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There’s lots of ways you can criticise Russell Brand and I think it’s good that he’s promoting debate, even if occasionally he’s being a bit out there, but the tabloids branding (geddit) him a hypocrite for caring about poor people when he's rich? Surely the rich people who don't care or help are the problem. If you were going to have a go at anyone shouldn’t it be the people who live in nice houses, have lovely stuff and aren’t doing a thing for anyone else. And if you have to be in the same position as the people you’re doing charity for or you’re a hypocrite then that’s going to make things a bit tough. I bought a poppy this year, but I’ve never had my limbs blown off by a bomb - what a fucking hypocrite! I sometimes buy the Big Issue, even though I have a house myself. Surely if I cared about this issue I would sell my house and give all the money to people living on the streets. Which would then include me. It’s the old Robin Hood paradox. In stealing from the rich and giving to the poor, he was then forced to steal from the formerly poor to give to the formerly rich. Even when he tried to even it out fairly some people spent their money quicker than others and so he and to go to the people who hadn’t yet spent their money and steal some of if from them in order to give to the people who had spent their money. Which led to everyone just spending their money and destroying all their property just to stop this terrible cycle of crime.
I am not convinced that Brand’s revolution has much substance, but having studied pre-revolutionary Russia I think at the heart of all this there are important issues that need to be addressed. If rich people lose sight of their privilege and dance onwards as hunger and poverty surround them then eventually they will lose everything.
Personally I don’t have a problem with people earning money for working hard or doing something that others can’t do (if only all rich people had got their money that way), but it seems insane and actually self-defeating to not give something back or use your position to battle for a fairer system. Or to actively use your position to grasp even more money out of the pockets of those who can’t afford it. Pulling up the drawbridge just makes you more prone to be attacked. Blatant injustices and super rich people ripping off poor people for no other reason than that they enjoy accruing more money than they can ever spend are certainly worth standing up to. It’s the people with the money and power who have the opportunity to make things fairer for those with less. Let’s make headlines about the ones doing nothing about it, not the ones trying to make a difference.
These things have a way of equalising out when the pendulum swings too far one way. The patience of the Russian people with their frivolous and out of touch overlords was incredible and hard to break and their grievances could have been easily assuaged. But the aristocrats’ belief that they were entitled to own everything in the world left most of them without anything and a lot of them dead.
Basically people will let you get away with being rich as long as you don’t become evil. Let’s celebrate the rich people who even make any attempt at all to even things up slightly. At least until all the cunts who are sitting back on vast fortunes doing fuck all have been shot in a basement.
Slightly weird Lord of the Dance Settee tonight. I didn’t feel like I had the whole crowd behind me in the first half, though the big laughs were bigger than usual, it felt like some of it was passing them by. Yet I got loads of positive interval tweets, so think they were just internalising the fun (or I was being paranoid). In the second half suddenly everyone was more behind the show than I think I’ve ever experienced, with quite a lot of shouting out (mostly in rather a fun way). As I talked about slapstick jokes someone threw a banana skin on to the stage (I assume - I didn’t see it happen so it might have been there since the interval), which I only discovered when I stood on it. Luckily (or unluckily) I didn’t fall over, but had some fun with it. By the end of the show the atmosphere had gone from slightly dulled to electric. I thought this might be the first sticky gig for a while but overall it turned out to the best of the week. Still two more to go this year,
then lots more in 2015. The momentum really seems to be building this week and I kind of wish I was doing a fortnight here so there was time for the word to spread. But hopefully these last two gigs should be pretty full and be as much fun. A few tickets left, so pop along if you can.
It’s not going to be practical to do anything with “I Killed Rasputin” in the short term and having lost a lot of money on it already I can’t even justify paying the money for actors, technicians and a studio to put together an audio version of it, but so that those of you who couldn’t get to the Fringe can have some idea of what was involved
I’ve put up the closest to final script that I can find (we made some more cuts and additions in the rehearsal process and there were some bits I liked that had been cut for time at this stage, including an appearance by Anna Anderson and more crazy mystics). It’s there to read for free, but if you enjoy it and want to help pay the £35,000 bill I’ve been left with (and thus speed along other internet content) then you can make a donation of whatever you like (either one off or monthly)
here. No problem if you can’t or won’t pay. It’s nice to think that people will get to read it.
