5573/18593
Today we launched
a kickstarter for the filming of “Oh Frig I’m 50!” in the hope that we can gauge interest in how many people still want to own a DVD and also cover the increasing production costs. So you have a chance to get your hands on a luxury 4 disc set including both Oh Fuck I’m 40 and Oh Frig I’m 50 and all the extras that will come with those shows. And we are limiting to production to just 1000 copies (the show will be available to download, but we aren’t going to do any more DVDs). As usual there’s some cool extra prizes and different levels of support and five sets of two people will get a Willy Wonka style tour of the backstage of the Queen Elizabeth Hall and get to appear in the show.
Support us if you can. It’s already ripping along quite fast and once those DVDs are taken they are GONE.
Yesterday I noticed that a box of drawing pins from my desk had been knocked on to the floor, almost certainly by my cat, but possibly by an angry bird. I was in a rush, but I made a mental note to tidy those away.
Today, in another rush to get some admin done before I shot off on the next leg of the tour, I headed upstairs to print up some stuff. I was in my bare feet (as I always am of course, even if my bare feet are in some shoes, I am still in the feet, but my feet were bare is what I am saying), but had forgotten about the drawing pins. Can you see where this is going?
I sat at my desk and felt a sharp pain in my foot. Instinctively I moved my foot away from the pain, much more quickly than I had put it down in the first place and felt a sharper pain in my heel. I realised what had happened, saw the two pins in my foot, the second one up to its plums in me. I quickly knelt down to extract them and of course another pin went into my knee.
My sitcom life continues, but like the sitcoms that I write it is one that continues unviewed by anyone. If slapstick happens and no one sees it, is it still funny? Perhaps it is funnier. I have always felt that this kind of terrible strong of accidents is only really amusing if it happens in reality- when slapstick is scripted it loses that verite and immediacy. Watching false slapstick is the equivalent of viewing pornography instead of having sex. Though you if you find yourself masturbating there is probably something wrong with you.
The sitcom writers of my life are playing a blinder this week though, what with birds inside the house and cats up chimneys and having to extract drawing pins from my feet and legs.
Still at least all this acupuncture cured my impotency. Either that or I am sexually aroused by slapstick. But only when it happens to me. That’s the most perverted kind of slapstick fetish.
Off into uncertain weather conditions for another three nights away from home. This tour is quite gently paced and there are none of the 15 nights away that I actually preferred (but only cos it got the tour out of the way quicker) eight or nine years ago. But I miss my family more each time and the prospect of three days without my son’s stupid smiling face and my daughter’s songs about poo and my wife’s songs about wee (not really, her songs about wee are useless) made me feel blue.
Plus the possibility that I might be devoured by the ice storm that was coming and only discovered in 5000 years time where my mummified corpse would be probed by scientists who wanted to see what was up my bum and then put in a museum…. to be honest that was also quite arousing. I may have a problem.
The first gig of the three was in Cheddar. I think possibly due to an interview I’d given with the Cheddar Valley Gazette (who once described me as a nationally-known comedian) for the first time ever the theatre was practically full. And though I saved the sensitive folk of Cheddar from a couple of the racier routines, there was still plenty of filth and it went down better than any of the usually mildly awkward shows I have done here.
Matt Wheeler was in the audience. I walked to school with him 35 to 40 years ago. He wore a black armband the day after John Lennon died. He can’t be 50.
Jon Barratt and Paula Maunders were also there. They were childhood sweethearts and are still happily married and have barely changed. They laughed at me for having young kids, when theirs have all flown the nest. But the joke will be on them if they become grandparents. I am only a parent and thus young. That’s how it works.
