Return Of The Blog

Its the return of the blog, oooh yeah, return of the blog, oh right now, return of the blog, you know that I’ll be back, here I am. etc etc cue your best Mark Morrison/Kermit The Frog voice. Anyway, yes, hello, this blog is back. Hello? Hello? Oh. There’s no one here anymore after my month long hiatus. Oops. I can understand why. What is the point of a daily blog if it doesn’t happen daily? Or even weekly? Well my friends, foes, chum, chumps and chumpettes, very little. Though to be honest, I had very little to write about in my time away and I thought it best not to bestow you with paragraphs of dull and instead take a breather from literary rantings. To sum up the last month – I gigged in Estonia and Finland which was incredible, but on the downside made gigging the UK shit again. In one week I dealt with horribly chatty women who talked all the way through the show in Poole, a lovely huge crowd in Chichester, an apathetic, bribed crowd in Leicester, a racist crowd in Bournemouth and a meh crowd in London. After feeling hugely deflated about the place I call home, I fucked off to Norway for a week where they proved to me that the world is lovely, with mountains, fjords, instant heart attack inducing brown cheese and respect for comedy. Incredible comedy gigs, a better understanding of English than many people I’ve met in the UK – and I mean British people, I’m not being xenophobic – and audiences who actually want to see a show. I’ve since been back and spending most days crying with sadness at the government’s constant destruction of the country, playing far too much Skyrim, occasionally blogging for the Huffington Post and doing gigs I honestly couldn’t give a shit about including one in Kent where I managed to insult a deaf women who sat in the front row with her back to the stage. To be honest, she deserved it. It was a temporary period of disdain and so each day, this blog would merely have said things like ‘honestly, you are all fuckheads’ before describing how I want to put my head in a pit and get a career in sleeping.

But I’ve missed typing that sort of thing, so here I am again, perhaps not daily, but with regular witterings to tell you – the one person that may still occasionally check this shit – about my life that you really don’t care about. Well to add to that ever growing set of things you know about me that probably take up useful space in your brain that you might need to do things like remember the PIN number for that card you only use in emergency, where you live, or your name, here is today’s newsflash: I’ve decided not to do a solo show at the Edinburgh Festival this year. Yes. There you go. Woah woah woah, stop those tears chickadee. Don’t go tearing up your travel tickets to the Scottish city, and pissing all over those few tickets you bought to see other shows you don’t care about but thought you might fill some of your otherwise meaningless life time with. I really would love to do a solo show and I have an idea for one and everything, but I’m not going to. Why? Well it’s all for a very good reason i.e. I really can’t afford it. I’m fairly sure that after owing at least £5k every year – not including all the money I don’t earn during Edinburgh having an impact on my bills for the two months that follow – that there was an audible cheer from my bank when I decided not to go. As a visitor you may think Edinburgh is expensive, but you honestly have no idea just how bad it is for performers and how much it costs us to work for a month. Yep, we pay to work. That’s worse than the government’s ‘slavery under any other name, still smells like elitist, right wing evil’ workfare scheme. At least those unfortunate souls forced into stacking shelves for nought but the threat of losing their benefits didn’t have to pay to do it. I can imagine, had Argos decided to stay in the scheme, just how shitty service would have got if every time someone served you, they did it without getting paid. They’d spend at least 45 minutes hiding at the back before bringing you a box of something they’ve spent 10 minutes of that kicking with hate. Now imagine them doing all that but having to pay for the privilege. Not only are you not getting your item number from the catalogue, but you’re getting a turd in a box instead. Maximum disdain for life achieved.

