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Thursday AGAIN? It is LITERALLY Thursday EVERY DAY. Prove me wrong, melonfarmers.
Last night I replied to someone quoting an old catchphrase in a positive manner, joining in, rather than expressing boredom or making them feel small for doing something that’s been done by many people (which is perhaps the natural reaction for many comedians and I’ve been guilty of it myself). I then tweeted that Michael Palin had taught me to embrace my past comedy and celebrate it (due to his apparent glee at reliving old bits of comedy win the podcast) as the classiest way to respond. People have enjoyed your stuff and they get one chance (perhaps) to share their enjoyment, so being churlish about it is a bit of a douchy way to respond.
That then led to 24 hours of people tweeting old catchphrases at me, which quickly became pretty wearing. I jokily told everyone to fuck off. But what was notable is how many catchphrases and running jokes I’ve perpetuated over my 30 year career. It’s fucking loads. And people hardly even touched on Time Gentlemen Please in which every episode was basically 30 characters saying their catchphrase(s) and then that being enough to fill the time.
Even more notable was that amongst that myriad of in-jokes, basically none of them had captured the public imagination. Moon on a stick came the closest I guess (though we didn’t make up that phrase and plenty of people use it with no knowledge that it was said on a TV show 25 years ago). It’s quite an achievement.
I know this depth of recurring memes in my work is fun for super fans and that doubtless you can recognise each other by saying “Put a Shrek in it” or “Magma” or “MSRM RIM RMM RWW MIOM RMM ISRMR PAFTK” or “Yeah, I sure love motorcycling. Motorcycling around. Some people like cycling on a normal bike, but not me. I say why pedal round when you can have a bike that doesn't need to be pedalled? With all the engine and stuff in it. Rrruum, rrrrummm” but you couldn’t say any of that to a civilian and expect a chuckled response. Maybe if I’d blacked up more in my work then it would have a deeper resonance with the public.
I don’t even see myself as someone who does catchphrases and indeed a few of my attempts are deliberately meant to parody the form, but I suppose we all speak in catchphrases and that any writer will create a few. Maybe to be successful at them you should be settling on one or two. Maybe you are to rest them so they don’t get well worn and overused. Still they’re all well worn and overused catchphrases by the time I’m finished with them.
None of them have sold me many T shirts.
What I’ve done there is confuse an imagination capturing catchphrase that can sell you lots of T shirts with a garbled collection of words, generally at too great a length to be remembered by the general population.
Oh yes, I have.
Still the impetus to respond with joy, not snark is a good one. If I fail to do it to you, then it might be just that I’ve got so many catchphrases that I’ve forgotten most of them.
If anyone manages to successfully quote " ABIA-IBJA-JBJAH-BAJ-BPA
ZOT-APBEA-EBAAA-BAAA-BNANB-SASB-BORA-BBOORA-OBJA-JBDT-KADT-KBSOH-THBTWO-UAS-BRA-RBAAA-BAAA-BJAJ-BJAJ-BOA-OBJA-JBAAA-BEA-EBMAM-BAAA-BJA-JBJAH-BATT-TWCAT-BAATWB-TBJBS-ASBZAZ-BAAA-BEAEBAAABS-AS-BAAA-BEAEBEA-EBMAM-BJAJ-BJ-THOMOW-WBJ-WICC" to me then I will take down my pants and wave my willy in the air like a helicopter whilst shitting in my hat.
And then I'll get off the bus.
I spent the afternoon working through my many tweets from March 8ths 2012-2020 to find the best examples of answers to the question “When’s International Men’s Day?” to put in my book. It took me a lot longer than I thought and I am only halfway through. There are some funny ones in there. I wonder if the book might have been better if it was simply a collection of all the tweets.
"It's November 19th" may in the end be the catchphrase I am most associated with.
