Up until about 2am last night (or morning if you’re being picky, but its dark and therefore still night in my book. Yes, I have a two page book. One page says ‘If it’s light, then its daytime. If its dark, its nighttime.’ I tend to get very messed up during the middle of winter and summer) I had completely forgotten I was hosting Comedy 4 Kids today. Its a bad thing to forget because, apart from the fact that it means I need to be doing something at 1pm, a time I am usually very happily two cups of tea into my day and just about stirring brain wise, it also means I should probably have prepared something. As it is, I’ve spent a lot of the last two days writing nothing about my Edinburgh show, which is a very different nothing to be writing to that of nothing about Comedy 4 Kids. Ultimately the kids today are going to get a phrase that derives from Icarus when he went ahead and fly to the sun without really knowing what he was doing: winging it. Ok, so Icarus died doing that, and its from football not Icarus. My you’re touchy today. Its also the fact that if I forget I’m doing a normal gig – which I should add never ever happens. I have the memory of an elephant. Which oddly means all I remember is growing up as an elephant – then I am letting people down and that’s bad. If however I forget I’m doing Comedy 4 Kids, then I am letting kids down and suddenly I become the worst person in the world ever. Apart from Mugabe. Or Will.I.Am. Anyway, all I’m doing here is throwing my guilt at you via blog format. Please catch it with your face and let me go one to what today’s blog content was intended to be about.
Yesterday I realised that I don’t really fit in with any type of intellectual group of people. Quite a realisation I know, but let me explain. During the day I helped my friend Wendy move house. I thought I’d gain some man points by carrying stuff. Man points are like Nectar points only you can only really cash them in when in the pub with other men or easily impressed women. For example, after yesterday I could say something like ‘I carried a chest of drawers up some stairs’ and that would use up all my man points in the hope that I might get bought a pint. This has never happened but in my head it might do. Then would what happen is the sexy bar maid would appear and give me a series of power tools and say ‘you can have these as you obviously know how to use them’ and then I’d cut down a tree or something. In reality, moving stuff yesterday absolutely destroyed me. I had no idea Wendy’s lovely new house had quite so many floors and the combination of heavy things and stairs made this pathetic little man rather tired and achy. I would find myself taking slightly longer to go back down the stairs in order to regain breath and occasionally just considered hiding for five minutes in the hope that my muscles may rebuild just a tad so that I wouldn’t have to crawl home. Still it was fun. I said the word ‘pivot’ a few times, and also got to unpack Wendy’s son Max’s box of toys, which included a Wolverine claw which is the coolest thing I’ve ever seen ever.
So ultimately, I’m not capable of life as a removal man. I thought I would counteract this when I went home by avoiding the football entirely. Instead I had a curry with my dad, we discussed everything from work to beer and how much neither of us care about the football. We honestly don’t. Two years ago, I did a rubbish warm up thing for a BBC ident (that’s Apple’s very own digital car damage product. Not) where I had to ask people who they would be supporting in Euro 2008 as England didn’t qualify. Apart from many interesting things such as a man at Bow Bus Depot who told me you have to be careful because ‘buses will just creep up on you and BAM you’ll be dead’, the one man that stuck in my mind was a huge fish salesman at Billingsgate Fish Market. A giant of a man in all proportions, with tiny round glasses, and a white apron covered in fish guts, he was one step away from being a character in the League of Gentlemen. Sitting, eating his egg sandwich, we asked him who he would support. He looked at us quietly for a few seconds, before bursting into tears with this tirade about how England had ruined his whole year. He’d booked tickets to the final and now they hadn’t made it through he didn’t know what the point was. The money he’d used for the tickets he needed to pay his bills and ultimately they had ruined his whole life. The big man sat, a picture of pathos, sobbing his heart out and we quietly crept away, camera crew and all. We didn’t use the footage. I mean, the whole point was ‘who else will you be supporting’ and he hadn’t really listened, but also here was a man who cared so much about football that when his team let him down again, it had ruined his life. I don’t think it could if I tried, but I really have far more things to than let football take over my life that much. Last night everyone seemed upset England hadn’t played well. Thing is, we never win anything. I don’t know how the country would cope if we did. We need the cynicism to remain British. Also, I do wonder if one year we should all just not care, the England team will go out there will nothing to lose and they might actually win. Unlikely, but you never know.
So instead me and my Dad watched a BBC4 program on Steve Winwood as we both think Traffic are awesome. I sat there feeling like a bit of an intellectual. Not strong enough to move furniture, not bothering with the football and instead watching a program on a clever channel about culture. Can you pass my pipe and a book of Proust and I’ll just regale you with my favourite passages everyone? Then my friend Wilz came round. He had been at the pub watching the football, and turned up on my door with half a beer in hand, smoking a cigarette. ‘Aha’, I thought ‘how can a yob such as this even consider crashing my evening of cerebral activities?’ At which point my dad made him a cup of coffee and they sat there discussing Marxism, privatization and markets within a social context. I sat there thoroughly confused thinking that I never hang out with other people at markets, and isn’t it amazing all the things that Groucho actually stood for. So, now I realise either I need to geezer up, or read some things. Or study politics while arm wrestling someone and therefore covering both worlds, labelling me a social diva. Or I might just not really bother.
Right Comedy 4 Kids time. I’ve only got one new joke. Its pretty hard writing new stuff for baby goats that often. Arf.
