Don't Play Your Music On A Train, Cuntface

I've just been on a National Express coach on my way back from Margate. It was raining the whole way and the traffic was shit as soon as we got near London. Then this fucking awful cunt says to the driver "Why do they call it rush hour when..." That's all I heard because the rage in my head gave me tinnitus.

The trip down to Margate on the train yesterday was just as bad because the train became swarmed with schoolkids and Jerk was freaking out at the sheer number of them. That said, as much as Jerk hated them, I found them all very entertaining. The boys nearest me started telling each other dog stories such as "A man who lived near where we used to live didn't ask another man if he could pet his dog but he just petted it anyway and the dog bit his whole head off". Every story was just pretty horrible but my favourite one was a dog in the Guinness Book of World Records that was shot in the head but an hour later he woke up wagging his tail. I'm not sure what category of World Record that would be under. Least dead dog?

Like every train journey, there was once again a varied selection of cunts determined to ruin everyone's travelling experience. Mainly, the cunts who play music really loudly on their mobiles. I got very fed up and went over to two seperate people and asked them to switch the music off. One complained, one apologised. That I don't mind quite as much as every other fucker on the train just sitting there letting these little pricks play music and pretending it's not actually happening. They're only kids, we can easily beat the fuck out of them. What is wrong with you people? And, the thing is, maybe I wouldn't mind half as much if any of these fuck-knuckles actually played decent music out of their little tin-can. I've never once got on a train and saw a bunch of hoodies kicking back old-skool to The Queen is Dead or Pet Sounds. It's ALWAYS shit. Mainly that infuriating record-company wank-fest that is I Kissed A Girl by that one fucking moronic whore. It's fucking everywhere. Fuck off! Speaking of morons, I know she was only about six but I saw this little girl yesterday pointing at Jerk. She turned to her mum and said "What's that?" Her mum had to explain to her what a dog was, the thick, fucking, six year old prick.

I got to Margate and had a very nice evening with my friends Karen and Bec. They're the loveliest, most hospitable people you could meet. They adore Jerk and Jerk loves them and their four other dogs. It's a horrible piece of cruelty to come back and take her away from all of that. But I've always had a penchent for cruelty so that's that. Speaking of cruelty, tonight I plan to watch a documentary about Colin Baker getting sacked from Doctor Who. Jealous?

All Lovely.

Isn't the weather lovely? It's been a treat walking round the local park with Jerk the last few days. She runs and plays in the river while I walk around pretending that walking is exercise. Even the normal park wankers aren't getting on my nerves quite as much thanks to the sunshine. Yesterday, I saw a wanker playing golf. No matter where you play golf you'll always be a wanker but I think you come across as an especially contemptable tool if you play golf in a public park. I'm as into hitting kids with hard, fast-moving objects as the next man but I still think that that shows a particular sort of thoughtless arrogance. I also watched a "gang" of "hoodies" play basketball with a tennis ball. It was probably the most awkward, fumblingly pathetic thing I've ever seen and as a result couldn't keep my eyes of it until one of the young gentleman asked me what my problem was? I didn't think he looked like much of an expert in anything and therefore his advice would be minimal so I left without replying. Quite quickly.

Then I went to the wedding of Nick and Maxine Wilty. It's lovely in this modern time that Maxine is still romantic enough to want to take her husband's stage name as her own. It was a fantastically fun day and I got drunk enough to know I was very drunk without turning very, very drunk. The ceremony was very nice with everyone cheering as the happy couple stood together at the altar. I was sure someone was going to shout out something incredibly innappropriate at anytime but it didn't happen and I wasn't confident enough to do it myself. Instead I giggled through singing Morning Has Broken and Jerusalem. If my Mother knew that I was singing Jerusalem she'd die on the spot and then very quickly turn over in her grave. Then, someone who could actually sing sang a very lovely, haunting version of Leonard Cohen's Hallelujah, a song about having your heart broken. A bit out of place but then I once went to a wedding where a harpist played the theme to Love Story and people around me gave me a dirty look when I pointed out that "She dies in the end of that", so it wasn't that odd. I don't know who sang Hallelujah but she was very good indeed and Mick Ferry pointing out that the song was used in Shrek only added to the poignancy of the moment.

Then we went to the pub. Then we went to the reception. I'll be honest with you, that's where I got drunk. At the reception. It was such a great do because everyone that I knew there I liked, how often can you say that about a room full of comedians? It was fun seeing people I hadn't seen for a few years, it was fun seeing the bitchy side of goody-fucking-twoshoes, eternal fucking nice guy Stuart Goldsmith come out finally and it was fun seeing Alastair Barrie asking people if they thought he was racist. I've never had to ask anyone that question before. Am I overweight? Am I starting to look older? Am I any use in bed? These are all questions that I've had to ask other people but never am I racist.?Have more confidence in yourself, Al. Of course, you're racist and a damn good one, too. After some speeches and more raising glasses to the happy couple we were treated to some music. Glenn Tilbrook got his guitar out and sang a few of his excellent and legendary songs while standing on chairs that were moved around constantly so he could basically walk around the room serenading us while being much taller than everyone else. The booze got the better of me though and I wimped out before I got so drunk that it was only mildly embarrassing and not totally embarrassing. I got a lift home from my friend's Rob and Linda who I never see much these days and will make a huge effort to see more of from now on. They're both lovely and pregnant.

My last couple of blogs have been a bit positive and nice and a couple of people have even pointed this out to me. Unfortunately, I'm visting friends today so tomorrow's one is probably going to be all lovely too. I was supposed to be at another comedian's drinks do tonight (one that I organised) but I've had to cancel. Shame, I'm sure I could have got some bitchy stories from that. Rest assured that this great weather and my happiness is very temporary. Ta ta!

I Know This Much Is True.

Last night was a lovely night for gigs and socialising. I was on first again at The Funny Side of Covent Garden and, although it was far from a storming set, it was very lovely indeed. It was a shame I couldn't stay to watch sets by Danny Buckler and Milton Jones but at least I had time after my set to hear a funny story. Danny told me yet another in a very long line of tales about a comedian on the circuit who, basically, can't stop lying. The comedian in question is actually very much an OK bloke but the constant stories that fly around the circuit about him are simply incredible. He's slept with royals, cancerous pop princesses, he's written the theme to the "new" Bond film (update that every time a Bond film is about a year away from release) and he used to play guitar in Louise Nurding's band (yeah, I wouldn't have bothered making that up either). But last night's story was up there with the best of them.

Apparently the comedian in question (oh, this is going to get tedious so I'll make up a name for him, let's call him, oh, I don't know, fuck it; Shappi Khorsandi, yeah, that'll do) .... So, anyway, Shappi opened his heart to a newish comedian one night fairly recently about why people seem to think that he fucked Princess Diana. The new comedian said that he'd heard that rumour and Shappi decided it would be best to clear up the whole misunderstanding once and for all. The rumour started after Shappi won his photography award. (What photography award?) The award he won for taking that famous photo of the Omagh bombing. (Eh?) It's simple, Shappi sneaked past the police to crawl underneath the bomb itself to take a photo of it. (Wasn't the bomb in the boot of a car?) Do you want to hear this story or not? (Er...) So, the bomb goes off and Shappi finds himself blown 20 feet away from where he was and unconscious. (I'm leaving) When he wakes up he finds that there's a perfect photograph of the bomb just starting to explode on his camera. So, Shappi wins a big award for the photo and everyone loves him. Then he's told by a friend that Princess Diana is having a party in a Kensington hotel and he should go down and papparazzi it. Dann...SHAPPI leaps into his speedboat and gets there in seconds but when the Princess of Hearts finds out that Omagh Bomb Boy is outside she gets one of her slaves to invite him in. Anyway, he didn't even fuck her, he just did a bit of DJing and hung out with her royal highness and Dodi and Wayne Sleep and all that lot. Then, in the early hours of the morning, Shappi was photographed leaving the Princess' hotel, it got in the papers and THAT'S how that silly, silly rumour got started on the comedy circuit.

I for one am very glad that's all been cleared up now and I can finally stop obsessing over that story. At least Stu Who's stories of facial reconstruction, his son inventing the internet and him getting the moon pregnant have a certain charm about them. But, like I say, Shappi's a very nice man and I'm not really sure why he says what he says but it very much amuses me.

So, anyway, I then went on to East Dulwich Comedy run by the fantastic Emma and Ron. Once again this weekend, it's lovely to be working for such passionate-about-comedy people. The bill was excellent and I felt very nervous at the thought of having to follow both Matt Rudge and the legend that is Dan Antopolski. I'm a huge fan of Dan's and he was incredibly funny in front of a very small, very quiet but very nice audience. I haven't seen him do a set for a few years but he was just as inventive and brilliantly off-the-wall as ever. You should check him out right now. Marc Lucero did an excellent job compering and he proved to be very good company throughout the night, seeming just as nervous about me going on as I was. Matt Rudge is confident, young, good-looking and funny so he can go and fuck himself. And, considering how pretty he is, he should take that as a compliment. The cunt.

I'm off to the wedding of the year now. Expect a drunken blog later tonight. MESSAGE TO DANNY BUCKLER: If I've got any of that story wrong, please correct me. Thanks.

They Came, They Saw, They Talked The Whole Way Through It.

I did two gigs last night and on reflection they were both good but I really didn't like one of them at the time. My first gig was at The Funny Side of Covent Garden, an excellent gig run by David Bourn, a man who is hard-working and passionate about comedy. I always have a problem playing his gig though because I've known David for 15 years and just think of going to his club as "I'm off for a drink with Dave". Then I get there and shit myself because I've just remembered I've got a gig. And last night was weird but probably not as bad as I thought while on stage. The front three rows all knew each other, never a good sign. They were, basically, posh city boys with loads of money and awful, awful, screeching, orange, murderable girlfriends. They were the worst kind of Trophy Girlfriend, mainly because they'd make you look like you'd come in last, but also because they found it impossible to simply shut the fuck up. Everything I said they took at face value and believed it - loudly. They had to comment on everything; I'm from Ireland, "Ohhh, I was finkin ov goin there. Iz well nice, innit". I live in London now, "London iz wicked, thass were I iz right now an everyfin". Shut the fuck up, "You know what I'm sayin, ahm alwayz shoutin that in my own ead". Awful cunts. But the bulk of the room was pretty nice so I shouldn't really have got that upset and it was very nice seeing the city boys looking genuinely embarrassed by their dates. They should be. Dump them. Now.

