Oh shit, another month over and not got far enough with my book. There's still two months to the deadline and April is a lot less toury, but it's going to be a difficult slog to make it on time.
And today, again, predictably, I was too tired to get much done. I think it's going to be good when I've done it. It will certainly be an eye opener as you're going to hear a lot more about my life than you have ever done whilst reading this. You'd better bloody buy it. Especially as chancer Emma Kennedy is riding hide in the charts with her
latest tome. Thank God I work with Collings, ensuring that one of my colleagues will always be less successful than me. For Godsakes don't start buying his book as well or I will officially be least successful person I have ever worked with. But better to be the worst person in the brilliant group I've been lucky enough to cross pens with, than the best person on BBC3.
Thank goodness Collings has had
his series cancelled, or I'd already be at the bottom of the pile. This is why my book has to be great, though of course being great is no guarantee of success, just as being crap doesn't mean things automatically fuck up,
as Horden and Corden seem to have proven. Are these decisions made by a blind-folded monkey with no sense of humour throwing darts at a wall through a wind tunnel, whose currents are mathematically programmed to blow any darts that happen to be thrown through it into a big pile of shit?
I've just checked. Apparently they are. More or less. Except the monkey isn't blindfolded. He's been blinded with a red hot poker, by someone wearing a mask of my face. Which explains why he has lost his sense of humour and why even my shittiest ideas can't make it to the screen.
It seems an odd selection method, but then I guess when the odd good thing somehow makes it through we should be thankful.
Due to tour commitments we recorded
podcast 57 today and demonstrated why no company will ever sponsor us, even though we took it upon ourselves to advertise Magner's cider, Sinn Fein, the Real IRA, W H SMith's,
Dan Jackson, Al Qaeda and WH Smiths. It's a motley crew and I wonder can you get into trouble for advertising someone or something without their permission? Can they be cross to be involuntarily associated with the other sponsors of the show? And will the nice man at Magner's who kindly sent me free cider regret his decision, or be glad to have got so many mentions for his product in our podcast, even though we claimed it was made out of the apple tainted phlegm of disgruntled Irishmen.
I don't think we've been on top form for a few weeks, (but as I've explained recently that is what makes the project so exciting and any decent or indecent listener should love the less successful shows more for their failure) but today's one flew by and was a lot of fun, was pretty much good all the way through and is offensive to all right thinking people on pretty much every level. But we don't want people who think right to listen to us. Or if they do they have to be people who are confident enough in their correctness to hear one man saying something unacceptable for one hour six minutes and 36 seconds, whilst another man tries to be woolly and liberal, but then suddenly says something genuinely offensive without even realising he's done it. We touch upon a new routine I've been working up about how racist people are in some ways closer to seeing all human beings as equal and the same than the rest of us and also introduce an interesting philosophical question as to who is the more racist person, someone who hates everyone on the Indian subcontinent or someone who just hates all Pakistanis? I don't think we come close to an answer. But it's interesting to live in a world where David Jason is in hot water for doing the old Mahatma Coat gag and I can claim to hate all Pakistanis (admittedly whilst being protected by Harry Potter's Cloak of Irony) and (hopefully) the wrong and right thinking people who are listening will understand the point I am making.
It's interesting that we cut a minute from podcast 56 because I felt what I had said could be construed as racist, whilst all the stuff I said today will remain in the show, but there is a difference, because I do believe the satire and irony were in the correct place today, whereas last time what I was saying came out wrong. So me saying "I hate Pakistanis" in the right context is not actually racist. It is rather liberating though just to take sides with one of the enemies that have fought for generations (especially when you don't know too much about what is going on) and declare that they are in the right. These things are pretty much going to drag on forever otherwise. Why don't they just send me to all trouble spots in the world with a 50p piece and I'll get them to call heads or tails and whoever wins ends up being right and the others just have to lump it. More stupid than blowing up people to try and make a point? You either keep blowing up people until everyone is just sick of being blown up so they stop blowing each other up (and then some twat will still keep trying to blow things up) or just let chance decide and then accept the result and get on with things.
We're all the fucking same. Stop manufacturing differences (based let's face it, mainly on which fictional man in the sky you believe in - none of which are actually real) and grow up.
Yet me swearing in an attic and calling for free pornography for everyone is the childish person in the world and the people bombing the shit out of each other are the grown ups. I would, as I observe in this extraordinary podcast, rather people were wanking than killing each other.
Make love to yourself, not war.
Anyway, I pretty much thought we were funny from start to finish today - even Collings, though luckily he was less funny than me. And nice to know I have the controversial beginnings of the new show at least fermenting in there somewhere.
I wonder if I can write my book this way too.
