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PUBLICATION DAY. The Problem With Men is now available in all good book shops. Push your nose up against the window and look at it from outside, but make sure you’re pretending to be exercising.
Someone should think about trying to sell books online. I think that could lead to something.
I listened to the first bit of the audiobook on my dog walk tonight and I was quite impressed. I made myself laugh. I find it very hard to watch and listen back to myself, but I felt like I did a good job with writing and performing this one (in spite of a couple of whistled esses and mild mid word garbles- I’m my own worst critic, but my self-criticism is mediocre at best).
Lovely to start getting some comments (as well as multiple requests for the thing I say you can request part way through the book, which proves that people are actually reading/listening to the thing). It hasn’t been a huge smash on the amazon charts (though got to number 6 on the Apple audiobook chart) but I am hoping this will be a slow burner that will sell on personal recommendation. So please recommend if it you like it. It is currenly
number 1 on Audible audiobooks in the Parody section. Even though it isn't a parody. Maybe it counts as self-parody. So what more recommendation do you need?
Weirdly I just feel happy that it’s out there and that I did a good job with the jokes and the argument. Being limited to 20,000 words (even though I went up to 25000) made it difficult, but did sharpen it up, I think. A lot of people are judging what it is from the title (even another comedian today which I was surprised at) - it wasn’t my choice to call it that, but I like it, because it is confronting, but ultimately up to you to interpret. If you’re getting angry with it before you’ve read it, then it’s because of the answer you have made up in your own head. What if the Problem With Men is that they are just too good?
Read the book or listen to it and then I will take notes. I don’t want notes on what you imagine the book is. Those are notes for yourself.
I went for a run through the mud this morning with my wife, whilst listening to my wife’s podcast (it’s a great one this week with Nish Kumar as a guest - it’s time women accepted that men are just funnier). Sometimes people bump into me in the street whilst they are listening to my podcast, but it’s a new level to be doing exercise with someone as you listen to them on a podcast. Hopefully one day all of our interactions will be this way.
My fourth health kick of they year is going quite well so far, though the run was difficult and my feet got soaked.
We had a lot of technical difficulties with tonight’s Twitch of Fun but I think there was enough funny stuff in the show to justify the many failures - out as a podcast and on YouTube soon and then I watched episode 4 of Taskmaster - my worst performance yet. A lot was edited out of this show (for time) and they made my appeal for Richard to look in my bag look lamer than it was. Daisy was flailing whilst I was tempting Richard with my truthful description of my bag containing one of the most famous people in the world with no clothes on. I feel Daisy’s post-competition flirting was what won it for her, rule-breaking for sure and the resulting victory meant a ten point swing in her favour. I ended the programme eight points adrift on the leaderboard, but had Richard picked correctly I would have been two points up (though to be fair I should have had 2 points the balloon task not 4). I hope you will remember this at the end of the series and deduct five points from Daisy and add five points to my score for the true result. Stop the count.
It was a deflating day, that second day when we recorded shows 3 and 4, after the fantastic start with shows 1 and 2. There are still 6 shows to go though. Can little Richy turn it round? I know the country is willing me to fail and correctly so.
And my tactical choice to go halfway with the balloon hoist (figuring that at least a couple of balloons would break, giving me a good chance of first or second) turned out to be a mistake too. But at least I won the task that I was most likely to win, so that’s something.
Do keep watching - there is much excitement and madness to come.