Then I went on to Big Night Out, Leicester Square which is the independent comedy club's FUCK YOU to the Comedy Store. It's right next door, sells out all the time and is a brilliant club. Apparently, it's very existence really pisses off Comedy Store owner Don Ward so I think that's a good enough reason to support it. The gig was great but boiling hot. The audience were a lot of fun and I really enjoyed mucking about with them. It's all run by Jeremy O'Donnell who is very funny and obviously great at running a top quality club. Apparently, he gave up a hugely well paid job in Australia to come back to the UK and start a career in comedy. The dozy cunt.

Sadly, I didn't see any of the other acts that were on the bills last night so I can't slag them off but I did meet up with Robin Ince afterwards so I can slag him off. It was very nice seeing Robin and even nicer seeing lots of people come up to him to tell him how brilliant he is. So they should as he's by far one of the most underrated comedians in the country and I'd say that even if he was huge. We decided to go for a few drinks so Robin suggested meeting at the bar in the Curzon Cinema, Soho because he's a big poncey twat and he was introducing a film showing there at 11.30. The film was Cry Baby by John Waters and it was fun seeing so many people say how much they thought that Cry Baby wasn't one of Waters best and wasn't it a big sell out that he made it and isn't it a shame that they're not showing that black & white film Waters made in 1902 where Divine ate a ton of human faeces? I realised that, although nice spending time with Robin, that I was not meant for this little world. The Curzon doesn't sell popcorn but does sell carrot cake, it sells DVDs of Q&A's by the director of Reykjavik 101 and FUCK OFF because Cry Baby is by FAR John Waters' best film. It's funny, it has Johnny Depp in it and it's not wedged 8 miles up it's own arsehole. I'm not complaining too much though because the people that I actually met, as opposed to eavesdropped on, were lovely, especially the owner of the Curzon who I was jealous of because he has his own cinema. That must be nice. Even if it shows a lot of crap. I checked the listings; not a single Bill and Ted film on in the next six months. Insane.

Allow me to reccommend a podcast, it's the Amnesty International Secret Policeman's Ball 2008 series featuring Robin Ince interviewing a comedian each week running up to the actual event. The first one is available now and features Robin talking to Stewart Lee. It's very good indeed. Go to iTunes and type in Secret Policeman's Ball, that's the best and seemingly only way you'll find it. To be honest, I really only listened to it because I heard Stewart Lee said some really nice things about The Clock Hour but Amnesty must have censored him, the fucking Nazi bastards.

Why Don’t You Just Switch Off Your Television Set And Go Out And Do Something Less Boring Instead?

I'm so bored of being ill now that I'm totally pretending that I'm fine. That normally gets rid of it. Just ignore it. That's the ticket. I did NOTHING yesterday. Well, I did a bit of writing but who cares about that? Basically, all I did was blow my nose, gob in the sink and watch TV. Two days of TV in a row isn't good for my well being. It reminds me why I like going out so much plus it makes me want to boot-fuck everyone who's ever been born ever. Plus two days without booze. Has anyone gone that long before? I doubt it.

I wrote a bit for the upcoming Real Daniel O'Donnell Show which is my favourite thing to do as we're all in charge of the show ourselves so nothing that we want to do gets rejected (unlike mine and Bennett Arron's script did by Children's BBC this week, "too mature" my ballbag). So that was fun. And that's pretty much when the fun ended because I went fucking insane and watched Sex In The City: The Movie. It was my own fault because the cover of the DVD came with a very clear warning; "'A classic' - Edith Bowman". For those who don't know, Edith Bowman is an awful bag of unneccesary excitement who says the words "A classic" everytime she points at something. So the blame lies squarely with me. The whole film is like watching the last three minutes of Father Of The Bride II over and over and over again. It's just screaming and cocktails. I get enough of that at home.

By the way, I watched EVERYTHING last night. Sex In The City, 3 episodes of Family Guy, Mock The Week (which was a compilation of clips not good enough to be shown in the series, that should give you an idea of the quality), Have I Got News For You (ALWAYS watch this after Mock The Week), 8 Out of 10 Cats (Doug Stanhope came across as really, really lovely), Secret Diary of a Callgirl (no, I didn't, but I was on standby just in case), No Heroics (Christ Alfuckingmighty), When Women Rule The World (it's great! It's a reality show based on women being in charge and telling men to do stuff that they can't actually do themselves. How producers Rebecca Eisen and Nicole Streak came up with that is a wonder), Arc of Infinity and Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom (still the worst Indy movie but fun).

That's too much TV. I'm really looking forward to gigs tonight not just because I'm playing two of my favourites but because it would be nice to see other humans. I mean, it won't but it's how I feel right now. It's sunny! Let's go out!

Doctor Who references: 1. Cunts: 0. The Doctor finally wins!

An Evening with Paul Ross.

I got ill yesterday and spent most of the day removing stuff from my nose. It's still going and shows no signs of stopping. There just so much stuff coming out of one nose. I don't know how much stuff is coming out of your nose right now but it will be nothing compared to the massive volume sliming it's way out of mine. I've got a cold but I'm acting like I've caught a disease that's somewhere between the one in Outbreak and the one in Philadelphia. I'm so bored of it already because everything I do is stopped due to snot. I think I'll just pop the kettle on, oh no, I won't as every pissing thing in my body is coming out my nose. It's really depressing.

It's not all bad though because last night I had a half hour of pure unmitigated joy. It might have been the happiest, most blissful moment of my entire life. Last night at 8.30 I turned to Bid.TV and watched Paul Ross' DVD Evening. It was fucking amazing. Paul Ross, former World's Biggest Cunt (he's not even good at being a cunt anymore), sits in a studio the size of a midget's stamp and basically begs for money. Sure, he's pretending that he's giving us an incredible bargain on the complete A-Team boxset, but it's begging really and his fat little desperate face has "M-m-m-mercy" written all over it. When he holds his hand out to show what a great friend he is to offer you The Best of Poirot at such a low, low price it looks even more of a tortured cry for help. After a while I muted the TV and as his flapping mouth kept moving I just threw bits of bread at him. It was honestly a very fun night in. Tuesday nights, Bid.TV, 8.30. Don't miss it.

My incredible joy was beaten, raped and left for dead not long after because very soon I'd be watching the greatest excuse for global genocide ever; Keith Lemon's Celebrity Juice. How the fuck did this cunting pile of agonising ball-throb ever happen? Who the fuck is responsible? Keith Lemon is a comedy character who is as thick as pig cement, has no talent whatsoever and yet wants to become famous. How it's creator Leigh Francis came up with the idea I have absolutely every idea. "Keith" hosts the ITV2 panel show along with two team captains, Holly Willoughby and Fearne Cotton, both finally looking embarrassed at something they're in. They're joined by celebrities who then go through a series of spunk-obssessed rounds of questions based on what show-biz folk have been up to that week - with HILARIOUS consequences! Apparently, George Michael was in Wham and now he's a homosexual! FUCKING BRILLIANT! At least some of the celebrities looked furious and agent-sacky throughout the show. Dermott O'Leary, Laurence Llewelyn-Bowen and some cunt who has a gossip column looked bored and upset. Paddy McGuinness, obviously, couldn't believe his luck. Can we put an end to all this shitty TV comedy now? Please TV people, I can't take any of the rejection letters you send me seriously if you keep on making this shit.

I'm ill. I went to the gym on tuesday and wednesday. A connection? I think so. I really like going to the gym. I can put on my iPod, go on the running machine for half an hour and just be in my own little world. What I don't like is another person being anywhere near the gym while I'm there because gym people are the smuggest wankers who've ever lived. People who scream while they're on a rowing machine, or use words like "intense" when talking about a Spinning class. PRICKS. The worst ones though are the bastards who give you a dirty look when you're using weights just because they know how to use the machine "properly". Maybe I want a bad back, Mr. Fucking I Can Lift A Washing Machine With My Flacid Cock. And how untrustworthy are the orange people who work there? "All OK?" they say when they clearly mean "I think you're on the wrong setting for that machine, mate. Your face is blue and your right eye is on your left cheek". Patronising bastards. But, like I say, I do enjoy going there. What's not to like! I mean, where else but Fitness First can I get up to date DVD releases such as Poison Ivy III, Return To Poseidon II and The Taking of Pelham 123 IV.

I went there. Where's my shitty series, ITV II?

Area Cunts Do Nothing.

Last night was the second of our Los Quattros Cunts meetings and after the fairly unsuccessful first meeting we were determined to make sure this one was where the mammoth ball of invention would start rolling. It was also the first one with all four of us so the atmosphere in the room was electric with inspiration and excitement. Anyway, we did fuck all. Paul cooked dinner, I got 8 cans of Kronenbourg at the local shop for £2.98 (they fucked up somewhere) and Jeremy has a new ringtone. Those were the highlights of the meeting. We then sat down to watch a TV series called This Is Pop (or something) by the now defunct Four Horsemen. It's a real shame that they split up when they did because if they'd split up a bit earlier then maybe This Is Pop would never have been made and there would have been a tad less embarrassment in the room while we were watching it. Then we watched The Onion Movie which had a few good bits in it (a nun drinks a jar of Ape Cum) but was mainly shit, very dissappointing considering how excellent The Onion can be. Then we all went home. Not an idea knocked out between us. It would have been a waste of everyone's time and lack of energy if we hadn't been exposed to these two clips:





The worst thing about meeting up with my fellow Quattros Cunts, apart from Jeremy not drinking, is that after a while I always end up talking about how great it would be if there was another Trap show, thus pushing myself out of the project. The Trap are pretty much the best show that I've ever seen and draining their talent has long been a hobby of mine. I think I'm just in that post-Edinburgh "Come On! Let's Do Stuff!" kind of mode but without any of the actual doing stuff so getting The Trap to do another show just seems to be my easiest option. I get to see a great show without doing any work. Maybe I should try to persuade Johnny Candon to join me and reunite our Tolerance Twins double act again? That was tasteful.

