So the press coverage for "You Can Choose Your Friends" has been blanket over the weekend. On the whole it has been very positive, with a few dissenting voices (mainly in the Mail newspapers apparently, which I don't mind at all). Even my natural enemy, the Telegraph has been complimentary, saying my writing is even better than my stand-up - but then given that they thought my stand-up was the worst comedy experience of 2005, then maybe that isn't such a compliment after all.
I will put everything up in the downloads and/or the press sections of the website as soon as I have it, so you can see what the journalist scum idiots have to say. It's strange and not entirely pleasant to be under the microscope again in such an intense way and inevitably even amongst all the good stuff, it's the occasional negative comment that annoys and grates and stays in one's head. But I am glad for once to have been involved in a project that is getting properly trailed on the channel and covered in the papers. But it's the reviews the day after and the audience share that are important (and probably most important if the people who watch stay watching for the full 90 minutes), so do watch on Thursday and get all your friends to as well - especially if you are friends with someone who has one of the boxes that goes towards collating audience figures. I'd love to do more of these, even if it is like My Family according to one of the previewers. The idiot. Would love to know what you all think about it too, so do let me know. It's a bit different than my stand up work, but I hope it's still subversive despite its apparently innocent appearance.
I was having a drink of the terrace of the Riverside Studios with friends tonight. It brought back memories of TMWRNJ series two, as we'd sit out here drinking vodka and Red Bull all Sunday afternoon after the broadcast. And also of "The Other Boat Race" as the bridge which signified our victory was only a hundred or so metres away. Ah time passes so quickly. Eight years since TMWRNJ now folks. Hope that makes you feel as old as it makes me feel.
I was a bit distracted by the couple next to me though. An extremely drunk (and one might suspect alcohol wasn't the only stimulant she had ingested as she was rather garrulous) woman was flirting outrageously with a man who was rather more quiet and who seemed relatively sober.
The woman was so loud and opinionated that it was hard not to tune in to her as if she was an annoying talk radio station. Her lack of inhibitions and possibly narcotic enhanced state did mean that she was coming out with some priceless and arrogant nonsense. I was more interested to find out whether the man was going to cash in on the rather frightening prospect of the night of passion that was clearly being offered to him, hidden not too effectively between the lines (no doubt a couple of different lines may have been the cause of this), though the woman was making the mistake, as she sprawled on her chair, of displaying her knickers in the direction of the people at our table, rather than in the direction of the object of her affections.
I actually had more sympathy for her than him. She was a mum, away from her young child for once and she had clearly decided to make the most of her babysitter. But he seemed in control of his thoughts and conversation and yet wasn't encouraging this woman to maybe go home and sleep things off. It was a little sinister. Was he weighing up whether having to sit through another hour of this empty-headed chatter was going to be worth it, as he might get a shag out of it? It was better than watching telly. The woman was being quite nonchalent about her baby, I think and hope in an attempt not to make her paramour think it was a big deal. But it came across as a bit cold and you would think any decent, more sober man would have been appalled by her unmotherly comments and perhaps take her up on them. But the quiet, sinister, sober, shag-hopeful man kept silent.
I wrote down the best two things she said and here they are. I will put them in a script one day.
Of her child, in response to the sinister query as to what time he went to bed - "He just goes to bed when he's told - he's very malleable." What an awful thing to say about your own son.
But best of all when she was talking about script ideas (as it appeared that both these people worked in the media and she was suggesting ideas from real life to write about) "Truth is stranger than reality."
They left together. Let's be generous and presume that the man walked the lady home, kissed her on the cheek and made his way home. Though it's almost certain he went in, had a couple of lines of cocaine and thought, "Ah, what the Hell. At least this might shut her up!"
