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A lot of kerfuffle over the fact that Geri says "Moon on a stick" in this week's episode of Succession. Those of you with long memories and old bones might recall that this was a phrase that occasionally appeared on the unpopular BBC2 series "Fist of Fun", so some people have been emailing and tweeting to let me know that I've finally made it.
Now the writers of Succession are Brits, largely more or less contemporary with our early TV work and there is a chance that this is a tiny nod to the show, but we did not originate the phrase. It was the kind of thing our grans used to say and had maybe fallen out of parlance a little (Shaparak Khorsandi used it as a title for an Edinburgh show, with no idea that we had made it briefly popular with one in twenty schoolchildren in the 1990s). So whilst there's a chance that Tony Roche (who I think cowrote this ep) might have found it funny to reference our rubbish show in his brilliant show, I think it's more likely that he just wanted Geri to express that the other side were overreaching in the things that they were asking for.
Nonetheless I will be putting Succession writer on my CV from now on. I don't think I've had to send a CV to anyone since 1991, but it's still nice to have it on there. For when I look at it.
I didn't get any writing done today as I was busy recording this week's Taskmaster podcast (very good episode of TM coming up on Thursday - I think I might have scored zero if I'd been on this week) and helping recover an almost lost episode of Drunk Women Solving Crime from a recording device. I managed another row and did a long dog walk for the first time in ages (the way things have fallen with the school run has meant my wife nearly always does the morning walk now), but then I had to take the kids swimming, so it was a writing write-off.
It was frame 120 of Me1 vs Me2 snooker - and what a frame it was and then I watched Succession with Me1's wife. When Geri said "Moon on a stick" I turned to my wife, who did not make the connection (it's almost like she has no idea who I am). I kind of hope she doesn't ever watch Fist of Fun or she will see the bit where I address her from the past and refer to her as "the piece of shit that stuck." But in a way it's romantic that I left that message for her. Right?