Now I'm about to do something stupid. I'm going to the gym. If you're in any way a friend, you'll stop me.

Laughing Gas.

Like you, I got up extra early this morning to rush out to buy the Guardian and get my free copy of How To Write Comedy by Catherine Tate. I'm nowhere near as successful in comedy as Catherine so I thought it would come in handy to hear her points of view on how someone could craft the same fucking sketch week in, week out. The booklet opens with this handy piece of advice for any up-and-coming comedy author; "'Writing' always means 'not writing' to me". Thanks, Donna Noble! I used that as an example of the tips given by Catherine because that was as far as I got. And why? Because I'M NOT BOVVERED! Ha ha! Take that, Tate. I'm not even bovvered! That's all I read because I wasn't bovvered in the slightest. Do I look bovvered? No, I don't. And do you know why I don't look bovvered, Catherine? Do you? Because bovvered isn't even a word. Yeah! It's the easiest thing in the world to not be bovvered because you can't be bovvered because bovvered doesn't exist. You big shit. To be fair, Catherine does make a very good point; if you're not very good at writing then get someone else to do it for you. Luckily, she managed to rope in her comedy chum Richard Herring to do all the important work for her in this booklet. It's very well written with some very good advice like read as much as you can, look for real life interesting characters to write about, have a conversation with a child (not as creepy as it sounds) and don't lose control when dealing with hecklers. Yeah, the cunt could have told me that before I went on stage on saturday. But no, I had to fucking BUY his advice two days later. It's is genuinely good, by the way, and also features articles by Mitchell and Webb on writing sketch comedy, Jo Caulfield on writing jokes and Josie Long on writing with fuzzy felt and crayons. Give it a look.

I hope How To Write Comedy by Catherine Tate will come in very handy because yesterday we had our first Los Quattros Cunts meeting. I'm sure this is pretty much against everything Richard might teach us but we started with the name first and are hoping that by getting drunk sketches will miraculously appear very soon. Nope. Just checked again. There's not a word about that in the booklet. Hey ho. We came up with about six ideas that are basically just scribbles in my notebook but, with more booze, should blossom into some very impressive monuments to comedy pretty soon. So far we have; Let's break the Paralympics, song racing and reclaiming the word "master". I think the last one might be racist but I've just checked with the booklet and Richard says that racism is brilliant, so we should be OK with that.

Unfortunately, I got the booklet after a British Gas inspector visited my house today. If I'd read it before he arrived I probably could have taken his terminally dull constant jargon with good humour and written an hilarious sketch right there and then. Sadly, all I wanted to do was smash his face in with the back of his own head. How come when these sorts of people come round they talk and talk and talk and tell you things that you can't possibly fathom and expect you to both understand and give a flying fuck? I'll tell you how dull this cunt was; he chuckled when he saw my boiler's registration number.

SHIT! Just checked the booklet. That is actually in there.

Hey Nonny Nonny!

Yesterday started brilliantly. It started with me on a train leaving Hereford. That was brilliant. I sat there drinking tea, eating a toastie and watching Four To Doomsday with the commentary on. I was very happy indeed. It was really sunny and there was no one sitting near me in the carriage. I read a bit more of my Dexter book which, although not as good as the TV series, is getting better and better. When I got off the train at London the tube to Charing Cross had been delayed at the platform but as soon as I got on board it started it's journey. It was as if London Underground itself had thought, "We fucking love Michael Legge and this train is going nowhere until that gorgeous bit of fuck-hunk gets on". It really felt that that's what had happened. That feeling of me being brilliant obviously spread to the staff of SouthEastern Trains because as soon as I got to Charing Cross my train was there waiting for me and it said the greatest words known to mankind on the board, "Fast to Ladywell". They may as well have written "Michael Legge, We all really love you!" on the dotmatrix. A ten minute journey and I was home. Jerk was wagging her tail with so much excitement. That's how good it was for her to see me. Yes, yesterday started pretty well.

Then I did a gig. Always a mistake and really I should know better by now. The Boat Show at the Tattershall Castle is a fantastic gig run by extremely nice and very hard-working people (Christian, Sally, Ali, Paul). The audience there is always relaxed, fun and intelligent and the atmosphere in the room is very positive indeed. I say always but last night they were....what's the word.....CUNTS. Not all of them. Just the 30 or so awful, awful drama students who came to the gig to play "Who's The Loudest?". I hate drama students. I think they're the worst people on this planet. I have infinitely more respect for murderers and estate agents that I do for fucking awful, awful drama students. At least a murderer might kill a drama student and therefore save the world from another cunt and an estate agent might run one over in his car when he's on his way home from work.

I used to go out with two drama students. One of them was and still is nice (Hello, Sally). They both went to the same drama school, Rose Bruford in Sidcup. Sidcup has two buildings of note in it; Rose Bruford Drama School and the headquarters of the National Front. One of these two places really used to upset me on practically a daily basis. I visited Rose Bruford dozens of times and anytime I was there wherever I looked there were piles of cunts rehearsing loudly or massaging each other or fucking singing. Pretentious cunts. And God forbid it was someone's birthday! The amount of times I witnessed some awful cunt project "Everyone! Everyone! This fine morrow brings the birthday of our dear Anton". That's they way they always spoke and they were always called Anton. Then about 50 twats would circle Anton and sing Happy Birthday while harmonising like they were in a gospel choir. Awful, awful cunts.

As soon as I walked on stage, and they started screaming to see who would get the most attention, I hated them. And it showed. I wanted to have the same fun night I'd had the night before and they were in my way and I despised them for it. As a result, I was shit. Just to make it worse, Micky Flanagan walked out on stage and did his set calmly, confidently and with much laughter. He was fantastic but it was soooooo obvious he was being brilliant just to wind me up. Richard Herring obviously thought the same. And when Terry Alderton got an encore and standing ovation I thought "Alright, I get it, we're all having a dig at Michael Legge because we love him so much". I suppose I should be flattered.

The drama students were loud pretty much all night and I just couldn't really deal with them. Just like all those years ago at Rose Bruford. I did ask them what drama school they went to though. Do I really have to tell you which one it was?

The worst thing about being crap last night, apart from actually being there, was that Philip Jeays was in the room. Philip is a truly lovely man who was kind enough to give me my first ever gigs when I started out and I'm sure it must have been a lovely nostalgic walk down memory lane seeing me being just as incompetent as I was back then. You'd really be doing yourself a big favour by checking out some of Philip's music. I'd do that now if I was you.

Toilet is Downstairs

One of the absolute worst things about being a stand-up comedian is that to do the job you almost always have to leave the house. It's rare that a comedy club pops round to yours for the night (although not that rare that a "comedy friend" will call up at home to try out new material on you, which is as comfortable an experience as your mum phoning up to describe her favourite porn film. It's shocking, you don't know why it's happening and you have to fake laugh the whole way through it). So, basically, at some point in our day we have to walk out the front door and travel to a gig that's too lazy to come to us. I've been unfortunate enough to travel all over the country and I've visited some right fuck-holes, I can tell you. But last night I set foot in what I can honestly say is the worst place I've ever been; Hereford. Good news, Nottingham, you're now down to number two.

Hereford is terrifying. Firstly, I don't know where it is. I honestly don't even know what country it's in. You get on a train from London that goes to Wales, you get off at Hereford and everyone has English accents. Where the fuck is this place? Maybe it's best kept secret. I walked from the train station to the B&B and I feared for my life the entire way. Everyone looked a bit mad, youths were riding motorbikes on the pavement and the whole place looked like the back streets of Belfast during the seventies, except Hereford would only benefit from three decades of terrorism. The theme of "shit" was very much kept up at the B&B, too. The lady who ran it was a piss-fountain full of pointless questions; "Did you travel here?", "Would you like your key?", "How many of you are you?" etc, and after I declined her offer to meet her family (honestly) I made the rookie mistake of going into my room. My room, slightly smaller than me, had the luxury of a bath/sink/urinal all-in-one and a television that only showed the programme that the little girl in Poltergeist used to watch. I was kindly informed that my bathroom, wardrobe and bedside alarm clock were all situated on the lower floor and imagine my joy when I discovered that right outside my window some enterprising young cunts had set up a make-shift go-kart race track. Fucking lush.

This is all trivial really as the gig itself, at the Courtyard Theatre, was one of the best gigs I've ever done. I basically went on stage with my few observations of Hereford and the audience agreed. It's very funny to visit a town, call it a dump and have the residents buy you a drink afterwards. I really had a good time but the comic .. me, Julian somethingorother, was absolutely brilliant. Pretty much every one of his jokes was really well crafted and very, very funny. All in all, a great night. I know that the Hereford Council subscribe to my blog so, as you have lovely people in your town, could you shoot everyone there under 20, bulldoze your B&B's and make the town generally a bit better? I'm just jealous because, as rough as Hereford is, they'd never build a traveller's site there. Travellers wouldn't last 5 minutes.

Right. It's a hot day. Now go outside, put Ween's La Cucaracha on your iPod and sit in the park.

Toilet is Gay.

Facebook has gone ego crazy. I don't know if it's the new change to Facebook has meant easier access to egotists on Facebook or a lot of people are thinking "Hmmm...only 98 shopping days to christmas. Better let everyone know that I'm headling The Laughing Piss in Amersham". It just seems a lot of status updates have gone mental but then so has New Facebook's fucking annoying spam usage. My inbox is now full of cunts telling me about their gigs, cunts telling me about their charity do's and Janey Godley bragging about how adorable her great-great-grandaughter is (she's a child, Janey. ALL children should be invisible and not heard). That's why I prefer MySpace. They have a bulletin board where if you want to say something, you can do and it's up to people to figure out if they want to read it or not. You can't ram it down their in-box. Plus, although you can change your status on MySpace, it's not as prominent and, generally, they seem less egotistical. Plusser, no-one ever goes there. It's very serene.

And, yes, my status updates are more big headed too. I think if you can lie for no reason then so can I.

