Collings was over this afternoon for podcasts and pancakes. The tour this year is going to make it tricky to keep producing a podcast a week (though luckily you podcast nuts will still be able to download our 6 Music effort which will somehow manage to remain weekly until the end of March) but we did two today so that at least you won't have to go without next week.
Podcast 102 was a high-spirited affair, with unpleasantness galore (though it would be hard to top the picture that goes with it - you'll have to click the link to see it - of me doing an Ashley Cole and showing off the top of my pubic hair into the bargain and thus giving us a 12A rating) and me venting a little about my failure to be nominated for
a Chortle award..
Although I am keeping up my stunning record of my work being ignored by award committees I am fairly sure that I will only ever win one of these perspex blocks if I am lucky enough to die. That's no good to me. I want to be around to hold the bloody thing and gloat and cry and tell everyone they are fuckers for ignoring me for so long. So I told Andrew that if I ever won a posthumous Chortle award I wanted him to accept it on my behalf and then ram it up the anus of Chortle founder Steve Bennett. Which would be quite hard to do given the shape and width of the prizes (and the tightness of any critics sphincter muscles), but I suggested that he might be able to find a few comedians who would help him and hold the supremo down.
I have no right to be so churlish as Bennett has always been very kind about my work, a point that was brought home later when
this review of the Headmaster's Son DVD was posted on the site. Lucky that Bennett hadn't listened to the podcast by this time, but perhaps unlucky that the DVD had come out too late for consideration in that particular category.
Of course I am partly joking when I discuss my frustration at my work going unrecognised (but only partly) and I know that these things are not massively important and that there is a lot of excellent competition out there in any case. And perhaps I have an exaggerated idea of my own proficiency as a comedian in any case and am simply too mediocre to be considered.
But it would be nice to occasionally get a little nod from the industry that my dedication to comedy above all else in my life was not a total waste of the precious gift of life. Or as one of my grandad's friends commented after listening to one of mine and Stew's early radio shows, "What a waste of a good education."
But don't worry, I can still kid myself that I might get a nod for innovation due to my experiments in the world of podcasting, so there is still going to be another smack in the face and crushing disappointment when that goes to Michael Legge instead for his brilliant innovative idea of copying everything I do and doing it less fastidiously and competently and amusingly.
And I know I will be ruined if I ever got this acknowledgment I crave. It's only the indifference of all executives and awards panels that makes me frustrated enough to keep me going. If I ever win something I'll have to shut up about this and it will probably annoy me that I can no longer claim to be an unrecognised genius.
Anyway podcast 102 and 103 blur into one a bit for me (and you'll be able to hear 103 next week obviously) but podcast Richard Herring pushed things too far and said many inappropriate and unpleasant things and perhaps demonstrated why he is not really worthy of any more accolade than the hollow laughter of the idiots who download his improvised crap.
But luckily the hollow laughter of idiots means more to me than any award or TV contract or professional success.
And no one can take my Daily Telegraph Worst Comedy Experience 2005 away from me. And they can't take away my Gamesmaster Golden Joystick either. Because I threw it in a skip in the late 1990s.
And for my last night off until 2nd March (when I will be in limbo between gigs in Harrogate and South Wales in any case - don't get another day off til 22nd March - the night of the Chortle awards) I went to see
Waiting For Godot at the Theatre Royal, Haymarket. I know the play well, having seen at least three versions and also having been in it myself at University, but this was a most enjoyable production. I am slightly in love with Ian Mckellen after chatting to him when we were on Loose Ends and he is excellent in it and remarkably spritely and sharp. For me they got the mixture of comedy and nihilism about right. Existence is painful and pointless and aggravating, but all the funnier for that. Roger Rees also brought home the tragedy of Vladimir in a way I hadn't noticed before. He's the only one who remembers anything that has happened before. The others blindly stumble on in their daily misery, but he has some very limited perspective on what is going on. But his perspective and memory only makes his life more tragic and painful than the others as he struggles to make sense of it. Estragon just sits and sleeps and complains about his feet and forgets pretty much everything and is happier in his ignorance. Yet still suicidally depressed.
Their friendship gets them through and yet they wonder if they would be better off alone.
The sadness hits you in the pit of the stomach, but it's so dark and true and life is so barren that it can only make us laugh or howl or both as we plop from our mother's vaginal canals into the grave below.
That passed the time.
It would have passed in any case.
Yes, but less rapidly.
"Try again, fail again. Fail better."
Not from Godot, but still probably one of the best summations of life you can get to in six words. It's a credo I live my life by.
