Days Without Alcohol 82
Another very busy day, but I have a weekend off in Wales, so that's something to look forward to. An early start after getting back late from Brighton as Andrew Collings came over to do another podcast. We're going weekly (for the moment at least) - I think Andrew wants to do this in the hope that it will help us further up the iTunes chart. He has a very empty life and it means so much to him. Ironically when I checked the chart later I saw we had plummeted down to over 50th. Perhaps only doing one every fortnight counted in our favour somehow. Or perhaps the bubble has burst and the fairy tale is over. Maybe just everyone thought the podcast was crap and unsubscribed.
I doubt it, because for me this was the best podcast yet. Whilst I'd been a bit tired and full last wekk, for the moment at least, the early start had us both full of beans and there was a point where we both were really laughing (at the idea of the paedophiles having to live in the sea and evolving - and how if those sexy female teacher paedophiles were there I would pretend to be a paedophile so I could meet them) in the way that we sometimes did on the 6Music show (we were forced to go into a record once because we have both corpsed so badly).
Collings gets a bit over excited sometimes, which I really enjoy, like a child that has eaten too much sugar or a man who doesn't eat wheat who has been forced to eat nothing but wheat. It is quite charming, though, it might be some form of mental illness and he might very well be about to have a break down. Let's hope not, though that might improve our chart position if he actually does it during one of the podcasts. Occasionally he will start talking about a subject that it's pretty hard to be funny about, but usually he will just become overexcited by a picture of a naked or semi-naked woman.
Last week we had talked about trying to beat Nuts in the chart (which we did for much of the week), and Andrew was wondering what was on their video podcast, but swore he would never look to see. I had looked at about 10 seconds of the one of the 45 second episodes earlier in the week and told him it was all harmless stuff. And I made the mistake of showing him one. Which he watched, despite having sworn moments earlier that he wouldn't look. Despite the innocuous nature of the slightly uncomfortable woman posing in her bra and pants, pulling a face that might have been meant to be sexy, but actually looked like distress mixed with fear (and what is sexier than that, hey fellas?) - more disdain that fear actually (suddenly not sexy at all, hey fellas? We don't like disdain), Collings was clearly sent into a whirlwind of excitement by boring images that he saw. If, as I suspect, he will one day be arrested for molesting ducks in a real life feathery version of Equus then this introduction to the world of the softest possible pornography might have been the thing that sparked off his madness.
We chatted about the Nuts thing on the Podcast (listen to it
here) Andrew pointing out the hypocrisy of the tabloids, chastising Heather Mills for saucy photoshoots in her model days, whilst having naked women on page 3 themselves. Then as we got ready to have our photo taken he had a mental brainwave of holding up the page 3 picture. Suddenly realising that this might be hypocritical in turn, he suggested putting his hand over the naked breasts, then though t he had a better idea - which was to pick up his biro and cover the bosoms that way. I made a weak attempt to say that scribbling over the form of a naked woman might more offensive than her just being bare, but high on adrenalin, wheat, coffee and duck love Collings (a talented artist) was at work with his schoolboyish graffiti. Not only did he scribble on the naked female form, like some kind of frustrated serial killer about to go out and claim another victim, but he then wrote a satirical reference to the Nuts podcast all over the rest of her body.
Not wanting the evil Collings to vent his pent up fury on me, I went along with all this, but attempted to register bemused disapproval in the photo, whilst Collings face beams with glee at his own evil.
Only later, when writing his own blog on the subject was he filled with remorse, choosing to
censor his desecration. Clearly after his crime spree he returns to being the pent up, wheat hating, outwardly reasonable man that he appears to be. When the full extent of his crimes are revealed everyone will say that he was just a normal quiet man, with strongly held opinions about why he loved 1983.
Anyway, probably the only way to stop further atrocities is to ensure that the podcast never slips quite so far down the charts again, so please go and subscribe if you haven't already. If not for me or Andrew, but for all the ducks that he will force to kiss him if his madness goes unchecked.
I have also been delighted to see that we've got a
wikipedia entry for the podcast now, though as I say in podcast 5 slightly bemused and amused that it picks up on Collings repeatedly calling me his colleague rather than his friend (though that might be even more true after this particular entry). It's also quite funny that when the compiler of the entry goes to list the "People" involved he actually only writes about Collings. Though I tried to persuade Andrew that this was due to me being so well known already that any description was unnecessary.
I was a little weary by the time I got to Cardiff to do the DVD record and slightly nervous due to the fact that for the first time we were only doing one recording. Slightly thrown by an initially unresponsive audience as well as a crumb of flapjack in the back of my throat, I actually forgot to do one of the early jokes (despite having done this show 25 times in the last eight weeks), but managed to recover after that and do a solid enough performance. It will doubtless make an amusing extra on the DVD to see me floundering around like an idiot. You'll have to wait a good few months to find out, but we're already planning to record the new Edinburgh show (probably "The Headmaster's Son") as well as "Christ on a Bike" before the end of the year. Then I will have an incredible six DVDs available for purchase.
