Gig 96.

I'm back! I've had a baby everyone - the gorgeous George. And if that wasn't enough I've also been incredibly busy at work, so I haven't blogged in about 6 months. But I also haven't written anything or done any gigs so I'd have nothing to write about anyway. But last week I forced myself to do a new 5 minutes at the dog and parrot. Most of it was bobins, I've been away too long and my comedy filter isn't working. One thing that did stick was a version of the Jam's That's entertainment. Do you know it?

THAT'S ENTERTAINMENT - Paul Weller
A police car and a screaming siren -
A pnuematic drill and ripped up concrete -
A baby waiting and stray dog howling -
The screech of brakes and lamplights blinking -
that's entertainment.

A smash of glass and the rumble of boots -
An electric train and a ripped up 'phone booth -
Paint splattered walls and the cry of a tomcat -
Lights going out and a kick in the balls -

that's entertainment.

Days of speed and slow time Mondays -
Pissing down with rain on a boring Wednesday -
Watching the news and not eating your tea -
A freezing cold flat and damp on the walls -

that's entertainment.

Waking up at 6 a.m. on a cool warm morning -
Opening the windows and breathing in petrol -
An amateur band rehearsing in a nearby yard -
Watching the tele and thinking about your holidays -

that's entertainment.
Waking up from bad dreams and smoking cigarettes -
Cuddling a warm girl and smelling stale perfume -
A hot summers' day and sticky black tarmac -
Feeding ducks in the park and wishing you were faraway -

that's entertainment.

Two lovers kissing amongst the scream of midnight -
Two lovers missing the tranquility of solitude -
Getting a cab and travelling on buses -
Reading the grafitti about slash seat not fares -

that's entertainment.

Well that doesn't sound very entertaining to me, so I came up with...

A morcombe and wise christmas special
Bruce forsyth spinning plates on the geneation game
an hour long episode of the new dr. who
but not christopher ecleston, he was a bit po faced.

that's entertainment.

Watching allo allo on a dreary Sunday
The fallen madonna with the big boobies, good moaning
a monkey heavy episode of you've been framed
a crash on top gear and clarkson's in a wheel chair.

that's entertainment.

Royal Navy Submarine- There's more below the surface.

The theme is advertising at LLC tonight, a subject most comics have a bit on. I saw a poster with the above title and picture promoting the royal navy. I know what they were going for. They're trying for a play on words. Life on a submarine isn't what you expect. There's more to it. There are a huge variety of roles and skills in play, the crew contains scientists, chefs, navigators, people with language, computer and communications skills. There's more below the surface. That's what they're going for. But when you see a big picture of a rising submarine, and the words 'There's more below the surface' the actual impression given is that this poster is there to inform me that there's more bits of submarine under the water. If this is news to you, don't join the navy. The last thing they need is someone turning up on the first day of training saying;

'Hang on. How are 200 of us supposed to get in there? It's only about a foot tall, apart from that sticky up bit.'

'No, there's more of it under the water.'

'Oh right.'

Voyager.

Floating through space now somewhere is the voyager space craft. And on the side is this picture to show any aliens what we look like. And we're naked. Is this the first impression we want to give? They might be impressed by the technology, but they'll be picturing our scientists building it naked. There's also a record with some Beethoven on it (that's just wrong anyway- a space ship with an LP, it's like having a car with a sundial.) But even if they're impressed by the music, they'll be imagining the whole orchestra in the nuddy. And the record, to make sure it doesn't warp or rust, is made of solid gold. That's just dangerous. Aliens think we're so rich we make our LP's out of gold, and we flounce about in the nude - We're just asking to get mugged.

So aliens will expect us to be nude. But we expect aliens to be nude, when the little grey men come out of the space ship they're allways nude. ET was nude and that's for kids. Why? Who invents intergalactic travel before pants?

jet pack crimp.

Practicing my crimping today. If you're not in the know, it's a form of rap/song/poetry/spokenword/nonsense invented by the mighty boosh. All the kids are doing it daddio. Didn't you even know that? Get with it grandad.