I had a really enjoyable gig last night. Unfortunately, the good gig was very much split between two gigs. At the 99 Club in the Ku Bar near Leicester Square I had a great time for 15 minutes but then it all fizzled out. I even said on stage how I hadn't been funny for the last 5 minutes. How grateful I was for the ballbag in the audience to point out that I actually hadn't been funny for 7 minutes. What really disturbed me about the gig was going to the toilet. The Ku Bar is a gay bar (but they had the straightest gay people I've ever met in the audience) and as a modern, 2008 kinda guy I felt totally comfortable being a straight man in a gay toilet doing my smelly straight business. Sadly, the cubicle was locked but that didn't stop some total cuntbag from barging in in front of me, turning the lock on the door from the outside with a coin and screaming at the two people in the cubicle "If you don't give me my fucking gear I'll fucking kill you". I was immediately put off going to the toilet. A shame, as I was suddenly shitting myself. When I told the story to Trevor Lock he said, with a world weary look of experience, "Never use the toilet here. That's where the sex and drug deals happen". No it fucking isn't. It's a fucking PUBLIC TOILET. It's where we shit. That's the only shit that should go down; my shit. My shit first, drug business second, OK? But the audience were fun (for 15 minutes) and then I went off to wait and wait and wait before doing my second 99 Club gig at The Roundhouse. They tolerated me with a staring ovation for fifteen minutes but in the end I broke their will and they laughed. It's very hard to do a gig in a tiny room where people are inches away from your face and no-one is laughing. I'm sure I'll get used to it.

Trevor Lock, on the other hand, was very funny. If I find out that he spontaneously made all that up I'll be ill, so don't tell me.

Right. it's only about half 8 in the morning. I've still got time to walk the dog with Gribbo (that's a man, not a dog), finish off some work with Gribbo (seriously, he's a man) and watch last night's When Women Rule The World (I just know it's going to make my blood vomit) before making the 5 hour trip to tonight's gig. Have a good day everyone and don't forget to update your status to something mental. Ta ta!

My Big Night Out

I spent 8 seconds saying Hello to one of my all-time comedy idols last night. I was doing warm-up for 8 Out Of 10 Cats and Vic Reeves said "Nice work" after I'd done my intial warmings-uppings. I spent the remainder of the next 8 seconds wondering why I'd chosen this very moment in my life to become speechless. I'm not very good at meeting people I admire. For instance, I've pissed off all three members of R.E.M in three different ways on three different occassions, I've terrified Morrissey and, to this day, Robyn Hitchcock hates my guts. After the show I avoided Vic easily, mainly because he didn't want to speak to me. Also I'd fallen into the company of Ben & Ben who work for a company that keeps an eye on Grolsch's image. It's an odd job. They have to go around events were Grolsch is being drunk making sure kids aren't drinking it, making sure no-one is driving while drinking it and generally making sure that no-one gets a bit violenty angry rapey while drinking it. The show itself was a lot of fun. Warm-ups are tough, laborious, thankless tasks where you go on 70 times a night after every break, set change and line fuck-up to "entertain" an bunch of free loading, joyless bastards who only want to look right through you on the off chance of seeing a genuine celebrity like Robert Lindsay or, God forbid, Ralph Fucking Little. Not so at 8 Out Of 10 Cats where warming up an audience is slightly a piece of piss. They are there for comedy, the room is set up pretty much like a comedy club and they seem to want to laugh no matter who you are. Even me. A bit of a weird thing happened last night that I'm very happy about. Jason Mansford very kindly pointed out to the audience that they should read my blog but then about 10 people laughed in recognition to my references to the Justin Lee Collins one. Are some people really reading this? Thanks! Shit, am I getting big headed now? Fuck, that's the beginning of the end then.

Unfortunately, I can only imagine that most of the really great stuff will be edited out of 8 Out Of 10 Cats because, well, you know, it was too good. Jimmy Carr's off the cuff remarks were fantastically scathing and Vic Reeves giving an example of how a severed head would run in the Paralympics was hilarious. In fact, Sean Lock and Vic Reeves make a fantastic double act and some bright TV executive should give them their own show very soon. Oh... I mean... They were fucking shit and some bright TV executive should go nowhere near them (there, that should work). 9 year old comedian Jack Whitehall was very good too. He's new but I think he'll give the comedy circuit's other "yoof" TV stars, like Greg Burns and Mark Walker, a run for their money.

On the way back from the gig I got this incredible feeling of how it was when I first started in comedy. Not so much the gig or the hanging out with other comedians but more the 3 hour cunt of a bus journey home. The central line, surely the most Martine McCutcheon of the underground lines, had broken down again and couldn't work. I got the night bus. I was dreading it because the night bus is full of mental. Wherever you sit, the worlds biggest mess of mad will want to sit next to you and scream in your face about how they used to own the sky. I wasn't happy. But then, I thought, well, all the antics that go on in an average night bus is bound to fill my blog with much hilarity the next day. It goes without saying that mine was the one journey in Night Bus history where nothing happened. Ever. But, fuck it, it still made it to the blog. Sorry.

I'm doing the 99 Club tonight. Twice! Never done it before but I'm looking forward to it. Any good?

Southpaw

Cunt. (There. Happy?)

If writing all these blogs this summer has taught me anything it's that Doug Stanhope fans are dickheads and my grammar is terrible. I'm never completely sure where commas and apostrophes go and my spellling is often bad. Not as bad as 98% of people who write on the internet. People who don't know the difference between "have" and "of" are far too many in number and far too thick to be allowed to live. Maybe I need to do an english language course or maybe I should of paid attenshun at skool.

I'm very busy today. I have to be because I did fuck not nothing all day yesterday. I slept for two hours in the afternoon and managed to squeeze in 8 episodes of Dexter. That's not productive. Luckily, I've got lots of gigs this week so the bitchiness should resume shortly. Have a good day!

Are you ready to rock?

I went to see Metallica last night. They're a pop group from the 80's who hate one another. I think I'm going through a bit of a musical mid-life crisis at the moment. I'm not interested in fast cars and even faster women and even faster houses, but I am listening to a lot of music that I loved as a teenager. Metallica, Anthrax, Marillion, Faith No More and Iron Maiden have all been overly played in my feeble attempt to return to a youth that I actually hated anyway. I met Metallica when I was 18 in a bar called the Omni in Oakland, California. It was the greatest/worst day of my young life. They were pretty much my favourite band at the time and there they were, being normal people, drinking normally in a normal bar. It was great because singer James Hetfield was the nicest man in the world and it was awful because drummer Lars Ulrich was a dickhead. 20 years later and I interviewed Lars Ulrich for MTV and time had not changed him a single bit. He looked youthful, energetic and he was a dickhead. Dickhead or not, though, his band rock jolly well. The gig was at the o2 Arena and it was full of other people clinging on to their youths, most of them had shown their true love of the works of Metallica by doing lots of little drawings on themselves and by being, incredibly, both long haired and bald at the same time. They played all the classics but also, remembering their middle-aged audience's bladders, enough from their new album to let us all go to the toilet frequently. They also played Stone Cold Crazy by Queen which made me very happy indeed. My good friend Ewan came with me. He's a proper musician who works with Ed Harcourt and Cerys Matthews, he loves Metallica and hates Manic Street Preachers. I like him.

I met up with Dan's Mersh and Tetsell before going to see Metallica and we mainly talked about the state of TV comedy. Justin Lee Collins seemed to be the main target of our abuse. The Dan's hadn't seen Bring Back Star Wars but they still had exactly the same opinion of it that I did. During this conversation I came to the conclusion that Channel 4 has gone to shit and is purposely trying to get on my wick. The Kevin Bishop Show, The Friday Night Project, fucking Fonejacker; what the fuck has happened to Channel 4? Why is it trying to compete with the very worst things on BBC3? I honestly preferred it when it was just the 4 logo swirling round and "We'll Be On Air Soon" was written at the bottom of the screen. It was way funnier. The conversation went on for about an hour. An hour of me winding myself up about comedy that I never intend watching. I was furious as I left. It was horrible. I mean, who goes to a Metallica concert angry?

Don't Just Sit There, Kick Justin Lee Collins To Death.

Justin Lee Collins. Isn't he just King Cunt? As I write, I'm watching Bring Back Star Wars, a documentary full of incredible insights such as Kenny Baker has a big cock (HILARIOUS! Because Kenny Baker is a fucking little midget! BRILLIANT!), Darth Vader has a huge helmet (HE MEANS HE HAS A BIG COCK! HIGH-larious!) and Luke Skywalker always handled his own weapon (FUCKING GREAT! He means that actor Mark Hamill actually has a penis! BRILLIANT!). Anyway, the documentary follows Justin Lee Collins' embarrassing hair as it tries to convince the stars of the original Star Wars to reunite. Shockingly, Harrison Ford declined, not because he wants to disassociate himself from Star Wars but because, like Justin Lee Collins, he fucking hates Justin Lee Collins. Honestly, have you ever seen anyone look so much like they know they're about to be found out at any second? He has the guiltiest look of any celebrity this side of John Leslie, and at least all John Leslie ever did was rape everyone. He didn't go up to Carrie Fisher and say "What was it like to have two buns on your head?", which, as you know, is worse. Basically throughout this two-hour celebration of arse, all Cunt Face does is run around bullying Billy Dee Williams' into doing an interview, boring C-3PO to death and securing the man who played Chewbacca, Boba Fett's helmet and half a fucking Ewok reunite for the very first time since the last Sci-Fi convention. I fucking hate him. I love Star Wars and after this documentary all that cunt has done is slightly make Jar-Jar Binks look a bit better. During an interview, Justin says these words: "Return of the Jap's-Eye". I would NEVER get bored of kicking him.

Lewisham Council have been charming again. They've just sent me a letter telling me how successful Travellers' Awareness Week was. Might have been nice if they'd let everyone (or anyone) in our street know that Travellers' Awareness Week actually existed but you can't have everything or anything. They also held a huge display in my local park under the banner of Lewisham Homes. It was designed to let people know that Lewisham is a great place to move to and, if you're already a resident, told you all the reasons why you'll never move away. I had a look round and by all accounts there has never been a single count of crime in Lewisham ever. I assume the constant sirens I hear is just the result of bored coppers making sure the equipment actually works. Also there wasn't a single mention of Lewisham Council bulldozing a special needs school to the ground to make way for a travellers' site. Move to Lewisham, people! No crime, no schools, no Justin Lee Collins.

