage in some time past when the lighthouse was working and strobing the front of the house every two seconds in a manner likely to make someone complain to the authorities.

I may have got this wrong due to me sending a few texts whilst I was watching. There was quite a lot of dialogue explaining the plot, and I wasn't paying attention. Still it was a most entertaining 105 minutes.

My gig at The Stand afterwards was just lovely. Three out of three for me this weekend.

This morning at breakfast the Ibis man came up to me with the remote control and proudly told me he'd fixed it and I could now watch Sky Sports One as much as I want. Thanks mate, twenty two hours late is better than nothing.

2:09 AM - 1 Comments - 4 Kudos - Add Comment