I've set myself a challenge for the last Objective show. Not only did I only have five days to write it, but it's about the Old School Tie and I am going to try and argue that if it's wrong to stereotype then it's wrong to stereotype people who went to public school as arrogant bellends. That's tricky, because you see so many of them who are arrogant bellends. But maybe you only notice the arrogant bellend ones. That's how prejudice works.
Even from that paragraph you can see how difficult it is to avoid slating the rich. It's against every comedic instinct in my body. But not all public schoolboys are tossers surely. James Bond went to Eton after all. And Captain Hook. They're both pretty cool and I don't think the fact they're fictional should count for anything. We have an Etonian Prime Minister and Mayor of London, and a 10th of government ministers also went to that one school. But it's probably just a coincidence. Like those newsagents where people keep winning the lottery.
But you know what? It's not like you can leave Eton, turn up at the House of Commons and ask for an office. You voted for them. Maybe not you personally, but you lot as a whole. There's way more of you than there are of them. You could have stopped it. And don't say that you voted Lib-Dem so can't be blamed. Their leader went to Westminster school. When the chips are down he's going to stick with the other public school boy isn't he? It's hard-wired into his DNA.
Hmmmm, maybe an objective approach is going to be beyond me.
When I went to Oxford in the 1980s I met a lot of public school pupils and what impressed me most about them was their confidence and self-belief. It isn't drummed into state school kids in the same way. If you go to Eton or Westminster you are aware that going to Oxbridge is a distinct possibility and that even being Prime Minister is not beyond the reach of imagination. Because we all have this idea of an old boy network there actually doesn't even need to be one. If state school kids just accept that these things are out of their reach then there's no competition.
I don't know how we instil this confidence in everyone (and to be honest if we could do that the world would be a horrible and confrontational place), but I wonder if this assumption about Old School Ties is just a get out clause for the rest of us and an excuse not to try. If we can believe that things are impossibly weighted against us then we don't have to go through the effort.
Life is competitive and public school obviously gives an edge - but it's not like that's not true in every field. Money and beauty will always help you get through life, but if you're poor and ugly then you have to work at it and ultimately not having everything given to you on a platter will make you better at your job. But you have to be prepared to take the chance to fail.
But look at me. I went to school in Somerset, where books are considered to be the work of the devil and the only chalk we had was a parsnip and the only board was some cowdung and yet I have worked hard and after only 22 years ended up with my own 4 part series on Radio 4...... ah well.
Funnily enough with all of this on my mind I was gigging in Windsor tonight, though not sure how many of the current Etonians came over from school to watch me. It was another run through of "What Is Love, Anyway?" and though my memory was a little shaky in places and my head was a bit stuck in the Radio 4 script, it all seemed to go down well. I came home and watched quite a lot of "Weird Science" the 1985 John Hughes film in which two 15 year olds somehow create a woman with a crappy old computer, mainly by somehow feeding photos into a slot at the front of it. I don't know how the computer could tell that it was supposed to select Einstein's brain and not his looks from a 2D photo, but I guess it had an extra 16K of memory or something and was able to cope with it. For me the ultra-realism of the film was ruined by the young star Anthony Michael Hall who felt the need to gurn and pull comedy surprised faces throughout the whole movie. Surely once he'd seen the incredible stuff in the early scenes he would have become used to the extraordinary happening. But if it scared him then he should have pulled real scared faces, not ones hoping to elicit a comedy response. I might have to track the cast down and force them to remake the whole thing with him giving an honest and realistic portrayal of the character. Comedy is about truth and to be honest Hall's slapdash performance took me out of the reality of the situation and reminded me it was fake.
But I'd love to see a Weird Science where two forty-something men instead of fifteen year old boys. And played entirely straight. If I win the lottery I am going to make that. If there's enough money left over from my
Jedwood Deadwood idea.
Fist of Fun series one is now available to preorder from
Go Faster Stripe. It will be delivered in two and a bit weeks time, but if you order now you will get it sent out to you the minute it's in the hands of the strange seaweed eating entity that is Chris Evans (not that one) - if you ordered Christ on a Bike early then you probably have it already. And it doesn't even come out til next Monday officially! Fist of Fun won't be in the shops, but only available from the website and me and Stew at gigs. Hopefully demand will be enough to justify our outlay on buying it from the BBC. Although even though we got quite a few orders today it did strike me how many more we'd have to sell to break even. I think we'll do it and fuck it, it's good that it's out there even if only a few hundred of you want it. Series 2 will follow next year and we might then release TMWRNJ if we sold enough of these! Exciting times.