Parklife

I am not cool. No, you can all argue that point but the simple fact remains that I might have passed cool quite some time ago. I don't like the right bands (Glasangeles, they're all the rage these days), I'm not very good at taking drugs and I don't wear my baseball cap backwards and baggy trousers with straps hanging off them like all da kidz did about 8 years ago and Stu Who still does. But I did have nearly 24 hours of being cool this week.

On thursday afternoon I was walking with Jerk in the park when a girl came up to me and said "Hello! You helped the day I got mugged!" It should be pointed out that I helped her the day she got mugged, I wasn't assisting the actual mugging. She had her phone stolen, so I called the police for her and bravely texted the word Cunt to her phone repeatedly so that her mugger would know how fucking rock hard I was. What an asset to society I am. Anyway, she was with some friends (all teenagers) and they offered me a beer. It's been a while since I sat in the park with teenagers drinking beer and it was fun. They seemed genuinely impressed that I'd seen Morrissey at Wembley two years before any of them were born and my incredible tale of walking to Sister Ray to buy Nevermind on CD the day it came out was met with wonderful "wow"s and awful "my dad bought it that week too"s. I sat with them being the coolest 40 year old EVER for about half an hour and then told them to hang loose (see, I know how the kids talk). I should NEVER have returned to that park.

But I did the next day. Stupid Jerk needed to be walked again so off we went. I saw "the gang" again and started to slightly swagger in a cool way (not an arthrictic way) as I approached them. The girl who's life I saved (sort of) ran up and said "I've got a tennis ball for Jerk!". She threw it to me and I threw it for Jerk. Well, I tried to throw it for Jerk but I lost my feeble grip on the ball and it flew over a fence on to the train tracks. Basically, it looked like I'd just gone "FUCK YOU, BITCH, AND FUCK YOUR FUCKING TENNIS BALL TOO". It really looked like I'd done it on purpose. Her face just dropped and my brain froze. Even "butterfingers" didn't pass my lips, instead I just grinned like an awful shit. They all just walked away. I felt awful but found consolation in the thought that maybe, just maybe, they all realised it was an accident and I was still really brilliant. This thought consoled me for about 15 seconds until one of them shouted "twat" from 200 yards away. Then I turned round to see Jerk peering through a fence at a tennis ball that she could never have. Please have the theme tune to Curb Your Enthusiasm in your head NOW.

I carried on the feeling of depression by doing a gig in Eastbourne later that night. Some of the audience were quite good, some of them were quite bollocks and most of them were quite not there. The Winter Gardens theatre is a big, big room to perform in and if it's not full it feels like there's no-one there at all. I was tolerated for about 6 minutes by them, then they sounded like laughing/listening/being alive was a fucking chore. At one point a man at the front looked behind him at the audience and said "I don't know what their problem is", which cheered me up a bit. I got home at 12.30 by stayed up until 4 forcing TV into my eyes. It's the way of the comedian.

Nothing's Coming Up Roses

OK, here's a delicate one. I've started to turn into a right-wing Nazi recently and I'm not sure what to do about it. Allow me to cut a long story short: I live in a very nice cosy little cul-de-sac in Lewisham, totalling just 20 houses. Everyone in our street is quite groovy and arty and, to make us even more right on, at the very end there's a little tiny school for special needs kids. That's nice, isn't it? Anyhoo, Lewisham Council have closed the school down, they want to bulldoze it to the fucking ground and build a site for "travellers". It's the story that the Daily Mail has always dreamt about.

Can you see why I might just be a little bit out of my fucking mind with fury right now, dear reader? Everyone has the right to lead any type of lifestyle that they wish and if a certain group of people want to pretend that they live a respected and traditional nomadic existence while actually arranging dog fights and selling their own organs for Cider Vouchers then that's totally up to them. I haven't got a problem with those cunts. My problem lies firmly with the award-winning ballbags at Lewisham Council. Fine. Build a £2 million site for these noble minstrels to burn down and rape, but don't knock down a school for special needs kids to do it. It's PC gone 9/11.

A couple of months ago at a town meeting I asked a knuckle-dragging sack of awful called Carol Long from Lewisham Council about the ethics of this. Luckily, Carol is the sort of smug bastard that when she patronisingly talks to you she patronisingly closes her eyes at the same time which meant she couldn't see the childish faces I was making. She tried to explain to me how lucky we all were to be allowed the travelling community to become part of our street (Note: the only other part of Lewisham that was deemed "lucky" enough for this project is a disused lorry park but it was rejected for some reason. I'm guessing the reason is that the council offices overlook the lorry park. I mean, we couldn't have our lovely council looking at the scary hobbits, could we?) all the while saying the word "travellers" about 700 times. I admit it, I cracked. I felt the right-winger within rise up and before I could stop myself I regretfully said "If they're travellers, WHY DON'T THEY TRAVEL?" I know. I'm a cunt. Carol then closed her eyes to tell me that just because they're travellers doesn't mean that they travel and when I explained that that's exactly what it meant she just smiled and said "Well, what's your definition of a traveller?" That was her big answer! That was it! I stared at her and said "I have three words for you. Alan Fucking Whicker".

So, that was a few months ago and today I'm a little bit freshly angry at the council because after we explained that if they destroy the entire area that the school is on they will also be destroying various rare plants and trees (which is totally against the Councils own rules, but fuck it, who cares?), they have claimed that defending this type of wildlife only shows my predjudice against another race (all the travellers are white). So, in other words, DON'T COME TO LEWISHAM FOREIGNERS! WE HAVE RACIST TREES! Not only that, the council have confirmed that the destruction of the school will start very, very soon.

Just in case you think I'm getting hysterical then please think on this. Remember that news story a couple of years ago about the family of "travellers" who got pissed on an Easyjet flight and had to be kicked of the plane? Well, they're the ones moving into my street. Not people LIKE them, it's THEM. FUCKING CUNTS!!!

On a lighter note, The Clock Hour was fantastic last night. I really loved it. Steve Lamaq promised to turn up but it was even better because he didn't. Prick. The show was all the better for having Dan Mersh in it. He's a very funny man indeed and it was stupid that we didn't put more pressure on him and manipulated him into coming to Edinburgh. Hopefully he'll be in more Real Daniel shows in the future. I'm tired now. I need a Fanta Lemon. BYE!

Silly, Stupid, Lazy Switzerland.

Switzerland's noble attempt to stop the commission of a second series of The Fucking Kevin Fucking Bishop Show sadly failed today and I woke up to find myself crushingly alive. Oh, yes, they can make cuckoo clocks but apparently a black hole is slightly beyond the Nazi gold hiding pricks. The Large Hadron Collider in Geneva was switched on this morning and, instead of wiping out the human race, it just hummed, crushed atoms and got one step further to finding Rhodes Boyson. Why they want to do that is well beyond me. I like atoms. Leave them alone. It does look good though, like a very polished version of the set from The Hand of Fear. What? Too soon?

OK, I have to go to The Albany. We're doing The Clock Hour with some other stuff mixed in tonight. My blog tomorrow should be furious. It will feature the council, special needs children, nomad travellers and my rifle of justice. Sorry today's was brief but if I start with all the crap that the council shoved through my letter box I'd have no time to say cunt. And no-one wants my blog to be free of that, See you tomorrow.

Doctor Who references: 1. Cunt: 1. A draw.

Incey Wincey

Who the fuck has a tarantula for a pet? That's horrible. It's like having a severed head as a pet. It freaks people out and makes you look creepy. Yesterday, I was in the pet shop buying food for my dog (a fine choice for a pet) when a massive, slurring, chav she-blob rolled in front of me with 8 take-away boxes full of crickets for her mad animal to murder and swallow in front of her children. I know she had children because she had the names of some of them amongst her thousands of tattoos (honestly, she was an incredible read), some of which showed how deep she was because they was written in foreign. What joy can be gained from owning a pet that would gladly kill you if it got the chance? She's (probably) not a Bond villain. She can't need this scary, hairy, leg-monster in her house. How misbehaved do your kids have to be that you'd get one of Mother Nature's own hit-men in to threaten them? I've been on my own for three days.

Last night, due to my growing madness because I've been on my own for three days, I decided to go to Old Rope. Old Rope is a comedy club where comedians go to try out new material and Phil Nichol goes to drink and scream. It's a very good night with barely a cunt on stage. I didn't perform there because I'm a coward and wasn't asked but the bill consisted of Matt Kirschen, Robin Ince, Benny Boot (who did all his own heckling, very impressive), Nick Doody....er....and some other people. Matt is such a superb comedian, the brand new material he performed last night sounded so well-honed already. The fucking cunt. And Robin Ince is without a doubt one of the very, very best comedians around, which is exactly why I left before he came on. I don't need my nose rubbed in Robin's goods. I wish I could do a spot there but it just seems so scary, standing in front of comedians and Phil Nichol drinking and screaming and performing brand new material that could easily crash to the floor. It's terrifying. That's what tarantula-woman should really do. Fuck the mad spider, when your kids are fucking around, make them write 5 new minutes of material to do in front of Alastair Barrie. The very thought. I might not sleep tonight.

I'm very glad that we're doing The Clock Hour tomorrow night at The Albany, Great Portland Street. I've missed doing the show a lot and, quite frankly, after this BORING week I'm glad to be doing anything. Dan Mersh has brought two other sketches to this re-mixed version of The Clock Hour plus we'll be delighting in the company of Brian Blessed's Balls also. If you haven't seen BBB then you really should. It's mental.

I think Andre Vincent's right. I've been saying snide comments about comedians then link to clips of them here on my blog. That's horrible. Who the hell am I to say what's bad? I'm nothing special. Andre is bang on the money, that's just me copying Chortle and if you go around copying things then you're a cunt, so I humbly apologise. Andre is, of course, responsible for The Daily Show, or it's UK knock-off at any rate. So, to make up for it, here's something BRILLIANT:

Doctor Who Vs. Cunt

The great thing about going on first at a comedy gig is that you can get home in time to see Most Annoying Couples on BBC 3. There's nothing better than coming home to find that this cunt-soup of a TV programme is the best thing on and you know you've got four hours to go before you even start to feel sleepy and go to bed. Apart from uncovering the incredible revelations that Amy Winehouse is not Neil & Christine Hamilton's cup of tea (to be fair, they like rape) and Kerry Katona is the ugliest, most useless, most kickable Hutt in the clan, my favourite part was hearing from chilled out feminist punch-bag James Jeffries. Apparently, when it comes to Heather McCartney, he feels that "how fucking awful do you have to be when you're crippled and still the nation hates you?" Well, Jim, ever heard of a little dictator called DAVROS? Yeah, Jim! Take it! Or is Davros too real for you, maaaaaaaaaan? Mind you, I wore the twat hat and did a talking head show for Channel 4 years ago. I became the first person on British television to call Richard Blackwood a cunt. But not the last, obviously.

