Bloody Hooligans.

I was clearing the rubbish out of my small front garden. Usually this gets me pretty angry, it's full of trash because thoughtless arseholes just dump their crap on the streets and it ends up stuck in my bushes. Bloody kids and layabout drunks! But I've noticed that about a quater of the rubbish is plastic poppy petals that have blown down from the war memorial at the end of the street. Bloody veterans! Honouring their dead! They don't think about the consequenses though do they? They go off fighting in two world wars, but who's got to clear up the mess? Muggins here, that's who.

Mcwirter Twins - and other guff cleared out of the notebook.

NEW DEFINITIONS:
Carpets - The spiders that live in your wing mirrors.
Warthogs - Geordies' clothes. (I heard this one on ISIHAC)

I'm a workaholic, I can't work without drinking.

Who invented fabric softener? Why are we buying something that weakens our clothes.

There was a craze at school where everyone wanted a diver's watch. 'My birthday last week, got this, tells the time 200 metres underwater.' I went one better, got a vulcanologist's calculator. 'Got this, does sums at 500 degrees centigrade.' Why did anyone want a diver's watch? If I'm 200 metres underwater I'm concerned with getting to the surface- I don't care if I'm later for a meeting when I get there.

Parents can be cruel. Take the Mcwirter twins, Norris Mcwirter and his brother Ross, Co founders of the Guiness book of records. If you've got twins, and you call one Ross, don't call the other one something that sounds suspitiously like 'No Ross.'

'Congratulations Mrs. Mcwriter, are these the boys?'

'Yes, this is my beautiful first born Ross.'

'And the other one?'

'Oh, him. He's no ross.'

'What?'

'Noriss, he's Noriss.'


What's that little hole you can open up on the side of your hoover hose? Surely that just means there's less air sucking in at the end you're using to suck up dirt.

WORST LYRIC EVER?
Lindisfarne -Lady Eleanor.

"She tied my eyes with ribbon of a silken ghostly thread
I gazed with double vision on an old four poster bed
Where Eleanor had risen to kiss the neck below my head."

Where's your other neck then?

Tanked up.

I was helping out a class today where students were comparing the same story in two online papers. I saw one about 8 people found inside a chemical tanker, I thought I’d see what the Daily Mail’s take was. Sure enough they’d replaced the word ‘people’ with ‘ILLEGAL IMMIGRANTS.’ OK, so they probably were illegal immigrants – but the Mail couldn’t have known for sure, as the story had just broken and none of the basic facts reported everywhere else could confirm that.

And, as Marcus Brigstock has said, the sort of tenacious, inventive go-getters who will cling to the underside of a truck for 8 hours are exactly the kind of people we need in this country.

But this blog is about comedy so here's the bit that made me laugh, a comment posted by a worried Mail reader following the story…

“I'm so sick of the immigration problem in this country. I even had a dream last night that there were a load of illegal immigrants living in my downstairs cupboard.”

- Helana, London

Gig 94, 95.

I’ve nearly reached my hundred, but I’m not ready to retire just yet. I compered the Chilli, and didn’t do a bad job if I do say so myself. On the way down I thought of a few new ideas on my recent fatherhood, which made for a good start. It got a bit ragged at one point when we were running out of time, which meant I just did a bit of material and got off – I couldn’t afford to keep going until I got a bigger laugh to end on, so Jenny Armstrong didn’t get the warm up she deserved – but luckily didn’t need it.

I did a gig in Beverly, Yorks. Which was lovely (as everyone who’s done it had told me) – the dangerous animals song was well received, but the few minutes of stuff I did first went down a storm. It’ll be nice if I finally get offered some 20 minute gigs where I can do a song and still have time to do some other stuff around it.
One of the new bits I did was about the advertising for Newcastle College – they use posters something like this…


The New Vivienne Westwood.
Not exactly like this, as I couldn’t find a copy of the poster on the web (well done NC publicists) Anyway, a fresh faced student with the words ‘The new inset name of most famous person in the field’ They’ve got them for Sports Science (David Beckham) , Business (Alan Sugar) etc. They don’t have one for Physics, and I’ve worked out why – it would have to be ‘The new Stephen Hawkin’ and that’s a bit of a double edged sword.
The cover of the guide to the library has two students leaping ecstatically into the air. It’s the LIBRARY! It’s not the BOUNCY LIBRARY!

Gigs 92, 93.

Obviously been a while since I blogged, and one of the points of this was to keep a count, as when this all started I said I would do 100 gig then see how I feel. Some people interpreted this as do 100 then definitely stop, but it was more to ensure I did a minimum and didn't give up before I gave myself a fair crack of the whip.

Anyway, the gigs I can remember over the last 2 months were...

92-Charity gig for Amnesty at the Cluny, where I sabotaged myself a bit by starting with the ebony and ivory stuff - this can be misinterpreted (search for that entry again to see some very indignant comments by somone who must have stumbled over the site and thought I was entirely serious, and I genuinely believed Stevie Wonder was too stupid to appreciate the difference between elephant teeth and people.)I will do this material again, but just lose the po-faced stuart lee presentation, and instead do it as I do 'The Who' material... great music but the lyrics are a bit etc.

93 - Our covers night - an enjoyable Pete and Dud sketch with Barry as Mr. Cook. And more Peter Cook but performed in the style of Morrissey to a kareoke version of 'How soon is now.' - I got a pervese pleasure from this, but it left most people bemused.

THE MOON AND NEW YORK CITY.

I occassionally do character comedy, usually wrapped round a suitable song -hence my singing cowboy, singing yokel and singing guatemalan busker. This last one was the short lived product of noting down the words 'troosers, losers, youze is(to be sung in bad spanish accent)' This resurfaced as a song where Paulo from Guatemala was fixated by the fact that everyone in England wore trousers. 'Even the weemin' is wearing troosers' and to ingratiate himself he busked a song about the British love of strides.

But what's great about characters is that you come up with material that would be impossible to think of or perform as yourself. It was Ned Nineacres who was bemused by the lyrics of the Who's 'Pinball wizard', not me. In one performance Paulo came out with the following (I think) comedy gold...

(This does rather depend on you being familiar with the title song of the film 'Arthur')

My friend Raoul - he's gone native loco man, loco loco- he acts all eenglish - and he has 5 pairs of troosers. It's true man, 5 pairs - it is his dream one day to have a pair for every day of the week. -It's crazy man, but it's true. You know that song? (Sing's Arthur's theme) IF YOU GET CAUGHT BETWEEN THE MOON AND NEW YORK CITY, I KNOW IT CRAZY, BUT IT TRUE! I love that song man, you know that was real popular in our village when the movie came out. We loved the movie and the song was a hit too - but then a rumour started that it was possible to get stuck between the moon and New York city, and that this was happening all the time man. I know it's not true now- you know, I guess if you live in New York and the moon is up, then you can jump and you're between the moon and New York city - but you don' get stuck, you just fall down. But, well the media in my country is a little different, and this rumour spread like wildfire, and everyone is terrified. So when I was walking home from the village and I see the moon, i was always lookin' over my shoulder, trying to see if New York city was a sneakin' through the bushes, tryin' to get me.