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Just woken up at 6.30am, my son wanted to watch the Marley and Marley video from Muppet Christmas Carol. This has been his favourite song for a good long while, though he hasn't requested it for a month or so. I found it on YouTube. “Are Marley and Marley ghosts?†he asked. It seemed odd that he hadn't realised it before, but maybe he was just checking. It sounded like he was surprised by the thought. “Yes, they are,†I told him,
He took this in.
“Do ghosts have bumholes?†He asked. Very seriously. Not going for laughs. It was a matter of scientific enquiry. But a bit of a mindfuck when you've only been awake for five minutes. “It's a good question,†I told him and it was. I immediately knew I'd have to ask both my guests tonight at RHLSTP. “I am not sure,†I told him, in what I thought was a fairly honest reply until I remembered I am pretty sure that ghosts don't exist and so therefore don't have bumholes. But if they do exist, do they have bumholes? I mean probably, right? But as a ghost is just an apparition and a shadow of things that once were, unless the ghost has no clothes on their lower half (and I've never heard of a naked ghost, even though loads of people must die naked) then you can't see the bumhole. And presumably they can't take their clothes off once dead. So in essence they only have the things that you can see (they're see-through but you can't see their internal organs, so again one can assume they don't have them), so maybe they don't have bumholes. Unless you can see their bum.
Also they don't use their bumholes - unless, I suppose, that they were doing a poo when they died and that's hanging out of their ghost bum (again I have never heard anyone talking about that when they say they've seen a ghost, but a lot of people must die in that situation).
I'd later talk to Jamie Demetriou about it and then wondered if ghosts really have a lower half at all - or do you lose the legs and stuff. You know, some ghosts are just a sort of sheet with eyeholes. But do they cut a bumhole in the sheet? Maybe. You rarely see a sheet ghost from behind.
What a wonderful material and emergency question generator a 4 year old is. If he can some up with something like this once a week, then I guess I will get enough stand up and podcast material from it to pay for his upkeep.
The podcasts were great tonight. I've not met Jamie before, but he's a very thoughtful and smart man and works impressively hard to create his stuff and is getting a very deserved run of success. Stath Lets Flats is a great show, if you haven't seen it yet and very much its own thing. It was a lot of fun chatting to him and riffing on stupid ideas like ghost bums.
Samira Ahmed is equally impressive - a very driven journalist and fiercely smart. She is funny too, but also serious and intellectual in a way that is always fun to have on my stupid/smart show. She seemed bamboozled to have been asked on, even after we'd done an hour of very interesting chat about Mary Whitehouse, John Craven's Newsround and her fight to get equal pay from the BBC.
Sometimes I worry that the podcast format might run out of steam or that I've forgotten what it is that makes this show work - is it an interview show or a chat or should we be generating comedy out of nothing or talking about serious subjects? The thing of course is that it can be all of those things and none of those things and keeps on changing and that's why (I hope, but also believe) that it keeps on working. The line-ups for this series so far have been utterly phenomenal and rich and on paper bamboozling, but in reality have worked perfectly. Can't wait for you all to hear them - though
you can pay to watch all the ones we've done so far here.
Thanks to everyone who came - it wasn't sold out (which was surprising) but much healthier numbers than the first couple of weeks. Next week is basically sold out, but keep your eye on the website for returns etc.
