Those of you wanting Collins and Herring this week or next will have to make do with our 6Music show and/or podcast of that show. Andrew is busy writing a Radio 4 sitcom and to be honest there seem to be enough ways to see or listen to me to be getting on with for even the most obsessive individual. Not only is there 1 Absolute Sunday show/podcast to listen to (with another coming up tomorrow), but an appearance on Genius and the first episode of Richard Herring's Objective (both on iPlayer) as well. Of course the 21st episode of As It Occurs To Me will be ready to download by Tuesday (or you can see it live on Monday night) and I believe Lionel Nimrod's Inexplicable World is on BBC7 on Monday and the episode of Argumental that I filmed months ago (when I was thin, if I remember correctly) is on Dave on Tuesday, then there's another RHO (RHO) on Thursday and I might even be recording an episode of The Apprentice: You're Fired next weekend. And if that's really not enough for you you can buy the Hitler Moustache DVD from gofasterstripe and see an exclusive video Collings and Herrin podcast. Things are going suspiciously well. Even if most of the TV things mentioned there were recorded months or years ago. This coming week might be the high point of my career, though it's going to make for a very gentle ramble if you want to make a graphic representation of my climb to mediocrity. Still enough Herring for anyone. Maybe I actually did die last week and these are the half-hearted tribute shows. I know you'll only appreciate me when I am gone.
Of course if you want to see Andrew Collins then you've only got the 6Music show. But I find that that is enough Andrew Collins for most people.
After the show today Andrew dropped a bombshell that is going to upset many comedy fans, he is giving up stand up. After his bold and impressive first show, "Secret Dancing", he is going to knock it on the head so that he can concentrate on his work as film editor of the Radio Times. Perhaps you may feel I have not been the most supportive advocate of his Lembit Opik like career shift, but I felt a little sad that he wasn't going to build on the molehill of excrement that he has already constructed. But I think he recognises that stand up requires a lot of time and dedication and the destruction of any possible personal life or basic happiness and he's wisely bowing out whilst he's on the bottom. You can read of his decision
here and if you missed the show in Edinburgh you now only have one last chance to see it live (though it is going to be filmed for posterity and if there is any justice the DVD will be the only artifact that survives when the human race is destroyed). If you come to see the Cardiff Collings and Herrin show in November, then you will also get to see the filming of Secret Dancing - the final ever show. Only 50 tickets left.
Book here. See the legend bow out. Though I suspect he will keep on doing 20 minutes about the Mitfords or kissing ducks when we do other live podcasts.
Still sad news.
Tonight I maybe should have started writing AIOTM (AIOTM) but that's never going to happen - so instead I watched telly, which might at least prove to be inspirational. I saw the worst advert of all time as well, worse even than the Halifax one about borrowing the car keys (that is the worst one, not the ISA ISA one like you think). Interestingly enough this advert is also set in a pretend radio studio. It's got Johnny Vaughan and Lisa Snowdon in it and is for some unpleasant looking breakfast biscuit. The way they try to convince you that eating biscuits for breakfast is a good idea is by getting Johnny Vaughan to crapply commentate on what a bad idea it is, before putting too much ketchup on his bacon and egg sandwich, thus proving that his idea of breakfast is ridiculous. But the line that Vaughan, or rather the shitty writers of this advert, come up with is "Biscuits for breakfast? What's next? Marmalade for lunch?" Even if it is meant to be pathetic, it is so pathetic that you can almost see a part of Vaughan die as he says it. I used to love him on the Big Breakfast, but to see him being reduced to saying this line in order to get paid (admittedly tens of thousands of pounds) makes me a little bit sad. Is that the best they can come up with? Is eating marmalade for lunch really that ludicrous? Perhaps is you ate only marmalade in big handfuls, stuffing it into your mouth and around your face even when your mouth was bulging full. But it's not that insane is it? If you want to mock the notion of biscuits for breakfast, whilst cleverly trying to sell the idea to a sceptical nation, then surely it would be better to say, "Biscuits for breakfast? What's next? Unicorns shitting talking pineapples on to your head?" And if you were sold to the marmalade idea then maybe the talking pineapples could then say, "Biscuits for breakfast? What's next? Marmalade for lunch?" because I think that would become incredible if said by a fruity and edible portion of Unicorn faeces. Johnny should have only taken the advert if they let him take the piss properly. I would suggest "Those biscuits look like shit, like the kind of dry inedible scurvaceous husks you'd give to convict sailors."
I hope Johnny Vaughan is embarrassed by those ads, but if he isn't then I feel embarrassed enough for him to ensure that the right level of embarrassment is achieved.
In fact the whole thing is so bad that I suspect it might turn out to be a clever viral ad campaign for Capital Radio itself. I hope that's what it is. The breakfast biscuit idea does seem pretty unlikely. Or better still maybe Johnny Vaughan is using his own money to satirise the advertising industry. God knows he must make enough cash on Capital Radio to not have to sell his soul. He's created the idea of a breakfast biscuit and then constructed this deliberately appalling routine around it to show us all of the redundancy of the whole industry and of already super rich celebrities selling out and saying anything they are asked to say in order to make even more money to add to the massive pile they have already. This has to be the reason right? Please God say that it is.
I have to say that if I ever did make millions of pounds from this job then I would really love to create a terrible advertising campaign for a product that doesn't exist and that no one would want. But the only way I could make that much cash is to advertise something genuine. So if you ever seen me in a terrible, embarrassing advert then you will know that it is either a clever, post-modern deconstructive parody or an attempt to raise funding for my clever, post-modern, deconstructive parody.