Then I watched Comedy Connections on BBC 2 or something. This week's edition focused on the Benny Hill joke that is Little Britain starring the very funny Matt Lucas and a bag of smug. Matt, although he's great, made the faux pas of describing writing Little Britain as "laborious". Need I say anymore? I am, of course, just jealous that they work with Tom Baker and I don't. Mind you, I occasionally work with Harry Denford and they NEVER do. Who's laughing now? Absolutely no one.

Last night's gig at Reading was pretty good. The people who work at Jongleurs Reading are very lovely indeed and the audience were mostly good, with the exception of some constantly chatty cunts. I tried out two new jokes! One got a laugh! That's not bad. It's going to take a bit of time and a lot of work before I'm happy with my set (No shit, Detective Einstein) but I'm very happy to be working on it bit by bit and, after doing stand up for so long, it's about time I did some work. All in all, last night was fun. Kevin McCarthy compered and it was good to see Geoff Norcott doing so well (he headlined, only two months ago he was in charge of photocopying the drinks vouchers). Rick Right was also on. I didn't stay to watch because….well, you know. Someone has to watch Most Annoying Couples, right?

And I'm glad I left when I did otherwise I would have missed seeing the most British man in history on the train. A man sat opposite me had a huge painting resting beside him while he read his Tony Parsons' book, I Used To Be A Punk Now Look At Me. Then a very drunk woman got on board and stood very near the painting and continually wobbled, swaying perilously close to the painting every time. Mr. Britain was furious and asked her to be careful. This, she thought, was the most hysterically funny thing she'd ever heard, which annoyed Mr. Britain all the more. She continued to wobble but did he try to protect his precious painting? Did he get up and stand between it and Drunky McGiggles? NO! Because he is British and he has a seat and he's not giving that up for anyone. Not sure how amusing that is in a blog but in years to come I'll read this and go, yeah, that was slightly funny if you were there. Sort of.

Doctor Who References: Two. Cunts: Three. Cunt wins.

Please Sir, Can I Have Less?

I'm a big health nut! Because I've been so utterly unhealthy recently, today I made myself a blackberry/orange juice/banana/peanut butter smoothie (yeah, it doesn't really work, I was nearly sick), I then had a really healthy garlic & cherry tomato pasta dish, I walked the dog and I brushed my teeth. I'm a regular fitness fanatical. I'm even going to the gym later. I will have no choice but to drink myself into a lot of comas to help balance out this misguided change in lifestyle.

I am very spritely today because last night I performed my first stand-up gig since returning from Scotland and everyone agreed that I had done a great job of compering. Sadly, I was doing a set but I take their point. I was lucky enough to be working with a very nice bill (practically unheard of in comedy, most clubs have a two cunt minimum) of Rob Heeney, Henning Wehn and The Raymond & Mr. Timpkins Review and the venue itself was incredible. Well, sort of. It's a place just outside of Chatham (that should give you an idea how remote the place is) called Dickensworld named after the writer of classics like Pride & Predjudice and Moby Dick, for all the audience knows. As you walk in you are escorted through a mock Dickensian town, like the one in Far From The Madding Crowd, that has it's own boat ride!! Mirth Control in John O'Groats doesn't have it's own boat ride! After walking through downtown Dickensworld we were then led to the venue itself, a mock up of an old Dickensian Victorian theatre, like the one in The Pelican Brief, that had about 12 people in it. I got worried. I needn't have because we were soon told by the world's cheeriest adult that 250 people had booked and it's a near sell-out. The thing is, even full this weird, weird room looks cavernous but lucky the audience were pretty good, not great, but pretty good. This is due to Rob Heeney's excellent compering work. He turned the room right round from a bunch of scratch card addicts at a chav wedding reception to a room full of people 50% of whom wanted to watch a comedy show. Not an easy thing to do given the circumstances. I was so impressed by Rob's skills that I ran on to the stage and did pretty much exactly the same. In other words, I bottled it. I chickened out. I cunted myself in the cunthead. Henning Wehn wasn't the pussy I was, he was excellent. I'd have stayed to watch the Raymonds (they're easily one of the best acts around, extremely clever and extremely stupid all in one go) but I was embarrassed and immediately jumped into a Hansom Cab, like the one in Are You Dave Gorman?

Still, it was good to get a gig all done and done. I may have fucked it up but I'll be doing my best to not repeat that tonight in Reading. I can't help but think that I've let the blog down by doing my first gig back with a really good line-up. Don't know who's on tonight but if you're missing awful, awful comedy then please check out the link below. A more right-wing, horrible piece of shit I haven't seen since....well, my act last night.

http://www.apple.com/trailers/independent/anamericancarol/

You see, I think men and women are kinda different...

I was very lucky last night. Even though Bennett Arron has been writing a kids TV trilogy, his novel, a screenplay, a play, an opera, a sit-com, a painting (somehow), a speech, a self-help book, a gritty war/snowboarding drama, a Metallica album, the word "anti-semite", an AIDS pamphlet, a brand new series of The Tomorrow People, the news, a panel show, a sketch show, a poem, a Vagina Monologue and a big shark, he still managed to somehow squeeze in some time to go drinking with me last night. It was good fun. We went to a bar with two Happy Hours! Between 6.30 and 7.30 you can buy any cocktail (except the one you want) for only £12!!! Then between 9.30 and 10.30 you can get any bottle of Coors Light (except the one you want) for the price that it actually should be anyway. Ah, the joys of drinking in London's glittering West End. You get ripped off, it's too crowded and everywhere you look you see a bunch of foreigners dribbling and being clueless - and that's just the bar staff! HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA!!!! It's funny because it's jingoistic!

Speaking of racism, Ben and I were casually staggering up Dean Street after leaving the Happy Hour bar when we saw that The Bath House were having a Comedy Night on. Except it wasn't a Comedy Night at all, it was a Women Only Comedy Night. That is just so unfair (especially on the audience). I mean, if there was a Men Only Comedy Night you'd all be putting your Helen Feildings down, switching off your Sex In The City's and putting your Chunky Monkey back in the fridge to protest against sexism. And you'd be right. OK, so most night of the week the bills in Comedy Clubs all over the UK are full of men and, God forbid, that if a woman did somehow get on the bill due to the promoter making a booking error while trying to think of this weeks excuse for not paying acts (Men! We cannot multi-task!) then obviously she'd be put on in the middle so she can be passed off as an open spot when she starts crying. But that's not the point! Having a Women Only Comedy Night is not the answer. Sure, it must be a tad frustrating to have to work harder to get on to certain bills at some clubs when you see them being headlined by male jugglers, male children's entertainers and male crippled racists rather than a female comedian but that's just the way it is, Ladies. Get used to it. My good friend Johnny Candon once said (and I hope he doesn't mind me quoting him) that he loved watching female comics because it meant that some man somewhere wasn't getting his dinner. Baking your own little comedy night is just the most sexist thing I've ever heard. What next? A Jewish night? Comedy for kids? A black circuit? Dream on, chicks.

Tonight I'm doing my first stand-up gig since I got back from Scotland. It's in a place called Dickinsworld. Really. I just found out I've got the girl's slot on the bill. Men win again!

I Blogged a Lot.

Hello there. I'm going to be blogging here a lot more (I mean it this time). Normally, I blog on myspace.com/michaellegge and on my Facebook page. I blogged pretty much every day during this year's Edinburgh Fringe Festival. Here are the past blogs in order. From now on I'll post as normal here. By the way, I say the word "cunt" a lot. Enjoy!

29th July 2008

Fitness Last
Current mood: cranky
Category: Romance and Relationships


Day one of the Edinburgh trip has passed. The Fringe itself hasn't started yet but Edinburgh has definitely begun. As soon as we got here the sun went behind a cloud, wrote a note about not being able to cope anymore and then blew it's own brains out. I walked from my flat to this internet cafe I'm now in and on the way was attacked by a vicious gang of fog. It was really sunny in London and now we're up here banging our heads on clouds.

Another clue that we're in Edinburgh is the lack of anything that you actually want. I'm from Ireland and I can confidently claim that the Irish and Scottish do "bugger all" better than anyone in the world (Take that, Wales!). If you want it then there isn't a fucking hope in hell of you getting it up here. And the worst thing is, they do it with a smile. Generally, I set my blood to simmer anyway but the temperature always rises when I see some scottish/irish person gleefully tell me that they've run out of Diet Coke. "But we do have Vimto". And in less than 24 hours I had to ask four times for a cup of tea in a cafe, the flat I moved into doesn't have the promised wi-fi or the promised TV or the (I assumed) promised hot water and the menu in the Indian restaurant was written in cod-scottish so not only did we not understand the Indian terms but we nae did'nee unnerstan the scawtish neither, ye ken? The flat also isn't the one advertised, but the landlady is genuinely nice and very happy to tell you all this. And, I'm afraid to admit, I'd be the same. I love delievering bad news. Face it; I'm a cunt.

On top of this, I decided that the only way to survive a month of Edinburgh drinking and eating bad was to at least go to the Gym every day. I'm a member of Fitness First's chain of gyms. They have over 17 billion gyms all over Britain so a daily work-out was guaranteed. Of course, that is until you come to Edinburgh. Where's their nearest gym? East Kilbride. Obviously, I'm furious and secretly overjoyed.

Rehearsals today. First show tomorrow.

30th July 2008

It’s Johnny!
Current mood: excited
Category: Movies, TV, Celebrities


I woke up this morning to find black banana stuck to the top of the kitchen door. This is because superstar Johnny Candon has now joined us in our flat. I also had my first drunk night of Edinburgh. Drink was taken and at 2 in the morning we all still thought it was brilliant that we were watching a black & white Doctor Who story that we all hated. Anyway, one thing led to another and now there's black banana on our kitchen door.

