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So it was another International “International Women’s Day. When’s International Men’s Day” Day and though this year I had the responsibility of caring for a tiny woman and doing a gig, I wanted to do my best to keep up my work of responding to everyone in the world who asked the question. Because in case you haven’t heard, there is an international Men’s Day and it’s on November 19th.
Mostly my stubborn 24 hour persistence seems to go down well, though it seemingly annoys a few meninists (even though I am largely just informing the world that there actually is an international men’s day - though with an occasional sprinkle of questioning if we need one) and also on the other side (with a little more justification) that the exercise distracts attention from International Women’s Day, especially as I am a man and all.
BUT International Women’s Day should be about us all celebrating women, male and female - and who but an idiot would think that wasn’t worth celebrating? And by dealing with this side issue of the people who don’t think we’d ever have an IMD, but aren’t prepared to do anything about it but moan and can’t even be bothered to google it first to check that we don’t, it hopefully frees up everyone else to do the proper job of celebrating the day. And it does also keenly demonstrate why an International Women’s Day is necessary (and possibly a men’s one is not) as well as point up the mindless foolishness and ubiquity of people asking the same redundant question. It makes them look foolish. It makes celebrating women look like something that non-idiots do. And my ultimate dream is that by informing everyone about IMD, IWD will become about women, not about people asking why there isn’t an IMD (when there is).
I hoped last year’s stint might have worked. It was certainly the case early on that most of the tweets I was seeing were from people either mocking the “When’s International Men’s Day?” idiots or pointing out that it was November 19th or that men, for all our issues and problems, don’t require a day like this, due to us not being oppressed or discriminated against solely for our gender. And I guess a lot of the fun is that I have set myself an at-least frustrating task. Indeed by the early evening as I prepped for my show in Canterbury, some part of the world (and I guessing the central to west USA) woke up and the question was coming in thick and fast and without irony. My work was not yet done.
I was no longer able to keep up, especially as I had to get on stage (I’d been so busy I’d forgotten to google a boring claim to fame for the city, but luckily as I was doing the show, a spare part of my brain was thinking about it and I managed to come up with the fact that an episode of the Apprentice had been filmed in the Canterbury Tales. I impressed myself with my multi-tasking, but this was the day for it. I’d cared for my daughter in the morning, made a roast chicken for lunch (and eaten two whole bulbs of roasted garlic, making for some unpleasant burps in the car that Giles had to pretend he didn’t mind about) performed a stand up show and written a Metro column on the way home, whilst still keeping the world up to date with the date of International Men’s Day. I won’t recount the full day’s worth of tweets (there were more than a couple) but A
ndy McH (for the second year running) has kindly storified it.I got a bit stir-crazy towards the end, though pretended it was getting to me a little bit more than it was. I am determined not to lose my temper with my daughter however much she tests my patience with repetition (using my own weapon against me), so the babies of Twitter were a good practice for me. I realised that I was a very specific search engine, that could only answer one question, but on the plus side you didn’t have to come to me, I come to you. I was going to pick out some favourites, but it’s so utterly relentless to look through and I can’t find them. Go an relive my day. It was fun.
Don't ask me any questions on Twitter now though. Like Father Christmas I come but once a year. See you next March 8th for more (though it'd be great if I am redundant) and I suspect there may be a much lesser fuss made on November 19th (because women don't see the existence of an International Men's Day as a challenge or comment on them - which does make those insecure and babyish men look even more foolish. They don't deserve an International Men's Day. I might campaign to get it stopped).
As was the gig, with over 200 people in the lovely Gulbenkian Theatre. The less I stop worrying and moaning about not being more successful or acclaimed, the more I realise how lucky I am to have what I have and that my work means something to the people who like it. I chatted to someone about Richard Herring’s Objective, which I am very proud of and think is my best radio work and was glad they had discovered it some four or five years after it was broadcast. Someone else on Facebook was saying how much they had enjoyed “You Can Choose Your Friends” which made little impact on the world, apart from being called the worst piece of television ever (more or less) by the Evening Standard. And then after the show I met a couple who thanked me for my book “How Not To Grow Up”. The husband had had a serious brain haemorrhage and been in hospital for months and the wife had read him books as their major means of communication, including my autobiography detailing my embarrassing mid-life crisis. This had helped them through this difficult time. I know I am a bit emotional and soppy post the birth of my daughter, but to see have that man standing in front of me and thanking me for something like that was very moving. And put things into perspective. Maybe one day I will reach a larger audience and maybe I won’t. But I don’t think that’s what is important now. Maybe my joke of trying to create a joke that only one person will get (but that they will love) isn’t so ridiculous after all. It that couple were the only people who’d read “How Not To Grow Up” then… I mean, I’d have been pissed off, especially with my family and friends… but you know. Our lives are all a bit like shouting into the void and sometimes my career has felt like that to me (mainly due to over ambition and inability to acknowledge how well I am doing), so it’s good to know that it’s doing something positive. And I am not going to take too much credit. It was mainly inspiring to see a man and a woman who had got through a terrible piece of bad luck and were both still standing and smiling.
I will press on with all this stuff for another 26 years, but if I am not the biggest comedian in the world by then you can stick this bullshit job up your arses.
Then back home, telling some Americans about November 19th and then making my wife some toast and feeding and changing my baby. The craziness makes more sense when there’s something solid and important back home. I look at my past and think that I have sometimes been a Punch cartoon, “The Man Who Doesn’t Know How Lucky He Is”. But maybe there’s a lot of us that are like that. And a fuck of a lot of them are complaining about International Women’s Day. I can only spot the pricks so readily because I am one too.
And the tour feels like it's gathering momentum, (though I think it's just a trick of the light) with next week's gigs selling really well - Reading (a tiny venue) has been sold out for months, Didcot has very limited availability, there's still some tickets for Winchester, but Bristol is also sold out.
So book ahead if you want to see the show. Please don't come if you're a dick though. I am enjoying playing to all these nice people. If you could claim some obscure piece of my comedy has saved your life afterwards that will really help me feel good about what I am doing.
