I have a stupidly hectic weekend. After getting to bed at 3am due to an appearance on a sky tv poker show, I was up at 8 to fly to Scotland to be interviewed by Frankie Boyle for a pilot he is doing for the BBC. Then tomorrow I am flying back to London to appear on Loose Ends in the morning and some BBC4 book quiz in the afternoon and a gig in Twickenham in the evening. Hopefully I can sleep in a bit on Sunday, before driving to Hull for a tour date. Because I won't be able to rest after that as I have to drive through the night back to London, so I can be back in time to catch the 11.30am Eurostar to Paris. This is too much for a man of my age. I hope I make it through it all. If not I died doing what I loved - driving away from Hull.
I arrived in Glasgow to be greeted by a sign that said something along the lines of "Welcome to Scotland, the best small country in the world!" The inclusion of the word "small" seemed unusually modest for this unashamedly patriotic country. Like they had wanted to say it was the best, before someone at the meeting had said, "Hold on, we're not as good as Brazil..... Or Australia. How can we get round this?"
So they decided to insert the word "small" which is delightfully vague. How does one define small?
"it's not as good as Italy!"
"No, but Italy is too big to be included in the category."
Basically someone has looked at an atlas and worked out that all the countries smaller than Scotland aren't as good as it. So they can claim to be the best country in the world that is the same size or smaller than themselves. And no-one can sue them for false advertising.
The pilot was a lot of fun. I chatted to Frankie about, amongst other things, the Virginia Tech shooting. I had been genuinely shocked by the TV coverage showing this mental idiot's ravings, not least with Sky who showed it all and then had the audacity to sanctomoniously discuss whether the footage should ever have been shown. Before then showing it again. Loads of times.
The Sky newsman argued that it was OK to show it in the UK because American relatives were unlikely to be watching Sky TV. But that wasn't really the point. By showing the footage Sky was saying to any self-publicising nutter watching that all they had to do was kill a few people and then whatever stupid and sick manifesto they had would be broadcast all over the world.
I argued to Frankie that I found this very distasteful as I have been trying to get on TV for seven years now, and had I realised that all I had to do was to kill a few Americans, I could have posted off some of my sketches and stand up routines and been guaranteed worldwide exposure for my unique brand of off the wall humour.
And it was particularly galling as when you watch what old Cho Seung-hui has to say for himself, it is a load of rambling incoherent rubbish. My stuff is miles better than that. Yeah OK, sometimes Warming Up is a bit woolly, but it's still better than his crap. Plus I would have put some effort into my performance. To kill all those people and then waste your shot at stardom is just a waste.
Plus Cho compared himself to Jesus. Now forgive me if I am wrong, but Jesus didn't directly kill anyone. The worst he did was throw over those tables - he had a temper - but you'd have to really like furniture to be more upset about that than the deaths of 32 people. Maybe if Jesus had had a gun he would have killed people, but I am sure the pro-gun lobby would argue that had Jesus been armed then he could have shot his persecutors and escaped crucifixtion. So maybe they're on to something after all.
The show (it's an unbroadcast pilot, so you'll probably never see this) ended with me and Frankie in a hot tub with two rather gorgeous young women in bikinis. This is what I got into showbiz for. I can't believe it has taken so long for this to happen.
Looking from my own pot belly to that of the bespectacled, beareded Scotchman I remarked "There's something for everyone in this hot tub isn't there?"
All tastes catered for.
