Hallo Ian

Ah Halloween, the night where lots of people, completely forgetting the original roots of Samhain celebrating the harvest and ‘dark half’ of the year arriving, all dress up as twats to run around pretending that scary things are fun. They aren’t fun. Sure you go ahead and dress up as zombies, having a laugh and a giggle, but should zombies ever attack you’ll be sorry you mocked them. Oh haha you’re a vampire, brilliant. Let’s all mock creatures whose soul purpose in existence is to suck the blood from people until they either die or undie, going on to suck others blood and starting again. Ghosts aren’t fun, have you seen Paranormal Activity? No, me either. I’m too scared. Werewolves are a pet you can only have once a month which is disappointing to any child and Mummies just confuse emergency services people when you wear the costume then get drunk and injured. Is he already fixed? No one knows.

Then there are those who dress up as superheroes and celebrities. Now, while I think those who costume themselves as denizens of evil are asking for trouble, at least they honour the celebration in order with what it became after many Chinese/Celtic/American whispers. Pretending they have breached the walls between the living and the dead, that are at their thinnest on Hallows Eve. Looking at the ancient Celtic tradition of leaving a place at dinner for the dead even though they probably want brains and you’ve made potatoes. So I can get why you might dress as Michael Myers for such an event. But why oh why would you be Spiderman? Oh hey, I love the idea of dressing as Spiderman. Don’t get me wrong. If I could find a flattering enough suit, I’d dress as Spiderman every single day. But he’s not remotely a ghoul. He’s not even scary or evil. He’s a champion of people. Since when did Halloween become ‘let’s all just dress as whoever we like then get pissed?’ Being dressed as one of Marvel’s top characters isn’t going to scare the shit out of other drunk revellers is it?

Nor does being a celebrity. Yes some of them are terrifying. Yes, if I met Lady Gaga in a dark alley all covered in meat I’d scream and run away. But she’s not undead. The exception to this are all the people who were dressed up as Steve Jobs or Jimmy Saville. You might say that they too aren’t scary, but since Steve has died Blackberry has fucked up so he clearly has otherworldly powers and just imagine all the children Jimmy’s ghost will try to fix it for and it makes you shudder.

All I’m saying is that I’d like Halloween to be proper terrifying again. I want people to dress up in black cloaks with huge scythes, I want people to stop trying to look sexy and just give themselves horrific looking head wound make up, and I want people to dress up as witch finder generals and dunk anyone who’s in a short skirt in water. Ok, so maybe the last bit is a bit harsh, and maybe getting someone wet when they’re only in a short skirt sounds more pervy than I meant it to be. I’m just saying no longer do I want to hide in at Halloween scared of children throwing eggs at my house, and more I want to hide because I don’t want to open the door to the clown from IT and the ghost of a small girl holding a spurtle. You know small girl ghosts are scary. FACT.

Right, I’m not sure where this blog is going but I’ve got opinions and I’ll just shout them around till someone listens. Or tells me to stop. So we’ll just close this blog. Before we do though, here are some small things:

- Yesterday I went to see Dylan Moran then I met Dylan Moran. Hooray! Dylan Moran!

- In live performance, I have no idea what the Rubberbandits are saying. No clue.

- Yesterday I chased Keith Farnan around the stage at Comedy Club 4 Kids hiding behind a giant inflatable Bulmers Pear. We said it was a ‘pear wolf’. I am more proud of this than you can imagine.

- My new favourite phrase what I made is ‘Captain Whatthefuck?’ Keith added to this with ‘Lieutenant Giveashit’. More swears with ranks please.

- I still love Galway.

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Woah Woah*

Its probably not hard to imagine that I was one of those kids that was very much into comic books from a very young age. Whilst I was very much into the world of Spiderman and superhero chums, the first books that ever captured my little imagination were Tintin and Asterix. Perhaps something to do with my Gallic descent, Asterix would make me giggle for hours as I laughed at all the silly names and Obelix’s catastrophic nature. I honestly feel I learnt more from those books about the Roman Empire and European geography than I ever did from school, and it certainly taught me the word cacophony thanks to the warblings of the bard. However, no matter how much I enjoyed the tales of the indomitable Gaul, reading Tintin was a whole different bundle of excitement for the 7 year old me.