Jet Pack Crimp

See the flying fox, Oh.
Is he just a bat?
No, a proper fox with a proper jet pack.
Strapped on his red back
Reasonable jet pack
Buy 3 get 1 free
4 pack of jet packs
nice set of jet packs
suit a pack of pack rats
Don't forget the pack-a-mack
Windy up there
Layers
Layers
Vest and T-shit
Long Sleeved T-shirt
shirt and jersey
What about a waistcoat?
No, that's going too far, Just put your jacket on.
I feel the need, the need for tweed.
Argile, Harris, Orkney, Mull!

Bloody Hooligans.

I was clearing the rubbish out of my small front garden. Usually this gets me pretty angry, it's full of trash because thoughtless arseholes just dump their crap on the streets and it ends up stuck in my bushes. Bloody kids and layabout drunks! But I've noticed that about a quater of the rubbish is plastic poppy petals that have blown down from the war memorial at the end of the street. Bloody veterans! Honouring their dead! They don't think about the consequenses though do they? They go off fighting in two world wars, but who's got to clear up the mess? Muggins here, that's who.

Mcwirter Twins - and other guff cleared out of the notebook.

NEW DEFINITIONS:
Carpets - The spiders that live in your wing mirrors.
Warthogs - Geordies' clothes. (I heard this one on ISIHAC)

I'm a workaholic, I can't work without drinking.

Who invented fabric softener? Why are we buying something that weakens our clothes.

There was a craze at school where everyone wanted a diver's watch. 'My birthday last week, got this, tells the time 200 metres underwater.' I went one better, got a vulcanologist's calculator. 'Got this, does sums at 500 degrees centigrade.' Why did anyone want a diver's watch? If I'm 200 metres underwater I'm concerned with getting to the surface- I don't care if I'm later for a meeting when I get there.

Parents can be cruel. Take the Mcwirter twins, Norris Mcwirter and his brother Ross, Co founders of the Guiness book of records. If you've got twins, and you call one Ross, don't call the other one something that sounds suspitiously like 'No Ross.'

'Congratulations Mrs. Mcwriter, are these the boys?'

'Yes, this is my beautiful first born Ross.'

'And the other one?'

'Oh, him. He's no ross.'

'What?'

'Noriss, he's Noriss.'


What's that little hole you can open up on the side of your hoover hose? Surely that just means there's less air sucking in at the end you're using to suck up dirt.

WORST LYRIC EVER?
Lindisfarne -Lady Eleanor.

"She tied my eyes with ribbon of a silken ghostly thread
I gazed with double vision on an old four poster bed
Where Eleanor had risen to kiss the neck below my head."

Where's your other neck then?

Tanked up.

I was helping out a class today where students were comparing the same story in two online papers. I saw one about 8 people found inside a chemical tanker, I thought I’d see what the Daily Mail’s take was. Sure enough they’d replaced the word ‘people’ with ‘ILLEGAL IMMIGRANTS.’ OK, so they probably were illegal immigrants – but the Mail couldn’t have known for sure, as the story had just broken and none of the basic facts reported everywhere else could confirm that.

And, as Marcus Brigstock has said, the sort of tenacious, inventive go-getters who will cling to the underside of a truck for 8 hours are exactly the kind of people we need in this country.

But this blog is about comedy so here's the bit that made me laugh, a comment posted by a worried Mail reader following the story…

“I'm so sick of the immigration problem in this country. I even had a dream last night that there were a load of illegal immigrants living in my downstairs cupboard.”

- Helana, London

Gig 94, 95.

I’ve nearly reached my hundred, but I’m not ready to retire just yet. I compered the Chilli, and didn’t do a bad job if I do say so myself. On the way down I thought of a few new ideas on my recent fatherhood, which made for a good start. It got a bit ragged at one point when we were running out of time, which meant I just did a bit of material and got off – I couldn’t afford to keep going until I got a bigger laugh to end on, so Jenny Armstrong didn’t get the warm up she deserved – but luckily didn’t need it.