Edinburgh every year costs us lot bloody loads. You have to hire the venue at a minimum of £1500-2500 for the month. Add to that the PR cost of at least £1k+, printing and flyer costs of the same again, accommodation of the same again, promotion costs of at least the same again, and enough money to pay your rent back home, all your bills and to live for a month despite not receiving an ounce of pay. ‘Ouch’ is an understatement. So this year, I’ve decided the Fringe can go punch itself in its overblown face. Especially as with the Olympics cutting into it, I really don’t expect to make anything less than minus £4k. Which is what would happen if I sold out everyday. Its like saying your worst case scenario is a punch in the face where you lose all your teeth and best case scenario is a punch in the face but two of your teeth remain making you look crazy.

There is no such thing as a union for comedians, because despite us being a bloody friendly lot (and we are. Seriously. I can only name about 10 comics I think are utter bellends), comics are still fiercely competitive. If a union of comics said they wouldn’t do a certain show, then that show would just offer it to newer comics who were desperate for a leg up and they’d still end up with a full, if less experienced bill. I do wish, however, that we could muster up a union, just once, to decide that everyone – absolutely everyone – didn’t go to Edinburgh one year. Just once. Then they’d all realise that a festival of comedy, theatre and music can’t happen without comedians, actors and musicians. We’d all meet in Hyde Park, remember what the sunshine was like in August and drink beer while promoters and venues in Scotland realised they need to make things more reasonable in these times of inflation and recession.

Its quite hard in a way to shout on stage – as I have been these last few weeks – about the oppression of the current economy and the government, and how people are becoming less and less able to live within their means – when the comedy scene has been like that for years. Most fees haven’t changed since the early 90′s, despite fuel, food and hotels all raising considerably in price since then. I’m honestly having to look at gigs that are out of London and work out if, after I drive there and spend petrol, its worth me doing, which is really sad. Especially as some of the best audiences are those the furthest away. So yeah, this year, no Edinburgh solo show. However, like a total tool, I’ll still be there doing kids shows, missing any kind of warm weather and spending my whole time missing doing a solo show. Ho hum.

See why I took a break? Well no more. You can look forward to me explaining about the miseries of the world more regularly again. Right, now off to see an ancient Welsh castle and spend the whole time complaining that I haven’t got wi-fi.

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A Small Pressie Por Vu

Merry Christmas everyone! Yes, even you! No, don’t turn around. There’s no one behind you. You, I mean you. Merry Christmas, festive greetings, Merry Xmas, Marry Crispmass (this is illegal in some states in the US so be careful) and Happity Chrimbo or whatever else it is that nobheads say.

Of course I’m not properly blogging today, as I’ve got to race off to my family’s house to play the annual ‘Who can consume their own body weight in food first’ game, then the ‘who will fall asleep on the sofa first game’. These are usually both won by the same person. So instead of a lengthy yarn, instead here is a small pressie to you. Not that you’ll have time to watch it today but I decided to stick my entire 2011 Edinburgh show up online before it gets completely out of date. Here’s part one:

TIERNAN DOUIEB VS THE WORLD PART ONE

And Part Two

TIERNAN DOUIEB VS THE WORLD PART TWO

And Part Three

TIERNAN DOUIEB VS THE WORLD PART THREE

And Part Twelve.

TIERNAN DOUIEB VS THE WORLD PART FOUR

 

Enjoy and if you do, please send it to others, spread the word etc as I’d much rather it get watched for free than not watched at all. Have a lovely day and remember if you get something you don’t like, it might look exciting if on fire. Merry Christmas!

 

 

 

A Case Of Boredom

Despite the fact that my life seems like a constant whirlwind of excitement, there are some days that just trundle by without much little more excitement in my life than an accountant may get from making an equation on Excel work i.e. none. Today is one of those. I am currently sitting in the Royal Festival Hall hoping that my brain will at some point, kick in with some severe magic. It hasn’t and instead all it can do is play about on Facebook, make me repeatedly think how hot it is today and take pride in the big suitcase I bought this morning. Yes. I bought a big suitcase. I slightly take back what I said about excitement because while it’s definitely dwindled away now, I have spent a large part of this morning wheeling a large suitcase around the West End imagining all the things I can put in it. I haven’t had my own suitcase for a while and the last one I stole off my parents managed to break whilst in Norway in January. After two days of finding it very difficult to cart around I checked and saw one of the wheels was almost completely shorn off. I have no idea how and like to believe it saved my life whilst accidentally walking around a field of saw blades.