Here was a man, who looks very much like a boy, going on the sort of adventures an imaginative kid can only dream of, with the sort of ramshackle companions that can only make a journey more entertaining. Tales of the Aztecs, finding the Yeti and searching for hidden treasure, Herge’s beautifully drawn books kept me reading them over and over again, ticking all the boxes of a boy’s fiction needs. L told me she saw an item on channel 4 news that said children identify with Tintin because his character is so bland, and yet he is surrounded by such strong personalities such as that of Captain Haddock, Professor Calculus and even his dog Snowy, that many can put themselves in his place and therefore feel so enthralled with the story. I think that’s exactly what I did. Admittedly there was a small blip when I bought Tintin Au Congo in France (as it was unavailable in the UK) only find it was pretty racist and included a bit where he drilled a hole in a rhino’s back and put dynamite in it, which made me feel as far removed from the man in plus fours as possible.

Overall though, it was a series of books that meant a lot to me and was the reading equivalent of Indiana Jones, with the benefit that it didn’t make quite as much noise when I indulged in it, annoying the parents less than usual (I was good at this. The condition of my 1001 joke book that still resides at their house is a testament to such things). So, it was with some trepidation I went to see the Tintin film yesterday. When I first heard about it and found out who was involved – Spielburg directing, Peter Jackson producing, Stephen Moffat, Joe Cornish and Edgar Wright on the script, not to mention the cast – I immediately had high hopes, but the CGi trailer made me concerned that like so many other of my childhood joys, Hollywood had taken it and punched it in the face. Sure Spielburg did some of my favourite films of all time – the Indiana Jones trilogy amongst others – but he also did Indiana Jones 4 which ruins that a bit. Peter Jackson did Lord Of The Rings which was astounding and as a fan of the book, something that felt it was as close as it could have been if Tolkien had made it himself, but then he also did King Kong which was shit. Stephen Moffat has written the best and worst Doctor Who episodes of recent times. So it was all up in the air, and sitting down in my seats at the Vue cinema with my 3D glasses making me look like an 80′s reject, I waited.

Some films affect me for days after. Scott Pilgrim had me pretty much running up walls and shouting quotes from it for days. Spiderman 2 similarly made me want to climb things for about a week. Tintin similarly has given me a bug to travel the world on adventures and maybe get a small white dog. From the very opening credits it was everything I wanted it to be, replete with a score from John Williams. Matching the Secret of the Unicorn book almost perfectly, it didn’t feel the need to have any extra rubbish characters or fiddle with what was already a truly epic plot line. The CGi looked incredible, all the actors pretty much how I had always read them in my head. Even Captain Haddock, who’d I’d always seen as a West Country man, seemed perfect with Andy Serkis’ Scottish tones. More importantly, the whole film was done with care, seemingly by people who fully respected Herge’s original visions. That’s all I ever want in a film adaption. Just care about where it came from. If a story’s good then there is never any need to tamper with it, and the Tintin stories were and still are, brilliant. I shall be spending the rest of this week reminding myself of that and waiting impatiently for them to do the next instalment in the series.

 

* Woah Woah is the noise Snowy makes in the Belgian and French versions of the books. I always liked to think that he was more cautious on the continent.

Meh Thursday

Oh yeah. A blog. I was meant to do one of these hours ago, but what with old Gaddifi popping his clogs, and then a meeting where I had two coffees that seemed to have contained more caffeine than someone who works in media after bathing in coffee, my brain is floating somewhere in a bubble of mind mayhem. The day has not been good to me. Starting this morning with a fight with a printer its just cruised along a level of mediocrity that unfortunately makes it memorable for being so unmemorable. I have a horrible feeling that at some point in my future as I struggle once again to remember the best gig I’ve ever done or a really special time, instead I’ll scrabble about with the time I was run over and landed like Spiderman and today, the day of extreme ‘meh’. Some days are set up just for that. Today was planned as ‘meh’ for weeks. Today was the day of ‘seeing my accountant’.

There are some duties in life that I can’t believe anyone could ever enjoy. Adding up receipts and putting the results into columns just to work out how little you earn and how much of that paltry earning can be handed over to the government to be put towards legislations you don’t agree with is most definitely one of these. With help from L, I’ve spent the last week gradually adding up all my flimsy bits of paper from April ’10 to April ’11, differentiating between ‘drinks for comedy reasons’, ‘drinks for drinks reasons’ and ‘drinks for drinks reasons I can pretend are for comedy reasons’, with L taking note of exactly how many egg sandwiches I had on the road in that time and the vast amount of Lattes. It appears that if you are what you eat from 05/10 to 05/11 I was a frothy egg of disgust. Which to be fair, sounds right.

