More writing needs to happen today and so this blog must take the hit for it. I live in fear that I am only allocated a certain amount of words per day and if I filled four pages with this blog then I would lose all ability to write anything else for the rest of the day. I doubt this is true but I’m feel I have to take precautions. I wish people were allocated a daily word limit. Sometimes you talk to people who just talk at you for hours and hours and its very difficult to escape. With a word limit there would come a point where they would just have to stop and listen to you waffle on, or you could both sit there in uncomfortable silence. It’d be brilliant. The best would be mid-argument when suddenly one of you is unable to speak, like when a gun runs out of bullets mid fire fight. The default winner is the one who still has words so could just finish it with ‘well then’, which is my favourite non-sensical row concluder. It really finishes off most arguments if you say it with an air of cockiness that gives the false impression you are very confident that it means you have won, when you know that really you haven’t made valid point whatsoever. For example:
Arguer 1: ‘I can’t believe you killed my cat for no reason!’
Arguer 2: ‘Well then.’
It strangely works. Its up there with ‘even Stevens’ and sticking your fingers in your ears and singing ‘la la la la la la’ very loudly to no tune whatsoever until the other person just leaves. Or cries. Luckily me and Layla never argue. I think we’ve argued about four times ever in the last 6 years which is really very very few. At least four of those have been because I’d drunk Jack Daniels which makes me angry. One of those was an incident to do with buying or not buying a loaf of bread. We don’t really remember which one it was or why it caused a problem between us but it will now forever be known as ‘Breadgate’ and is often brought up as a reminder that our arguments are lame and then we laugh.
I ended up doing a gig last night. I wasn’t intending to. In fact as Layla was out I was fully hoping to spend the night doing some writing, then beating Prince of Persia on the Xbox. It’s a stupidly easy game and I’m glad I’m borrowing it and didn’t buy it. It’s got beautiful graphics though and has really helped me to understand the situation in Iran. No wonder there is all this terrible dispute when Ahriman is using evil magic to corrupt the land and must be destroyed with light magic and by balancing on tiny ledges. It makes everything much clearer. But a gig came up and I said yes for two reasons. Firstly I needed the dosh. I need any dosh. It’s getting the stage I’m willing to start mugging people. Only I know I’d be so rubbish at it I’d end up getting beaten up and mugged by the muggee and then getting arrested. Not dissimilar to a kid at our school who went up to people aggressively saying ‘Oi, gimmie your money’. Then when you’d say ‘No’, he’d just shrug his shoulders sadly and say ‘Oh, alright then’ before lurching off. I think he wholly misunderstood what was meant to happen. Secondly, it was another of Maff Brown’s gigs and the man he do run some lovely gigs. His gig Outside the Box is what I would consider to be the Fat Tuesday of South West London. Only he gets bigger names more regularly than we do. And is weekly. And it sells out weekly. Essentially I hate him. Last night on the bill was Tim Vine, Andy Parsons and Lee Mack, amongst others. Last time I did this gig was over a year ago and I had to follow Robin Williams. Yes, that Robin Williams. He was in London practising for a the Prince’s Trust show he was doing and was a very very special guest at several small clubs around town. I was meant to open but something went wrong and I ended up being the act who followed the line-up of Omid Djalili, Al Murray and Robin bloody Williams. He stood backstage with an entourage and was a truly lovely man. I told him that I had to follow him and he was very friendly and told me about the time he had to follow a big act in New York when he was just starting out. Apparently most of the audience had left and he’d ploughed on. After that tale I had remained shitting myself about it all, while Robin went on and stormed the hell out of it. He was brilliant. The best was watching the crowd hear Maff announce ‘Welcome to the stage Robin Williams’ and they started to clap normally then as he reached the stage, and they realised who he was they went absolutely mental. Then I followed and surprisingly had an amazing gig. Robin had hyped the crowd up so well that they were superb.
Last night was no where near as daunting. I got to go on first which was nice, and I tried a few new gags, totally overran and subsequently left on a bit of a rubbish gag. It didn’t matter as it all seemed to go well and I stayed for Tim Vine’s brilliant new stuff after before heading home. And that’s it. I’d better stop there as I’m near my word limit. What I will leave you on is if you live in South West London then do go to Outside the Box in Kingston as its by far one of the best clubs in London.
If however you live nearer North London then never fear for Fat Tuesday starts again next week with the indomitable Andrew Maxwell and the ace Nick Doody both being on. Double headliners eh? Pretty awesome if I do say so myself. For all line-ups lookie here:
https://www.tiernandouieb.co.uk/fattuesday-listings.htm
And now back to the writing board/word doc. Its really not the same saying word doc is it?