 

My new suitcase has a 30 year guarantee which is amazing. I aim to kick the shit out of it for 29 years and 11 months then take it back and get a new one, even though in the future there won’t be suitcases as we’ll just win zip stuff and put it in our pockets of our space jeans. True story. But it is properly hardcore and I’m fairly sure it could survive being attacked by sharks and bears all at once (yes I know it’d either have to be sea bears or flying sharks for them both to be in the same area, but I’m taking that into consideration) and could probably be ok where it to be hit by a monster truck in the face. Not that it has a face. But if it did, it would. It’s properly huge and I’m almost considering fitting myself in it, sticking a stamp on it and letting Royal Mail take me to Edinburgh next week while I have a bloody good snooze. It could fit all sorts of other stuff in it too. Weapons, wild animals, other people, and there is a part of me that wonders if I can survive with just a tshirt and one pair of jeans for the month while I use my ubercase to carry around things for criminals like a low key johnny Mnemonic.

 

This is how desperately today needs some excitement. I’ve taken to pretending I’d have the risk ability to cart a suitcase full of weapons around and imagining being attacked by sky sharks. Brain magic really needs to happen soon or I’m just going to prop that case on its side, climb in and sleep in it till someone makes me leave or carries me off.

Waiting

I am sitting in my parent’s house waiting for the courtesy car that they were given while theirs is repaired, to be delivered. While I sit and do this, they are in Lisbon, in the sun. This is one of those moments I feel I have been bullied into submission through sheer force of relation. While they swan around absorbing tons of vitamin D, I am trapped indoors with the time frame of 12 til 6 unable to go anyway until ‘the man’ arrives. This is, the opposite of fun. Sure you could say I’ve relished driving the car around myself for the last week while they’ve been away. Sure you might add its nice to be in their house all quiet and able to write in peace. Yeah you could say all of those things but I’m busy procrastinating out of spite for the fact I can’t be elsewhere procrastinating in a different way.

It is now only two weeks till the Edinburgh festival kicks off and so finding new and interesting ways to procrastinate is very much the name of the game in order to keep stress and panic levels high. So far I’ve already gained the mid-Festival spot on my nose, which seems to have appeared about 4 weeks early, so I think I’m doing very very well. Just yesterday, when heading the Royal Festival Hall – my current favourite writing hotspot – my working opportunity was hampered by the graduation ceremonies happening in the building that I managed to walk right into. Rather than thinking that I should find somewhere else to hide, work and utilise what little time I have left to the fullest, I instead played the game ‘how many people’s graduation photos can I accidentally get in’. Using a clever weaving and walking skill picked up many a moon ago whilst traversing the streets of busy London I’m reckoning I’m in at least 30 of the South Bank Uni’s graduates special last day photos. I live in hope that in 10 years time they’ll have a reunion and spend most of it talking about the ‘small beardy man’ who none of them remember but clearly must have been important to appear in so many pics. Its a great game and many of you should play it on unsuspecting students.

Thusly however, very little work was done yesterday. And now, today, I’m playing the ‘how can I start work when at any minute a man may knock on the door’. Chances are he’ll only arrive at 6pm just as I’m about to pull my own eyes out through boredom and having run out of all other areas in which to waste time. Little do Enterprise Euro Car know just how much of my life’s work rests in their probably grubby and oily hands. Little do they know.

‘Ave A Banana

I don’t know what to blog about today. I had set today aside as the last day of doing nothing before Edinburgh and have already messed this up by booking in a preview for tonight which now means I have to work on it, eating too many amazing cupcakes which have sent my blood sugars loopy and therefore made me too fidgety to sit still and I’ve discovered a banana in L’s kitchen that has gone so far beyond the point of ripe its close to becoming a fossil fuel. The combination of these things has rendered the day largely unrestable and as I’m sure you can imagine I’m a jittery mess of prehistoric banana excitement and preview worries. 

