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We were busy filming unnecessary extras for the TMWRNJ DVD when we did the Stewart Lee RHLSTP (out this week) so we didn't get to do a backstage interview for
the lovely people who donate a pound or more a month here (there's quite an impressive library building up of extras including stuff from RHLSTP, RHMOL and the occasional bonus thing - we will be putting up the few TMWRNJ extras that we managed soon). So to give myself a bit of practice with filming and editing and to work out what it is possible to do from home (with half an eye on producing some cheap inserts for AIOTM or just one off Youtube bits) I decided to film me interviewing my ventriloquist dummy instead of Stew. There is a link there, of course, as the legendary and possibly fantasy story of it being used as a masturbatory aid during Edinburgh 87, but I also think the dummy looks a bit like Stew - it has the same hair style that he had in the 90s and similar fashion sense and I've been thinking for a while about doing a sketch in which it becomes apparent that as Stew reaches ever higher heights of fame and experimental comedy I am sat at home, recreating old Lee and Herring sketches in my basement with a ventriloquist dummy (who won't play ball because even he is embarrassed by the situation). Which I am sure is how many of my detractors who don't think comedy exists outside of TV picture me. As usual, it's very much comedy at my own expense, though I do find the public perception of erstwhile double acts (including musicians writers and anyone who famously worked as a team) fascinating. The fact that even Paul McCartney is stung by the thought that people think that John Lennon was the talented and cool one is testament to the power of the idea that someone is always carried in a partnership. We all have that rivalry to some extent with work colleagues or family members. And deal with it in different ways.
As with my snooker podcast I like to play around with the expectations and the madness and the blurred division between truth and fiction. Luckily in reality, mainly (I think), I am able to see the funny side of all this and allow myself to play with the perceptions and that lack of grasp on reality. But like with the snooker, I do seem able to divorce myself from reality enough to talk to a ventriloquist dummy without seemingly having that much idea of what he's going to say. I noticed the parallels of the snooker with ventriloquism when I talked to the brilliant Nina Conti. Her dummies say stuff that she would not say. Some of it might be true or have some truth in it and yet she seems to not have total control over what comes out. It's the human condition. We're all trying to stop the voice in our head saying the stuff that it thinks. I suppose that's part of what makes Peep Show great as well.
Anyway, Ally did a good job of undermining me and bigging up Stewart Lee and making me look insane and I actually massively enjoyed the experience of dealing with both Ally and his wife Sally, who were both made by my great-grandad in 1892 and used to perform little sketches to convert children to Christianity. He cannot have imagined all the things that they would go through. Would he be glad that they were still in the family and still being used to entertain? Or upset about their swearing and weirdness and their part in a strange alleged incident in a Masonic Lodge? Who knows? But you can only see it if you subscribe to the badge scheme, so luckily very few people will ever see it. As with the snooker, my wife, who saw me editing the sketch, was not very impressed. She's worried people will think I am really mad. But obviously I am not really mad. I am just talking to a 120 year old block of papier mache whilst pretending it is my more successful friend and allowing it to still defeat me in all arguments.
Weirdly though the sketch only took me about an hour to put together late in the day, I wasted most of the daylight hours trying to put together a youtube clip to publicise the podcast and the badges.
Again it only took 15 minutes to film, was very much improvised and included an appearance from a very reluctant Smithers, but I didn't import it into my computer correctly and had to try and edit it together at least a dozen times, sometimes losing the pictures (because they were still on the camera), sometimes the sound disappearing for no reason and sometimes just having a situation where it refused to let me export what I'd done. I more or less worked it out in the end (aside from a flashing green light at the end, which comes, I think, from the countdown to Smither's “voice-over†- I don't know why it does that) and although it was frustrating and time consuming it did make me think that, with practise, it will be relatively easy to make stuff for the internet. I need to get a bit more finesse on stuff and work out how to detach the sound track from the pictures so I can do more effective cutaways, but just by using my old digital camcorder and my phone it had the makings of something that doesn't look entirely shit. So there are possibilities here. I only wish I was 25 rather than 47. The internet offers you younger people an amazing outlet for unfettered creativity. I just don't think I am going to have the time or energy to take things as far as I could. But if I had the same lack of responsibilities, willingness to work all day long and ability to live as cheaply as I did in the early 90s now, but still had access to a computer and a camera and the internet, I think the sky would be the limit. You're out there somewhere Charlie Chaplin (Or Charlotte Chappettelin) of the internet.
Also as I am wearing a T shirt with 1990s Richard Herring on it (which will be one of the prizes in the February prize draw for monthly subscribers - another one of these just sold on eBay for £51) I am hoping that in 15 years time I can make the picture of me wearing the T-shirt into another T shirt and so on to infinity (or death, whichever comes first).