I did a gig in Beverly, Yorks. Which was lovely (as everyone who’s done it had told me) – the dangerous animals song was well received, but the few minutes of stuff I did first went down a storm. It’ll be nice if I finally get offered some 20 minute gigs where I can do a song and still have time to do some other stuff around it.
One of the new bits I did was about the advertising for Newcastle College – they use posters something like this…


The New Vivienne Westwood.
Not exactly like this, as I couldn’t find a copy of the poster on the web (well done NC publicists) Anyway, a fresh faced student with the words ‘The new inset name of most famous person in the field’ They’ve got them for Sports Science (David Beckham) , Business (Alan Sugar) etc. They don’t have one for Physics, and I’ve worked out why – it would have to be ‘The new Stephen Hawkin’ and that’s a bit of a double edged sword.
The cover of the guide to the library has two students leaping ecstatically into the air. It’s the LIBRARY! It’s not the BOUNCY LIBRARY!

Gigs 92, 93.

Obviously been a while since I blogged, and one of the points of this was to keep a count, as when this all started I said I would do 100 gig then see how I feel. Some people interpreted this as do 100 then definitely stop, but it was more to ensure I did a minimum and didn't give up before I gave myself a fair crack of the whip.

Anyway, the gigs I can remember over the last 2 months were...

92-Charity gig for Amnesty at the Cluny, where I sabotaged myself a bit by starting with the ebony and ivory stuff - this can be misinterpreted (search for that entry again to see some very indignant comments by somone who must have stumbled over the site and thought I was entirely serious, and I genuinely believed Stevie Wonder was too stupid to appreciate the difference between elephant teeth and people.)I will do this material again, but just lose the po-faced stuart lee presentation, and instead do it as I do 'The Who' material... great music but the lyrics are a bit etc.

93 - Our covers night - an enjoyable Pete and Dud sketch with Barry as Mr. Cook. And more Peter Cook but performed in the style of Morrissey to a kareoke version of 'How soon is now.' - I got a pervese pleasure from this, but it left most people bemused.

THE MOON AND NEW YORK CITY.

I occassionally do character comedy, usually wrapped round a suitable song -hence my singing cowboy, singing yokel and singing guatemalan busker. This last one was the short lived product of noting down the words 'troosers, losers, youze is(to be sung in bad spanish accent)' This resurfaced as a song where Paulo from Guatemala was fixated by the fact that everyone in England wore trousers. 'Even the weemin' is wearing troosers' and to ingratiate himself he busked a song about the British love of strides.

But what's great about characters is that you come up with material that would be impossible to think of or perform as yourself. It was Ned Nineacres who was bemused by the lyrics of the Who's 'Pinball wizard', not me. In one performance Paulo came out with the following (I think) comedy gold...

(This does rather depend on you being familiar with the title song of the film 'Arthur')

My friend Raoul - he's gone native loco man, loco loco- he acts all eenglish - and he has 5 pairs of troosers. It's true man, 5 pairs - it is his dream one day to have a pair for every day of the week. -It's crazy man, but it's true. You know that song? (Sing's Arthur's theme) IF YOU GET CAUGHT BETWEEN THE MOON AND NEW YORK CITY, I KNOW IT CRAZY, BUT IT TRUE! I love that song man, you know that was real popular in our village when the movie came out. We loved the movie and the song was a hit too - but then a rumour started that it was possible to get stuck between the moon and New York city, and that this was happening all the time man. I know it's not true now- you know, I guess if you live in New York and the moon is up, then you can jump and you're between the moon and New York city - but you don' get stuck, you just fall down. But, well the media in my country is a little different, and this rumour spread like wildfire, and everyone is terrified. So when I was walking home from the village and I see the moon, i was always lookin' over my shoulder, trying to see if New York city was a sneakin' through the bushes, tryin' to get me.