To be fair the preview worries aren’t that bad and due to my self-assurance that I can hone my evening’s show to the next step closer to Edinburgh with only an hour or so’s work has indeed meant that I’ve knowingly scuppered my own day with immense sugar intake. That was a self conscious decision. The banana however, was a discovery no one could have guessed. Its skin blacked to the point of seeming like a denizen from a scorched earth, it stood poised above various jars on the sideboard just waiting for my nosey curiosity to see it staring back at me. How long has it been there? Who knows. How long will it remain? No one can tell. Is it safe to eat? No. Definitely not. A small incision with a knife proved the insides to be gooey, myself recording the time of death at 3.44pm, and after calling L in to stare at the incredible ex-fruit, it was disposed of in the bin, despite us both knowing it could probably power the UK for a fortnight.

Gone off fruit will never stop being a small fascination to me. I remember back in the yester year when I worked for Camden Council, and an entire week was wasted by one of the staff members showing us a clementine she had left on her desk for over a fortnight. The air conditioning had resulted in turning it into a hard shell of orange misery and it became a small highlight for any passers by in need of procrastination. ie every passer by. People would tap it, shake it, bang it on the desk and even rap it against their own head with many a comment about what a bizarre occurrence it was. It both highlighted the banality of such a workforce and at the same time the desperate need for something of more interest than excel spreadsheets and angry council residents.

I feel like disposing of the banana was a mistake. I could have turned up at the preview tonight holding aloft my petrified Musa acuminata and merely avoided writing any more jokes but saying things like ‘I bet if you slipped on that you’d go back in time’ and such other wonderful observations.

 

Sigh. I’d really better do some work.

 

 

Lunchboxing

Today’s lunch consists of crips and a mini toblerone bar. I have finally got some money, but I decided that I quite wanted to spend at least one element of today being an 8 year old child and as I sip my fizzy drink and crunch away at my Paprika Max (the best crisps in the world ever, factoid) I almost long for a small lunchbox to be eating them out of. Preferably Spiderman, He-Man or Transformers, but hey, I’m not picky which one. I sometimes miss the idea of a lunchbox. Mostly because it was rarely made by me, and so you just pick up a little lightweight display of your cultural likes, parade it around, then at midday, crack it open to discover what delights have been placed by your parent/s for your munching delight. I tried to pack my own a few times but my inability to clingfilm or foil properly often meant I would carry a dripping container around the playground only to find a congealed gloop of juice and bread very much drowning and not waving inside. It also lost the element of surprise that my mum or dad might give it. Would today’s treat be a chocolate bar or a clementine? Who could tell. It was a veritable low budget Pandora’s box. You can’t quite do the same now. I don’t think I’d trust anyone other than my mum or dad to make me a packed lunch box and I’m fairly sure I’d live in fear that after walking down the street with my hella cool Radiohead or Wu-Tang Box swinging in my arm, that I’d crack it open to find a granola bar and a plum. THAT ISN’T A LUNCH! I would get all upset, try and swap my items with the other weird adults who still carry lunchboxes and the whole thing would be an upset. So I’ve settled for crisps, fizzy drink and chocolate. And no box. Its the closest I can get to winning today.

