I still haven’t entered all the numbers in my phone yet, and as luck would have it, all the texts I’ve received over the last day or so haven’t been from any of the numbers I have entered. This creates an unintentional and semi-exciting game called, ‘Guess The Texter’. By merely reading the text I have to guess who its from and how to respond. So far I have guess 3 out of 5 right. I was completely thrown by fellow blogstro Michael Legge’s text asking me my opinion on Asher Roth. Having assumed he has some level of taste and had possibly also read my blog of a few weeks back, I did not think Legge would be the sort of person to seriously ask such a question. Alas, as I had no idea who had sent it, I didn’t reply and Michael made the rookie error of listening to it and is now deaf in the ears from such horror. I realise these are the consequences of playing such a game, but there are always casualties of war. I just hope I don’t get a text saying ‘Red wire or blue wire’ or it could get bad.
So Fat Tuesday returned last night in the swanky looking The Compass. It was a tad odd going in to our old room that looked all new. It felt like we’d left home for a few months and our mum had let our cousin stay in our room and they’d put lots of odd posters and things up. At the same time the cousin was much neater and upmarket than us and had put lovely curtains in the window, replaced the manky bar with an oak one and put chandeliers and a new sound system in. All of which is brilliant, except when like me, the old sound system really confused you enough. It all looked great though and after an hour or so we worked out the best way to configure everything ie. have a light and some chairs and a mic. I suppose its not rocket science. If it was, our gig would be a lot more aggressive. I prefer not to have rockets at a comedy show. Maybe that’s just me. The rather unusual situation last night was that the bar wasn’t yet ‘officially’ open, which meant that while our show was on upstairs, downstairs was closed off. Audience were only allowed to get drinks by waiter/waitress service and they had to stay in the room except for loo and cigarette use. It was like an oddly enforced yet fun lock-in. Unlike other secret posh parties we didn’t have nice food, party games or a dead hooker, but if the situation happens again I will try harder.
It was a great gig. Not just because all the acts were brilliant – Robert White, Liz Carr, Dave Gorman and Gordon Southern – but also because it was a small but perfectly formed crowd of regulars. Apart from maybe 2-3 of them, every member of the crowd had been loads of times before. That meant they didn’t need much warming up at all and were more than accepting when the mic broke during the first act and when they were told that if they left during the interval they would be shot and attacked by dogs. I didn’t say the last bit, but they knew it would happen. The new managers and staff all seemed very enthusiastic about everything which was nice but unusual. We will have to beat this out of them with time. So not really anything to complain about. Which makes for a dull read no? So for your sake here’s a fake ending to the evening:
….Just as Gordon was about to go onstage the management ran on saying we were all too loud and that next door had complained loads so the entire evening was to be conducted in whispers. Everyone co-operated until someone in the second row sneezed causing the management to say we were never allowed in the venue again. This created uproar with the crowd and a full on bar brawl ensued where some people and chairs and people sitting in chairs were all thrown out of windows. I joined in, but was pulled away by the head honcho, The Compass, a giant man with a Compass for a head. He smacked me in the face with some organic goods and I luckily ducked his attempt to hit me with a vintage bottle of fairtrade rum. Thinking quickly I wrapped a load of mic cable around the metal bracket of the disabled lift creating an electromagnet. His stupid compass head was drawn to the lift and as he got stuck I sent it up and then down crushing his tiny disproportionate body and saving the day.
That was so much better than the real version. In fact that was so much better than most days. I’m going to the Udderbelly Southbank Launch party tonight. If the giant purple cow doesn’t come alive and start eating children and then I have to destroy it using a rocket launcher, I will still write it as though that happened tomorrow. Perhaps this is my new career. Forget comedy , welcome Tiernan Douieb action writer extraordinaire. Will start with today’s epic about how my cats have grown 50 ft in height and I have to use a combination of a paper clip, some cottage cheese, a banjo and my wits to reduce them to normal size and stop them from destroying Winchester.
