I was last invited to the British Comedy Awards in 1992 (possibly 1993), an occasion which I mainly remember for me and Stew shouting "John Cleese" when Angus Deayton went up to receive an award. Well we were both at least saying it quite loudly, but I think it was Stew who really bellowed it, loud enough according to some to be heard on TV. This is probably why I haven't been invited since.
We were there because of our work on "On The Hour", the only thing that I have ever worked on that has been given an award (well, you know, apart from Little Britain, but I don't think I can take any credit for that). So, in the last 12 or 13 years I have done nothing that has been deemed worthy of even minor recognition by the powers that be in TV comedy.
In the late 1990s this used to really bother me. Mostly if truth be told because I knew that some kind of official recognition would improve the chances of Fist of Fun and TMWRNJ getting further series. But also because I am human and it's nice to get recognition, even it is by something that you ultimately don't really respect.
And the British Comedy Awards hold a similar place in my heart to the Perrier Awards. (
More evidence of my cornish hypocrisy here).
Nowadays the disappointment of either being an unrecognised genius or a recognised talentless idiot is tempered by the fact that I haven't done anything recently that could possibly garner me an invite. And I no longer sit by the TV in the dark, drinking heavily and smashing things while stabbing voodoo dolls of Peter Kay and Leigh Francis wishing I could be there. I did see a few bits of tonight's show, but it was enough to make me rather glad I wasn't there. Because what should be a celebration of comedy seems to have become an advert for various reality TV shows (the X Factor winning a comedy award? Hey?) and a back-slap for lots of people who are already very well established. It would be nice to see an awards that drew people's attention to stuff that wasn't already a hit and the only things that remotely did this were the awards for "The Thick of It" and Chris Langham, though it's hardly as if either him or Armando is an undiscovered newcomer.
But the bitterness I once felt has almost entirely subsided, not least because I am delighted that I don't have to go through the embarrassment of presenting an award with Chico (poor Dara O Briain) or be in the same room as my hero Johnny Rottens making a pillock of himself. His comments that comedy and anarchy are the same thing might well be true, but being made amongst this institutionalised celebration just pointed out how far this was a celebration of either.
Still there's a part of me that fantasises about winning an award in the future and then going on stage and sticking it to everyone in the room for their smug stupidity. Pointing out that to accept an award from them would be to acknowledge that all the stuff I have done that they have ignored must indeed be rubbish and chastise all the supposed comedy anarchists for sucking up to the exectutives who have neatly divided up the prizes so their current hit shows appear vindicated.
Of course I probably won't do that partly because I wouldn't have the bottle and partly because I can't really see me ever doing anything that will be nominated. Like my Perrier failure, to get through the rest of my career without an invitation to the British Comedy Awards might be seen as a sort of perverse success. Or as perverse success is otherwise known, failure.
Ironically I couldn't watch too much of the show because I myself was meant to be on TV tonight. Pokerzone had asked me to take part in one of the tables on Poker Night Live - in which internet games are shown for about three hours and commentated upon by poker experts. I was tonight's "celebrity" guest. I followed all the instructions I had been given and waited to be on TV (you get to see all the cards, but there is a time delay so people can't cheat) but was a bit surprised when the table I was on wasn't mentioned in the rundown by the presenters. I rang the studio, but the man in charge didn't really seem to know who I was. I think he thought I was just a member of the public desperate to get on satellite TV and kept fobbing me off, telling me to get on a waiting list for a general table (which was impossible to do as it was totally full up). Finally I gave up on the idea. I was only meant to be publicising my own pokerzone show, a show that the pokerzone channel seem to be unaware of. Which I think shows the level I have now reached in my career. Yes my contemporaries might be living it up with Robbie Williams and Chico, but I can't even get on TV on the obscure satellite channel that has cancelled my only major TV show for six years.
That means more than all the awards in the world.