So, it was my first drunk night and today was our first tech run-through of the show which spawned two new lines! Mainly, due to me not remembering the actual lines. Another first happened today; I was handed my first flyer of the festival. My first of a fucking billion to come. You can't walk three feet in Edinburgh without someone begging you to see their solo version of Romeo & Juliet or a teenage revue team's Reduced Works of Ben Affleck. The flyer in question was handed to me by The Lovely Ben Moor. That is actually his real name. He is actually called The Lovely Ben Moor and everyone who knows him always refer to his full title when talking about him. I know him reasonably well and therefore call him by his first name, The Lovely. He is lovely and his shows are lovely but they sell out fast which is something I would never stoop to or achieve. Anyway, the lovely man gave me his flyer and as soon as he left I folded it in two to make his face look like it didn't have a nose. It's what me and my "friends" will do to all flyers we get. It's funny. And soon I will post a gallery of the best ones right here.

It's the first night tonight. 11pm. Think of me then.

31 Jul 2008

Toilet
Current mood: evil
Category: Jobs, Work, Careers

The first Clock Hour of Edinburgh went very well last night. Obviously, I was the best and the other cunts...sorry, my fellow performers were the best too. Especially Margaret, who I stood in front of during the whole of the final scene. Stupid crying pregnant bastard.We still don't know the show 100% but it's very good and we're all happy with it. Which is worrying because if we like it then no-one will come and we'll never win an award sponsored by a loans company. If we thought the show was a sack of shit in a bag of balls then it'd be nominations all over the shop. They'd probably bring the Perrier back just for us but, sadly, we're just not shit enough. Must try worser. Of course, I feel like a winner already because this is the third year in a row where I've been ignored by a man called Toilet who always pretends he's never met me. He's a cunt's cunt.

So, very happy with our show and I've just seen Johnny Candon's One Careless Lady Owner at the Stand 2. Johnny is naturally funny and charming but watching him sweat through his life as an adopted Johnny Candon really was fun. I'd recommend seeing it but it's on at 12.15 which is mad. I recommend staying up all night. Just like Johnny.

Edinburgh is also experiencing it's very first ever heatwave with temperatures soaring to chilly. It's really nice here at the moment but pissing with rain shall resume shortly no doubt. I'm on at The Liar Show today (www.theliarshow.com) where I will tell the story of a 4 year old Nazi. Should be fun.

01 Aug 2008

Apples
Current mood: bouncy
Category: Food and Restaurants


OK, let's start with last nights show. Right in the first 3 seconds of me being on stage a latecomer walked in and farted. Needless to say, from then on in it was our best performance to date. It had everything! Laughs, applause, improvisation, technical hitches and two walk-outs. I genuinely couldn't be happier. It's really going great.

Yesterday I was very pleased to take part in The Stand's Best of Irish photoshoot. Sadly, I had to smile while holding a bottle of Magners, something no decent human being has ever done before. But it was for The Stand, probably the UK's best comedy club, so I did it. What I didn't do, unlike 5 of my fellow Best Irish comedians did, is get my photo taken while punching a man dressed as an apple. A grain of dignity still....

Then I saw the excellent Pros from Dover show which features the best ever Richard Burton sketch and immediately afterwards did a show called The Liar Show. It's run by an extremely nice man called Neil Masters who does mad things like cycle to the airport and back for a laugh. Strangely, I respect him for that. The Liar Show had it's first show yesterday and, although I can see it turning into some sort of cult hit, it does need tweeking a tad. The premise is this 4 "performers" tell a story each, 3 are true stories, 1 is a lie. The audience then guess which one is the liar. Simple? Yes, it fucking was. I told a story about taking a train to Edinburgh, a woman from Canada in America told a story about opening a bank account, a dutchman told a story about how he once spoke to another human and then, finally, a man told a story about how he once dismantled the Eiffel Tower with his pubes and shoved it up Spaceman Bill's arse. As you can see, it wasn't that difficult a quiz. Plus I was the only one not to get laughs so I'm in a huff. But it'll pick up and everyone there seemed to love it so maybe I'm just being John Q. Cuntyballs again. Adam Bloom's doing it soon so go to see it when he does it.

The day ended with a night at Brooks Bar where I was blanked by the very talented Mark Watson. That now makes my Edinburgh-Pretend-We've-Never-Met list to a whopping two; Toilet and Mark. It'll pick up though. On the way home we played football with the traffic and actually won. So that's what happened there then.

I saw Johnny Candon's One Careless Lady Owner again today and it was even better than yesterday. I have now decided to be Johnny's director for his show and one day I will tell him this. I made notes and notes and notes all the way through his show like a younger more beautiful Ben Walker. Johnny DEFINITELY needs to keep in the bit where he went red and apologised to an old lady in the front row for saying the word wank. He can drop the crap about being sold by nuns though.

I'm at The Stand tonight at 6 then Glasgow Jongleurs at 8.30 the back for The Clock Hour at 11. I'm like the Robin Ince of comedy! Phew!

02 Aug 2008

Positively Insulting.
Current mood: weird
Category: Romance and Relationships


Last night was out third Clock Hour show. This time there were no technical hitches, our performances were better (even though I out-hammed Danny LaRue in some parts) and the audience seemed to really like it. It's all going so well that I can only assume that it's all an elaborate joke that's going to bitch-slap me at any moment. I'm so happy with the show and that is a BIG problem for me. I pride myself in my negativity and this new happiness is starting to give off the wrong impression to people.

I did Jongleurs in Glasgow before the show last night and after 2 minutes in the dressing room Rob Collins, the compere that night, said "Christ, you're fucking positive". No-one has ever said anything more insulting to me before in my life. I am the worlds 2nd greatest cynic. But he was right. I asked everyone how they were, I even looked like I gave a shit when they answered. I told them all about how lovely the weather has been and how I really should make more of an effort to get up Arthur's Seat this year. Only cunts go up Arthur's Seat. And only King Cunts do gigs up there. What the fuck is happening to me! I'll be telling people that I'll DEFINITELY come to their show next.

Today I'll be on at the Lucy & Des Show hosted by Des Clarke and the lovely Lucy Porter. She is now officially known as The Lovely Lucy Porter because she had a fight with the former Lovely Ben Moor and took his Lovely from his name. Plus she came to The Clock Hour last night and said nice things about it so she's doubly lovely now. Their show is on about 5 somewhere in the Pleasance. I am nothing if not a fountain of information.

I really better watch this positivity thing. I'm off for a run in the Meadows now. Really. I hate running. But this morning I put on my shorts, my trainers and made a Running-In-The-Meadows mix in my iPod and feel really happy about it. Of course I'm happy about it. I haven't actually started running yet. I feel happy now but in 20 minutes I'll feel exhausted, sweaty, angry and exceptionally blasphemous. I also might DIE. If this is my last blog then I want to go out in a blaze of glory.

BIG FUCK ARSE FLANGE!

03 Aug 2008

Elephants & Ladbrokes
Current mood: hungover
Category: Goals, Plans, Hopes


Last night's show was the first one that I can confidently say that I was totally shit in. I can be a bit shit in any show, of course, but last night's was shit on rye. Everyone else in the show was great, because they're pricks. I was shit because...well, fuck off. Luckily, Steve Bennett who runs Chortle.co.uk was in, I assume, to review the show so it'll be nice to know that the reason we get a one-star write up will solely be down to my talents. He might hate me as a performer but Steve seems to like me as a person (gay?) as we drank reasonably heavily together last night. I would now like to take this oppurtunity to review him: Seems likeable enough. 4/5.

At the moment I'm in an internet cafe, that uses an internet cable that was invented in 1204, directly across from the place where I stayed the first year I did Edinburgh. It's above a Ladbrokes which is a dream only a few of us have made a reality. It's also next to my favourite breakfast place in Edinburgh or the world; Elephants & Bagels. I used to love going in there. The overpriced toast, the stop-serving-breakfast-at-6am's, the look of shock on Steve Gribbins face. It's nice. JK Rowling invented Harry Potter there. I'm going to go there now and invented a character called Rapey the Raping Rapist. I trust when Rapey gets famous E&B will put up the same amount of memorabilia for him that they do for Harry.

I've got Glasgow Jongleurs again tonight before The Clock Hour but as of tomorrow I'll be going to see some shows. I'll tell you what they're like. Just like Steve Bennett.

04 Aug 2008

CUNTS.
Current mood: busy
Category: Life

Wasn't I just saying how well our show was doing? Didn't I tell you how good it was? Well, it looks like a few people out there haven't been reading my blog or something because last night's audience were CUNTS. Boring bunch of mirthless bastards. When they laughed, which was practically fucking never, you could hear the disappointment in their voices like they'd let themselves down by actually enjoying something in their fucking useless, empty, cunty lives. I HATE THEM. I know that you really shouldn't blame an audience for a show's failure but trust me. THEY. WERE. CUNTS. I hope their ugly, fat, retarded children grow up to be murderers and kill them. Slowly. But, hey, that's the wonder of Edinburgh.

After the show, I had every right to go out drinking and so did so. At Brooks' Bar I was approached by a spangly Dan March who was very drunk and had shit all over his face. He immediately raped Paul and Jeremy, for some reason. Then he drunkenly said to me in a drunk drunken voice "How's it going then, you old bastard?". "Not very well, actually", I replied. "Why?" said drunk Dan, drunkenly. "Well," I quipped, "Some cunt just called me a bastard". But, hey, that's the wonder of Edinburgh.

Now, I really should point out that not everyone in the audience last night was a FUCKING BASTARD CUNT because two really nice American students waited after the show to say really nice things about it. I thank them a lot. Paul was wearing a lovely Batman t-shirt that impressed them a lot. They asked him if he'd seen The Dark Knight. "Seen it?" he said, "I lived it". I had no choice but to ask him in what way had he actually lived The Dark Knight? Johnny reckons it's because he lives in Wayne Manor. Well, he's looking after it for Camelot.

Tonight I do the Stand's Best of Irish before The Clock Hour and then compere Spank! right after it. I like all the busy-ness of this year's Edinburgh. It means I'm in even more of a bubble than most other years. I know nothing about what's going on outside the Fringe. I only found out today that Freddie Mercury didn't kill Jill Dando. I have no punchline to that. Oh, but I do have this: Do you think that the phrase "Safety Pimms" is funny and should be in our show? I do.