 

I need this comfort food as by this time last year I had pretty much written my entire Edinburgh show. It wasn’t by any means finished but I had already done several hour previews with the structure and many of the jokes in place, and constant tweaking needed until early to mid July when I had, what I considered to be a finished product. This time this year, I have four pages of notes, about 15 minutes of disjointed material and a certain air of panic. What’s the difference and why is it taking me longer this year than last? Well, here, my friends, in the terms of 90′s hip hop parlance, is the dilly-o. Firstly, I’ve been busier this year with writing for other things. There is nothing like stopping you writing your own stuff that you will lose money doing, than writing for other people that has the faintest possibility of earning money. Reason Numero Duo is that I’m feeling a bit cocky about writing an hour. I shouldn’t be and knowing I feel like this makes me feel even more panicked about it all, but I’ve now written a fuckton of material in my years of gigging, including two full hours and another 30-40 mins of new stuff in the last 3-4 months alone, so the idea of churning out 55 mins really doesn’t worry me in the same way it used to. However churning out 55 mins of a coherent show is a whole different game that I still don’t know all the rules for. Gulp. Fear. Thirdly, everytime I start writing, I get an email from someone about doing something else, writing something else, gigging somewhere or seeing someone and my show gets knocked back to the bottom of the list like a fat kid at the school football team. Lastly, its because my show has a vaguely topical theme and the arse about me stupidly picking such a subject, is that it all keeps changing. No sooner have a written what I consider to be a cracking bit about the NHS reform or some such bit of legislation, the government does something even more despicable and leaves everything I’ve written forgotten in the dust.

 

So the solution? Well first preview is in two Sundays time and between now and then I need to get my head down, not see friends or anyone and write like my life depends on it. Or y’know, I could just keep eating crisps and hope something really funny happens to me between now and then that I can talk about for 40 minutes. Or improvise. Or just run away to Columbia with my shiny new lunchbox and start again. It’ll be fine either way I’m sure. Gulp. Fear.

 

Last note. Last night I was all a bit cultured and took L to go see my friend’s company Simple 8 Theatre’s new show ‘Four Stages of Cruelty’. Its based on four of Hogarth’s paintings and is wonderfully funny, exciting and macabre all at once. It has a fantastic and extremely talented cast and the most inventive horse creation I’ve ever seen. Its on at the Arcola from now till end of June and I couldn’t recommend it enough. Tickets are available from:

FOUR STAGES OF CRUELTY

Jackets, Money and Idiots

I have actual things to say today and I totally would’ve blogged about them earlier, only my iPhone needed a new update apparently and that means my whole laptop has to have seizures for about an hour while it downloads it and upgrades. It amazes me how despite the futuristic nature of Apple – the iPad being the closest we have so far to something from Minority Report, the iPhone ensuring social lives die within seconds of purchase due to a never ending escape from correspondence – they still falter on certain elements of their software taking a large amount of your life away unnecessarily. Take coping a CD onto your iTunes for example? Sometimes I think it’d be quicker to book a recording studio and re-do all the songs from the album myself, master them straight into mp3 and then put them on my iPod rather than just stick a CD in the drive and wait for eternity to pass while it works track by track. Similarly, upgrading my iPhone is one of the most tiresome processes known to humankind. My macbook isn’t great and I’m sure its aged ways aren’t the best for dealing with such things, but I’m also sure that now, in this here future, I shouldn’t have to put my entire day plans on hold just so I can have a slightly smoother menu setting on my screen.

Right, so back to the actual topics. Today’s blog contains three themes. One being a boring one that I’ve mentioned many times before, one being something similar to something I wrote a while ago and one being a sure sign that I am both naive yet old and grumpy all at once. Let’s roll team!

MONEY MONEY MONEY

Its that time of year again when Edinburgh payments need to be made and as such this means I am so broke that fixing me would require more superglue and patience than its worth. I forget as I roll through the months leading up to this time that I probably shouldn’t buy another copy of The Walking Dead comic book, or spend far too much on booze as it’d all come in useful paying the extortionate prices for August, but it never seems to click. I could have had a great deal less fun between last September and now and not have to contemplate how I’ll live on soup and pasta for the next three months, but then I would have had a lot less fun, and consequently have less material for my Edinburgh show ultimately rendering the point in going useless.

