I was shown into the dressing room at the Preston Frog and Bucket and was delighted to discover that there was a snooker table. I haven't played snooker for ages and not regularly since I was a teenager, when I had badgered my parents to buy me a 6ft by 3ft table for Christmas. The badgering worked because it was my main present one year in the late 70s or early 80s and I used it a lot, both for playing snooker and billiards, but also as a convenient table to lay out my Subutteo stuff.
The table in Preston was very similar to the one I had had and it gave me a nostalgic flashback and I was itching to play.
There was no one to play against as Reliable Pete was busy setting up the gig, but that didn't matter. Although I would occasionally play against my brother or my dad in the old days, I spent many happy hours playing games against myself, where I took on the personas of two different players and had long contests against myself.
So this was another opportunity, after a long lay-off for Me 1 to play Me 2 at snooker to discover who was the best. The first game showed how evenly matched the players still were, going right down to the final black of the game, but Me 1 edged it. At least I think I did. Doing this again made me remember how difficult it became to recall which player had just played the last shot. It is easy to get confused when you are playing yourself at snooker.
I was surprised by how rusty my knowledge of the game was. In that first match I had used the pool triangle instead of the snooker one and thus had 15 "reds" (though I had to use five yellow pool balls to fill the triangle and then mark the actual yellow with some chalk so I didn't get confused). I then found the snooker triangle and remembered (I think correctly) that you only havre 10 reds in a game. I wasn't even sure how to lay out all the colours, desperately trying to remember the order of the green, brown and yellow. All those wasted hours in my youth and this information was now just a hazy blur, but I did get it right as it turns out.
I decided to tweet highlights of the next game, guessing correctly that many of my followers would have had similar childhood games and find my competition against myself amusing. I suppose I also knew that I would piss off people who didn't find tedium amusing and who don't like their twitter feeds filled up with one person. These are excellent people to piss off, because they act all high and mighty like their time is important and they can't make the effort to scroll past things they aren't interested in. But they're still on Twitter. Scroll on dudes. Scroll on.
Personally I think this was an excellent use of Twitter and I am sure many people will talk of the epic match between Me 1 and Me 2 for years to come. It was amazing snooker - For those of you who missed it, here is the commentary, which you must read in a Ted Lowe whisper and try and imagine it with the tension of having to wait to see the next tweet and work out who you are rooting for. Me 1 or Me 2.
Current score me1 1. Me2 1. Very tense. I have forgotten whose go it is. 2 I think.
4-1 to me 1. 5 balls potted. No fouls. This really is snooker at its best. Except when me 1 missed the blue that was right over the pocket.
Me 2 now at the table
The White goes in off and me1 loses his commanding lead. It's now 5 apiece for both mes.
Me2 went ahead and had an easy blue but went in off and missed it. 10-6 to Me 1. Back in command. It's hard to see Me 2 getting back to table.
Me2 is back at table. Trailing 11-6 after fine long pot from me1. The whole length of this 6ft table
Let me know who you are supporting (It turned out that support was fairly evenly distributed between those for Me 1, those for Me 2 and those who were annoyed by me filling up their Twitter feed - Scroll on dudes. Me 2, the underdog at this stage was possibly slightly edging with number of fans).
Me 1 pots again and puts me 2 in a snooker
Pictured
Me 2 gets out of it but sets me 1 up for easyish pot. He gets it. 12-6
Me 2 thanks to oddly sloping table pots green, then follows it up with a brown, but oh... White goes in too. That would've been 2 ball break.
Instead me 2 trails 22-13. Can the underdog come back? He has the support of the crowd.
(I was really hoping Me 2 would win it as well. I hated Me 1 by this stage. But honourably I still tried my best when I was being Me 1. If anything I tried a bit harder, to ensure, ironically, that I wouldn't be accused of favouritism)
Somehow me 1 misses brown from restart, but me 2 pots White again. 26-13. I want me 2 to win so much!
Me1 gets a break of 9. Me 2 now needs 2 snookers. 35-13. If only there was some way I could influence the result. (astonishingly that was the only 2 ball break of the game, though one of the Mes had a four ball break of 11 in the first game - surely a world record).
Me 1 makes unforced error. A chink of light for me 2?
Has me2 got the snooker he requires?
Pictured.
He has. Just 10 points in it. (Admit it, you're excited now)
Oh you twat me 2. Pots the White.
This is the shot for a me 1 victory.
Oh shit. Me 1 wins. I hate me 1. He is really show boating now as well. Me 2 looks devastated.
Next up me3 versus me4 for the honour of playing me 1 in the final. Or me 2 in the 3rd place play off. Stay tuned.
I was genuinely annoyed that Me2 had bottled it, after his impressive comeback. Even though he had hardly potted any balls. To be fair even though it's the convention that if only the black ball remains and there is more than 7 points between the players that's the end of the game, the way I was playing there was no guarantee that there wouldn't be some fouls made anyway (indeed Me 1, showboating attempted to pot the black for the biggest break of the match and missed it completely - even with that foul though he had still won).
Of course not only was it nostalgic (for some) to be taken back to childhood idiocy, it was also funny that a man of 43 would do this. Some people thought I was having a Charlie Sheen style breakdown, though to be honest I am surprised how many people following me really don't get my sense of humour. Most of them liked it I think. I was glad to find I wasn't the only one who spent most of my childhood playing with myself - you know, when I wasn't playing with myself. My Subbuteo tournaments were massive. I used to play four twelve team leagues, home and away, FA Cup, League Cup and Scottish Premier and then every four seasons a world cup and I played many, many seasons (I think I kept each game to ten minutes, but maybe it was longer). When I supported Leeds United, they would always win all competitions and then weirdly when I switched allegiances to York they started winning. Then I grew up a bit and realised it was pathetic that I was so partesan and then York would NEVER win. I didn't see that this swtich around was just as ridiculous. But many others commented on the pyschology of what's going through your head when you are playing games against yourself and the way that bizarrely you do have favourite yous. I think this ability to split myself into two people has probably helped me as a writer and a comedian. I have often discussed this duality in terms of creating situations where you ad-lib (or attempt to wrong foot yourself by saying something you weren't expecting) but also as a writer being able to put yourself into the personas of many characters, some of whom you might not be sympathetic to from your own perspective, but who you have to be when you are looking at things from their perspective. I had a similar shifting of personalities in regard to my dad being my headmaster. I was able to put him in two mental boxes. He was my dad at home and my headmaster at school.
It's lucky I wasn't on Twitter when I was a teenager though because I think I would have tweeted about every single Me versus Me game without any irony. I was a dull and odd child, obsessed with statistics and competitio (usually against myself). Seemingly I was not alone. Although ironically, of course, I was.
But even though I was being post-modern I genuinely enjoyed the Me 1 versys Me 2 competition on a non-ironic level. It was great to get the two Mes out of the mental attic. And I wished I had a snooker table to take to all the venues so that I could do a proper multi-frame tournament to discover who is the best snooker player, Me 1 or Me 2 or Me 3 or Me 4 or Me 5 or Me 6 or Me 7 or Me 8 or Me 9 or Me 10 or Me 11 or Me 12 or me 13 or Me 14 or Me 15 or Me 16 or Me 17 or Me 18 or Me 19 or Me 20 or Me 21 or Me 22 or Me 23 or Me 24 or Me 25 or Me 26 or Me 27 or Me 28 or Me 29 or Me 30 or Me 31 or Me 32.
Not any more Mes than that though. A 64 Me tournament would be insane.
The gig was good.