Comedy is, by far, a brilliant avenue of employment if your thing is to evade tax in every way. I can’t imagine that you’d want to take up all the other areas of comedy just to pursue such things – the severe poverty, constant self angst and dealing with twats probably doesn’t balance the pros and cons – as you are able to claim off many a thing. Clothes – yep I wear those on stage. Yep, all of them. Those cinema tickets? Well I wrote a joke about that film didn’t I? And that trip to Norway where you didn’t gig at all? Er, well that’s conveniently in my last Edinburgh show isn’t it? How about that time you went to La Porchetta with friends for a friends birthday? Well someone laughed at something I said didn’t they? Er, what? Yes, these are straws I’m clutching on.

Either way, while I happily attack those corporations avoiding paying tax back into the economy, I have more double standards than a drunk flag maker and if I can avoid throwing what pittance of money I have into the hands of this shit government, I will try my very best. Doesn’t mean its remotely exciting though. It also doesn’t mean I enjoy it when five minutes before I leave to go see my accountant our printer decides it doesn’t want to work and after aggressively firing two bits of paper at my legs as though its in the most violent game of tic tac toe ever seen, completely crashes. Sure its paranoid to blame such a thing on the fact I was wearing my Rage Against The Machine tshirt and perhaps said printer took that as a slap with a glove around its monitor, but that’s exactly what I blame it on. That and the fact that it was a necessary element of ‘meh’ Thursday. Along with not being able to find anything funny about Gaddafi, having a meeting that overran and now a need to do work despite coffee brain damage and a need for a nap. I can see the future now when my life flashes before my eyes on my death bed and all I see is a series of egg mayo receipts and a printer flashing up a message telling me I turned it off incorrectly. Sigh

Fringe 2011: Day The Final

So today is it. One of each show left before I can return to the sanity of not repeating the same words every single day in the same rooms and regain some level of variation in my life. Once again, as per every year, its not been what’s expected. If anything, its been brilliant all round, with all three shows doing very well, but in the case of one of them, that really wasn’t expected at all. The Adventurer’s Club show I do with Tim Fitzhigham shouldn’t have happened let alone done as well as it has. Planned many months before Edinburgh with a structure created in a Starbucks at 10am with myself and Tim very hungover and trying to ignore the constant fire alarm going off, it was then left untouched due to various injuries Tim gained for his solo show. Weeks and weeks went past and I instead focussed on my solo show and Tim focussed on being spazzed out on painkillers, both completely neglecting our kid’s show writing duties. Then, finally, a week before Edinburgh, we gained a polar bear outfit, scribbled a script over three hours in a pub getting more and more drunk. We rehearsed twice in Tim’s little London abode, both times getting distracted by one thing or another (the other being the pub or one of Tim’s many zany tales) and I went home, finished up the script and emailed it over. Further attempts at rehearsal were scuppered by Tim’s broken finger getting a bone eating infection and a doctor’s appointment that could have meant he wasn’t able to make Edinburgh at all. Eventually we had our first rehearsal as our first show at the festival.

Three shows kicked off with script half learnt and props missing, before a family bereavement meant it was cancelled for four days and it seemed like it would never really get going. Yet three glowing reviews later ( a 5 star in the Scotsman!), quite serious amounts of telly interest and a constant wonderful cameo from Craig Campbell here we are, perfuming to very big audiences. It seems that the show I was least prepared for may end up being my Edinburgh golden trophy. Odd huh? I find it truly baffling. Brilliant, but baffling. What does this say about Edinburgh prep? It reminds me a lot of writing an essay at university the night before whilst drunk, only to get a 1st, whereas the essay I spent two weeks researching and writing only gained me a low 2:1. I am starting to wonder if I should just rock up next year with a few post it notes and wing the whole thing. Being unprepared is the best form of preparation. That’s not a saying but I might try and make it one. Pretend a superhero has said it or something.

Hopefully that will spread round the comedy ranks and everyone will start to believe it. All the comics would just stop bothering to prepare for this month of stupid and we’ll all become self righteous improv groups. Then when its trickled into theatre and art as well, I’ll start preparing again and win everything. Mwhahahahahahahaha. Plan of the century. Or y’know, I might have a year off next year. Or do a play. Or just be an adventurer with Tim. We’ll see what happens. Three more shows to kick the face off today and after that the comedy new year will begin again and we’ll see what it brings. Onwards the end!

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