It is such a silly amount of money. The cost of our flat this year is three times what we pay to live on the same road as Lauren Laverne in London. That’s just ludicrous. I bet Lauren Laverne won’t be living on our road in Edinburgh so as far as I’m concerned its way overpriced. It’d better compensate by having its own batcave/laser/guard werewolf/ portal to Narnia or I’m going to complain. I’ve at least been assured it has wi-fi, which is some consolation.

Every year I contemplate just how to go about finding a rich benefactor and every year I’m reminded they haven’t really existed since the 70′s. All I want is an anonymous donor who will put a crapload of money into my account to sponsor my mirth making and in return every now and then I have to go and kill someone. Or you know, just annoy them a bit. Or tickle them. One of those. Is it that much to ask? If anyone who reads this doesn’t want me to eat out of bins during August and fancies giving me somewhere in the region of at least £3-4k, then comment below. Or put some in my bank account and push a note through my door saying who you want tickled to death.

THE JACKET

Outside our house as I returned home today, was a Teddy Smith jacket. Like a really nice suit jacket with fancy velvet lining and probably cost someone a good £200 at least. I say was, as its now inside, despite complaints from Tom about how skanky it is for me to bring it in. Finders keepers and all that I say. Well, its not even that I want it for myself, its more part of the curiosity about where it came from. If I owned a jacket like that I would make sure that I didn’t just leave it on walls outside other people’s flats knowing full well they’d take it inside to find clues. I’m hoping its not a dead man’s jacket. I am hoping its Lauren Laverne’s jacket so she’ll realise we are neighbours and we can hang out. I’m pretty sure its not Lauren Laverne’s jacket. I also like to think its someone’s jacket who, half way down our hill, decided they were sick of looking slick in life. Perhaps an estate agent or banker who suddenly saw the futility of their job and realised that by discarding the uniform jacket of the businessman they could look at a new life travelling the world barefoot in search of justice like Kane from Kung Fu. Or, more likely, it was someone who was drunk. Either way I’m going to try it on and put it back outside and keep watch for who finds it.

 

THE APPRENTICE

I watched the Apprentice last night. This isn’t like me and I partly blame it on the person I was watching it with, although to be fair to her, I could have sat in another room, but I felt tweeting potential would be higher if I stayed. I haven’t seen it for many many series as the entire concept of such a show bothers me. So several self absorbed, smug, arrogant idiots do a fuckton of work and tasks to earn money for a man who already has a lot of money due to him making something that hasn’t been in use for about 30 years. Then everyone watches as the idiots make even bigger idiots out of themselves and then get fired from a job they weren’t getting paid for in the first place and so ultimately equals being the same as the worst internship anyone could ever do. Its not an apprenticeship. All they learn is that when they appear on telly people think they’re obnoxious bellends. Unfortunately most of them are the sort of people that will ignore that and carry on being as such. And year in, year out, people watch this parade of morons make and sell soup or whatever the crap challenge is that they’d never have to do in their real field of work, and everyone indulges in sheer schadenfraude when they screw it all up and Sir Alan gets shouty.

Now I know this is being naive, but will it ever be possible to just have a show where everyone is a bit nice to each other, gives constructive criticism and ultimately everyone learns how you should do a job and work with each other and the nicest person gets a lot of money? Where when Sir Alan says ‘You’re Fired’ they mean a clay effigy of them is put into a kiln as a lovely memento of their time there. Wouldn’t that be nice? Boring yes, but bloody nice. I wrote a show concept recently which was all about random acts of kindness and two different telly people threw it back in my face saying that no one ‘wants nice TV’. This is so disheartening to hear and I blame the disillusionment of youth entirely on it all. What I actually want is a ‘Britain’s Got Talent’ where every act is cheered on and the judges have three ticks to buzz in when they do particularly good tricks, a remake of Big Brother where people get given an older sibling for a day to take them out to the zoo and a Tool Academy where people are trained to be engineers for the benefit of society. And this of course, is why I don’t work in telly. Yet. Or ever.