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I had an early morning stone clear to clear my head (and some stones) and recorded it for audiophiles only. It was up within an hour of me finishing the walk. That’s the modern world.
Listen here.
I had two zoom meetings in the morning, one looking at the new Sky schedule (luckily for us as most advertisers are falling away in lockdown they are backing us all year and consequently hopefully paying most of the cost of us putting together my audio sitcom- if I get time to write it) and then another with a student looking at whether political correctness was killing comedy. He seemed to be of the opinion that it was and that people were being cancelled for jokes, but I am not sure he is right. I can’t really think of anyone who has been outright cancelled for stuff other than crimes (or maybe crazy, but serious twitter comments) and none of the people whose work is being taken down due to black face are being told they can’t work again. He quoted some big American comedians saying that you can’t play universities any more because the students are so sensitive. I’ve seen some UK comedians grumping about this on social media too. Not one of them is under 40 though and most of them are in their 50s or 60s. What the fuck are they doing playing student venues? And if they are playing them then they surely have the common sense to know they have to adapt their act to the sensitivities of the audience. Students have always been right on and cautious of the kind of material that a more jaded and older audience might enjoy. There’s always been a generation gap and there should be. But also they’re all trying to fit on and work out who they are so they are not going to be comfortable laughing at stuff that might get them judged by their peers. It’s always been that way. Some comedians, I think, find it hard to accept that they are now the older generation (I know that I do) and they aren’t going to be cool to people half or a third of their age.
Not only do most of the comedians who complain about woke culture and not being able to say anything still say whatever they like in their acts, they also mainly draw huge audiences and revenue. So they can’t play colleges any more. Good. Get the fuck out of there. Go and play old people’s homes where you belong.
I think it’s good to reassess your comedy and personally I am impressed by the political resolve of young people. They’re not going to get it all right, just like we didn’t. They are going to sometimes push things further than necessary as they attempt to outdo each other, just like we did. But I think they might be able to affect an actual sea-change in attitudes to race, gender, sex, consent and equality, just like we didn’t.
But blimey, their music is all bang bang bang and you can’t hear the lyrics or tell if the people in the band are boys or girls. Right grandad.
I am only saying all this in the hope of fitting in so I can play colleges…. Jesus, I can’t think of anything worse. The good thing about getting older and a bit more successful is that I don’t have to do those gigs any more. When I think back to some of the student audiences we played in the nineties I wish they had been a lot more woke, because a good 20% of those gigs were populated by unwoke horrible cunts.
Most of you were nice though. Not Aberystwyth.
Somehow amongst all this I managed to put together the last two chapters of my book. We had someone else looking after the kids today and it literally might just have been that that made the difference. Catie has been doing the lion’s share of the child care as I’ve struggled with the book, but I have felt guilty about it and felt like I should go and help if the writing wasn’t coming immediately. But today for the first time in 100 days I didn’t have to worry about that. And bang, the book is finished!
Well, when I say finished, the first draft is done and there’s no gaps and the argument more or less flows. It’s till 4000 words too long and I haven’t covered a few things that I wanted to do and my editor is getting her red pen out as I write. So there will be another big shift to put in once I hear back from her.
But fuck, it’s a relief to have got this far and in terms of being close to the finished product I think it’s probably the best first draft of a book that I’ve done. I have been quite fastidious in rewriting the chapters til they are punchy and say what I want them to, so I am hoping that the second draft will take a few days rather than a few weeks.
It’s out in November. I will let you know what it’s called and when you can preorder it as soon as I know.
I am lucky it was a short book. I don’t think I could have done 80,000 words under lockdown.
It felt good to be done (though I forgot that I’d done it and didn’t mention it to Catie for ages) and to know that I have a week or so where I won’t have to think about it and can have a bit of time to myself. I will probably use that time to work on something else, but I can also dream that I might read or exercise or do something non-connected to work.
As if to prove the point I then completed the day by doing two things on Twitch.
I made the draw for an exciting new snooker tournament for elite players only. You can
watch it here.
If the unboxing of the prizes interested you, then you might be too late for the July draw, but you can get your name in the hat for August if you become a
monthly badger.But you lot must all be monthly badgers by now right?
I did my first non-charity stand up gig in two years tonight, for the excellent XS Malarkey live stream on Twitch. I tried to do mainly new and improvised stuff (though you will have seen some of it on blogs/RHLSTP intros). Then had a spirited chat with Toby Hadoke and hardly mentioned Doctor Who at all.
