No gig tonight and so to celebrate I am wondering around the flat in my superman pants. I’m sure this isn’t the loveliest of images for many of you, but as you can only imagine it, pretend I look better than I do. I feel oddly heroic in my Superman pants. I’m not sure why, as Superman did not wear pants with his logo on it. I imagine that would be rather narcissistic. Saying that, if I was Superman I’d do whatever I liked, as I’d be Superman. If anyone ever dared say something along the lines of ‘Hey Superman, how dare you wear pants with your name on them you narcissistic wanker’ I’d just burn them with my laser eyes. Ultimately its things like that that make me realise its pretty lucky I’m not Superman. If I was, I’d be a wanker. ‘Save us from this fire Superman’ the people would cry. I would respond with ‘No.’ They would say ‘you bastard’ and I would say ‘what will you do about it? I’m Superman. If you even think about cussing me, I will kill you quicker than that fire could.’ I’m horrible when I have super powers. It’s pretty lucky I don’t have any.
I’ve had a very long two days what with yesterday’s car adventures and all the gigs and things. After hopefully getting those women sent to prison, Wednesday got a lot better. I was meant to be doing two gigs in the evening, the first of which was a preview at Sion James’ lovely gig at the Brixton Bar and Grill. It’s a lovely venue and he has some great line-ups coming up, but sadly last night we only got an audience of one, so it had to be pulled. She was a very nice audience of one, so instead we sat around for an hour, eat lollypops, and were later joined by John Gordillo and Donald Mack where we complained about people not turning up to previews. If you live near Brixton, go along next week, its a great room.
After that I drove myself, Al Barrie and Pete Johansson to the Magdalene Ball at Cambridge University. Sometimes in comedy you get to perform at shows in places you would otherwise never be allowed in. I’m fairly sure that if I hadn’t done a set at the ball, were I ever to set foot in Magdelene College, the police would be called because a ‘ruffian is loose on the grounds’ or something akin to such a reaction. Perhaps trumpets would be sounded and hounds would be released. Especially as I have my beardyness at the moment. I was also asked to dress smart, but being worried about dressing too smart for Brixton I mixed it up with jeans, trainers, a waistcoat, shirt and tie. The unique combination made me look like a sort Justin Tramperlake. The gig was actually lovely. A tent full of people with names such as Maximillian and Olympia, who all had double barrelled surnames and between them probably own everyone and everything I know. They were a really up for it crowd though and Al Barrie excellently compered the night, having a lot of fun making very posh people recite the words to ‘Back Once Again With The Renegade Master’. There is something about very posh voices that means making them do hip-hop/dance lyrics never stops being funny. Some of their accents were at the level of posh where it was hard to understand what they were actually saying. ‘R’s were replaced with ‘w’s and sometimes the pitch would go so high if they agreed with you, you just had to nod and humour them. If you didn’t a tiny man servant came along and hit you with a cane. He didn’t. But it felt like the only reason that didn’t happen is because he probably had the night off. We were treated very nicely with free booze, food and cakes. Despite this Matt Reed stole some Jelly Beans, because he is a massive skank and will one day go to hell, from where he will probably steal bits of fire and sin to make people annoyed.
By the time Pete got off stage though it was nearly 3am and we didn’t get home until was past 4. There is something disconcerting about being up at that time and being sober. I used to regularly be up at sunrise back in them golden days where I did club and stuff, but I was generally a mess of sorts. I remember that nice feeling of getting on the tubes at 6am looking at all the people heading to work and thinking ‘wow, this is awesome. I’m going home to bed.’ Last night however, as I was walking into my flat, the chirpiness of the birds just made me want to individually flick each one in its stupid beak. Or set my cats on them, which would probably have been more effective.
So I’m pretty knackered today and it didn’t help spending the afternoon teaching 7-8 year olds how to do stand-up. A crazy plan of Wendy Wason’s, we both attended her daughter’s class at her school in Tufnell Park and gave them a series of activities to try and get them to learn how to do a very short set. It was mental. My tired brain was shouted at several times as each and everyone of the class of 27 wanted to tell us how they fell over, or had a fizzy drink explode in their face. Some of them grabbed the concept really quickly. One boy walked on stage and said ‘ I went to the park to play football with my dog. He beat me 5 nil’, bowed and walked off. Sheer genius. I might tip off some agents now. I bet it won’t be long before he’s hosting some E4 show about how crazy haircuts are and being snapped in magazines drinking fizzy pop outside Toys ‘R’ Us. Other kids sadly were completely baffled. Stories that would go on forever without one iota of humour, or tales that would suddenly become ‘and now I will lie, I eat a biscuit’ followed by their own laughter and staring from the rest of the class. Still thoroughly rewarding. We’ll be returning in two weeks to help them do stand-up at their assembly so we’ll see if they’ve worked out what a joke is by then.
I feel this blog probably dragged a bit today. This week has been full of brain damaging moments, which is probably why I am walking around in Superman pants. I fear that further madness will create more and more bizarre clothes changes and states of mind, until in 3 years time someone enquires about my whereabouts. ‘Remember that stand-up? The hobbity one, the one with a name like Timan Doobie, or Tevan Dweeb or something? What ever happened to him?’ To which the response will be something like ‘oh him. Well he couldn’t handle it anymore and so he ran off. They say he now roams the black forest dressed as a bear with a batman cap on. They call him the bearbatman.’ ‘That’s a shit name.’ ‘Yes I know.’ I just read that out aloud to myself in a Peter Laurie voice and my cat Bella stared at me as though I’m clearly mentally ill. Luckily no gig tonight. Will watch Psychoville and do some further sitting around in my pants occasionally humming the Superman theme.
