The Me vs Me snooker seems to have captured people's imaginations and today as I sat in my plush hotel room in Manchester (The Frog and Bucket put me up in a nice hotel every time I come - this courtesy didn't, alas, extend to Reliable Pete, who is staying in one of our usual dosshouses on the outskirts of the city. The first step in our accommodation apartheid) I started thinking that maybe I could put on some exhibition matches for the public to attend. I would play myself (and maybe Me 3 and Me 4 could compete too) and I would commmentate as Commentator Me 1 and Commentator Me 2 as I played. I think there is too much emphasis in sport in going to watch excellent sportsmen and women playing, but there is little outlet to watch the kind of rubbish games that most of us actually play. Yet, as I think yesterday's experiment suggests there is nothing more exciting. You can be fairly sure that top snooker players will clean up the table when they are given the opportunity, but with any of the mes (even the more adept players amongst them) there is the constant danger of missing a sitter, not just failing to pot it, but not even hitting it. This adds a tension to proceedings and also a cause for massive celebration when I accidentally manage to put together a four ball break. And given that I am all the players then it is also a satire of the arbitrary nature of fandom and support for certain players. But yesterday clearly shows that people are capable of seriously getting behind one of the Mes, some of you hated Me 1, but some of you admired his dedication and professionalism. I had fantasies about this idea becoming so popular that I might actually one day perform it to a packed house at the Reading Hexagon - but importantly still playing on a 6ft by 3ft table (I think the games would be interminably long on a full size table). People would come along wearing T-shirts of the player that they favoured. It would be a beautiful theatrical piece about in which performer and audience colluded in making tedium and mediocrity into excitement and excellence. It would be difficult to get quicky through a tournament by playing two matches at once - but crucially not impossible. It reminds me a little bit of Andy Kaufman wrestling women, but I think it is different enough. And I like the idea of doing something that would confuse and bore most people, but that a minority would really get behind and become obsessive about. It is sport for people who hate sport.
I think I might actually be able to become a professional snooker player. And the great thing is that if I can get a sponsor to put up some massive cash prizes for my tournaments then I am bound to win. But also a company could safely get the publicity by putting in a million pound prize for a 147 break and be absolutely certain that they'd never have to pay out (unless this is all an elaborate hustle/sting) as my highest break, even at the height of my snooker powers was 35.
Some people suggested I make this into an Edinburgh show and it might actually work, with a tournament played over the course of a Fringe. I imagine Dan Tetsell playing a seedy and grumpy referee, but all the other parts being done by the various mes. But it's vital that it wouldn't turn into a chance to do loads of funny comedy characters. There should be no conscious attempt to make the different Mes different. Their individual personalities and styles would develop through the way the audience perceived them or the way my subconscious decided to feel about them. Just as Me 1 and Me 2 developed into cocky victor and unlucky, self-sabotaging underdog.
This might be the greatest theatrical development since Shakespeare. Alternatively it might just be a load of stupid rubbish that seems funny for a day and then comes to nothing.
It is definitely one of those two things. Only time will prove which it shall be.
Luckily for the world in general there was no snooker table in tonight's green room.
Before I headed to the gig I was watching Channel 4 and was amazed by how many adverts were for those injurylawyer4u style firms, trying to make money from accidents at work. I wondered how many people who use these services also like to complain that health and safety has gone mad and don't see connection. I suspect it is a lot of them. Speaking as a man who possibly massaged shit into his hair and still didn't attempt to sue, I think we'd all be a lot better off if we cut each other a bit of slack and acknowledged that sometimes an accident is an accident. But you can understand why any business is forced to impose seemingly insane health and safety practices when lawyers (as well as the "real lawyers" at injurylawyers4u - don't know why they feel the need to insist on that. It makes one suspicious in a way that you wouldn't have been if they hadn't mentioned it. I mean you'd assume they were real right?) are hovering ready to sue anyone who fucks up a little bit.
