In this week's
childish podcast, overcome with hysteria and puerility, I had encouraged our listeners to make some changes on wikipedia. Mainly it has to be said involving false allegations of bumming. I am 41 years old. It is so extraordinarily pathetic that it surely can only elicit laughter. Or pity. I thrive off either. Laughter and pity are my meat and drink.
The choice of victims is perhaps what makes it most amusing. Firstly , when Andrew had asked me what
Barabbas had actually done wrong (before he was released instead of Jesus by the Womans), I tried to cover up my ignorance by suggesting he had stolen some stuff and also done some bumming (I am not proud of this - well only slightly). Then when we found out that that wasn't in his wikipedia entry I said that people should change it. God bless you, some of you
had a go, though the moderators were very swift to come down on this and change it back. How did they find it so fast? Do they have software that detects swearing? And if so, who thought to put the word "bummer" into that swear search. Whoever they were was a very childish and pathetic person.
Then when we chanced across the actress,
Argentina Brunetti as we were discussing a film she'd been in and discovering that she had had an amazingly full career spanning many decades, even though we'd never heard of her and I had looked her up expecting her to have only one imdb entry, I had then said that someone should put an entry in saying that she had played the title role in "I'm A Bummer", two years after she had died. I know it's breathtakingly stupid. My only excuse that she was entirely innocent of anything wrong and I held no grudge against her and thus such a wantonly pointless and disrespectful thing would be amusing.
Of course it's even harder to edit imdb, but a listener called John Reynolds did manage to slip the idea on to her page, by
posting a question. Even he admitted to me, "All rather sad (in every meaning of the word), I know - but it's the summer, I'm temporarily out of work, and have nothing better to do with my time than to try to alter the words of the Internet at the whim of a comedian."
But seeing the query on the official page of the blameless Argentina Brunetti made me laugh for a full minute. What an utterly stupid chain of events. I was laughing at the utter idiocy of me and John Reynolds more than anything else.
Is it good to be in my 40s and spreading such childishness around the world? I would say yes, but can completely understand if you are sitting there, shaking your head and pitying me my every breath.
To have a tiny amount of power over a very small group of people and to use it in this way, is, for me, perhaps the greatest artistic statement ever made in human history. Apart from "Un Chien Andalou".
Show 2 was unusually for a second night, rather a good performance. There were over 160 people in, meaning I was about 20 down on last year's second show, but well up on the year before. I don't know if any of this is indicative of anything, but it's good to have the figures courtesy of previous postings and as I have been in the same room for three years it gives a better scientific sample. I was very pleased to have so many in. It augurs well. My only real worry about Edinburgh is losing loads of money, but if things carry on like this then I won't and I can just relax and enjoy myself.
And I am really enjoying myself. There is a definite lightness to my soul. I also had a terrific late night gig at the Stand, with an audience that were slightly quiet and reticent, but that I managed to get whipped up and on my side. It means a lot to me to be able to do well at such an iconic venue. Five years ago I didn't believe I was capable of doing stand up comedy, but now, on a good day, I can really hold my own. If you work at something hard enough and long enough then the dividends start to come in. But I think also doing my show has made me realise how much I wanted to be a comedian and how cool it is that I actually am one. And I am enjoying that properly for the first time.
It's hard to be inspired by this voyage of personal discovery when you know that, thanks to me, a dead actress is being accused of playing a bummer in a film.
But one step at a time.
They probably won't put that in the heart warming TV movie about my struggle to the middle.