05 Aug 2008

Cunts Redux
Current mood: fabulous
Category: Dreams and the Supernatural


I'm glad to say that last night's audience were a lot nicer than the previous nights bunch of fuckerbastards. The show was a lot more cartoony too. I think I like that.

Not everything was that nice though. I performed at The Stand's Best of Irish comedy show. I love The Stand so it's always a pleasure to be there but, unfortunately, a perfect example of cuntdom slipped through their radar and made his way to sitting in the front row. As I was on last at Best of Irish I thought it was fair to say that I AM THEREFORE THE BEST IRISH PERSON WHO EVER LIVED. He disagreed in the only way he knew how; by booking tickets to Jason Byrne over the phone while I was on stage. A great heckle indeed. But he ruined it after I declared I was from Northern Ireland and he said "I'm from Guildford, ironically". A bomb went off in Guilford in the 70's or 80's and he obviously concluded that it was a group effort by everyone from Northern Ireland. After I explained that I had nothing to do with it, it was my Mum, he became furious that I would make jokes about the loss of innocent lives. Er...HELLO? I don't think it was me that brought the subject up. And I don't think it was me that implied that all Northern Irish people are terrorists. Mind you, I think it was me that said "Ohh, looky me! I'm from Guildford! Boo hoo! I got all blowed up! Ah-boo-hoo!" I need to take it easy in the future.

After the Clock Hour I co-compered Spank! with Leon and it was fun and really difficult in equal measure. It's such a hi-NRG, fun-time, WE-ARE-HERE-TO-PARR-TAY atmosphere that wheeling out a (nearly) 40 year old permently grumpy joy-murderer like me seemed too much of a contrast. The audience were extremely nice and were postive about absolutely everything they saw or heard. I even got a huge round of whoops, hollers, cheers and YEAHS when I asked "Who here has feet?" but then in the second half I found myself in Nuts Magazine hell. In Spank! they have a spot called the one-minure promo where a member of the audience can get on stage and plug their show but, wait for it, they have to be naked! Unfortunately for me, someone was up for it, got up onstage, took her clothes off in public and told us all about the play she was in (The Crying Abortion Rape of Sodomy, Pleasance Away, 11am). I genuinely felt extremely uncomfortable and looked like a Dad who had come to Spearmint Rhino at 4am to drive home his stripper daughter. But not in a good way. The acts were great at Spank! though. Tommy and The Weeks were very funny indeed, as was Juliet Meyers, Ian Stone and, well, me, really.

I've seen shows that I'm not in too. I saw Johnny Candon's excellent One Careless Lady Owner (The Stand 2, 12.15pm) for the third time. It genuinely gets funnier each time and it's now so slick that Johnny's got the whole show down to 18 minutes so it'll both entertain and free up your day all at the same time. I highly recommend it. I then saw Stewart Lee, also at the Stand, but I don't really think I need to tell you how he was. It's very highly unlikely that you don't like him. I'm dying to see some shit impro though. Please feel free to recommend some.

07 Aug 2008

Me and Toilet up a tree.....
Current mood: loved
Category: News and Politics


I am a penis. Yesterday I spent money on a bag full of toys. A bag full of fucking toys for a man who's nearly 40. A bag full of toys for a man who I don't even like. Me. When will I grow up? When will this fucking stupidity end?

But I digress....Last night's show was FUCKING AMAZING! It was our first sell out show of the run and the audience loved it. The great thing was we had loads of press in. The Scotsman, The Guardian, The Daily Express, Melody Maker, Empire and The Bible all came to see us and promise 5 star reviews all round! They also said that they would kick Idiots of Ants to death and bootfuck Pappy's Fun Club into next year just so the public would only come to see us and no other sketch groups. They're leaving This Show Belongs to Lionel Ritchie alone for some reason. There was also a millionaire record producer from Hollywood in who wants to turn The Clock Hour into a film to be shown in London's West End! Plus the BBC want to record everything we've ever thought for a 4-part Radio 4 series for BBC3 on ITV2. I'm glad this is happening because now I am of equal to soooooooooooo many other lying cunts up here.

All the lovely sunshine was great for the first few preview days but now that the Festival is underway properly it's good to see the rain constantly working it's heart out to make us all miserable. It's rained non-stop since tuesday night and my room has a leak in it. Yesterday, it rained sideways for 4 hours and I saw a frog. In the fucking street. The good news is that the weather will remain like this for the next few days. After that the Met Office are issuing a severe weather warning. Fucking brilliant.

On a much happier note, I've been to see some shows. Zoe Gardner's Fault at the Underbelly is completely fantastic. It's just so solidly brilliant from start to finish and Zoe made me laugh constantly. I especially liked the bit when she said "You're a cunt!" and looked straight at me. It's an excellent show that you've really got to see so do that, please. I also saw Richard Herring's The Headmaster's Son which was amazing because it's just so slick and proffessional in it's structure and performance but filled with loads of brilliant stupidity too. It's good that. The best thing I've seen though is a wonderful pantomime musical called Portobello Pantomime: Somewhere Over The Rainbow. Now, everyone who knows me well knows that I absolutely adore pantomime musicals. "Oi, Pantomime Musical-Boy", my friends often say. "Are you going to another pantomime musical, you big panto-musey?" And this is probably the best, greatest and only pantomime musical I have ever seen. It's based on the Wizard of Oz which is a children's book about cunts but this time it's set on the Portobello Road market instead of Kansas and all the cunts have been replaced by fucking arseholes. Just in case you're thinking of going, understand this: Dorothy is now called D and she doesn't have a dog, she has a potato. A potato called PoTOTO. Well, it gave me lukemia. And Jeremy plays piano in it.

I've had some time to reflect recently and I think maybe I'm being a bit harsh on some people up here in Edinburgh. In fact, I'm going to put it all right by turning this Edinburgh run into a great story all it's own. My Edinburgh stay is actually going to have a proper story arc, the kind of story arc Richard Curtis would die for if he wasn't already dead. This is it: During this Edinburgh I am going to... BECOME BEST FRIENDS WITH TOILET. Toilet is a man who pretends he's never met me everytime we meet. He's an arrogant ball-ache but I will become his companion in this feel-good hit of an Edinburgh. I saw him the other night talking to my friends and immediately felt sick that I had no choice but to sit next to the pretentious fanny. It was then that I had the idea to be his best friend so I sat next to him. I mean, REALLY next to him. Really uncomfortably close as I was practically on him. Did he say hello? Did he register me? Did he even so much as ask me to stop sitting on his arm? NO. Because he is a hard-hearted cad but, because I have love in my heart, I feel like I can change Toilet for the better. We're enemies now but soon, we're going to find out that we really need each other. Me and Toilet are Trains, Planes and Automobiles 2 and, unfortunately for Toilet, I'm John Candy. Mainly, because I'd rather be dead than be in a film with him. Watch the development of this story, people, it's going to be a good one.

08 Aug 2008

Edinburgh in your own home.
Current mood: exotic
Category: Games


Our flyerers are amazing. We went from 3 tickets sold at 10pm last night to being two thirds full at 11pm. Thank you flyerers. I think people are interested in our show now not because people think we seem funny or people think that the poster looks good or people think that that's that one girl from Katy Brand's Big Fat Arse but because, basically, they want to fuck our flyerers. And who can blame them? They're fantastic looking. We have the studenty lovely blonde one and the studenty lovely Indie skinny boy and the studenty albino Canadian. They're gorgeous! And they're great at their job. Well done them then.

If you've ever been involved in the Edinburgh Fringe Festival you will know that there is only one thing worse than all the cunts up here and that is all the cunts who didn't come here. All the fucking shitty thick comedians who laugh at the thought of doing Edinburgh because it's a waste of time and money but still don't mind spending weekend after weekend in Nottingham or Doncaster or, God forbid, Nottingham "entertaining" broken humans at night and shuffling around DVD shops trying to complete their Steven Segal collection during the day. A couple of months ago at a weekend at The Comedy Cafe I asked Danny James if he was going to Edinburgh. He laughed and said "No, mate. I'm staying down here to clean up". "Clean up?", I replied. "Is that how you make money now?" So for people who aren't in Edinburgh but you feel like seeing something like the full Edinburgh Experience in your own studio flat, here's some reccomendations: Firstly, Johnny Candon bought a DVD by a stand up comedian called Dorothy Paul entitled Dorothy. This stand up and music set will truly give you the full Edinburgh Fringe Festival experience because the cancerous bitch that stars in it is such a boring arse-burn of immense magnitude that you will only watch Kick Me In The Head Repeatedly, I'm Karen Taylor happily for the rest of your life. Dorothy does a series of different, layered, creatively brilliant characters who can't speak and can only be differentiated by the different eye-rape of a frock she's wearing. We also watched a film called Hellzapoppin' which was made in 1941 and is so incredibly wonderful that it's description will only sully this blog with some sort of horrible positivity. It's amazing and you should watch it right now. Look it up on imdb.com.

I realised that yesterday I sort-of reviewed Portobello Pantomime: Somewhere Over The Westway like I'm some sort of fucking superior critic who has the right to say such things. I'm obviously not that superior a critic because I forgot to tell you about Mr. Bastard, one of the actors in the show. Mr. Bastard, his real name, was the stand-out performer in the show for me because I've never seen an actor play a role and, yet, let his own lack of personality puke through the character at the same time. He is such a cunt. He's irish and he can't do an irish accent. How is that possible? Genius! He also delievers the worst line of dialogue ever written: "I donner give a shish", which he recites like he's have a Downe's Syndrome stroke. Please go to see it.

Update on the story of Edinburgh: Yesterday, I saw Toilet in the Pleasance Courtyard but was actually too scared to talk to him. I think that still sits justifiably as part of the story. I mean, man doesn't like man, then man wants to get to know man but man's too shy to say anything, finally man plucks up courage and man finds man to be very nice, then man and man become best friends, then man gives man a punch in the neck and man laughs. That is still a fucking story. If you have any ideas as to what my opening line to Toilet should be then please let me know. I'm getting you to write it for me! How Mark fucking Watson am I?

09 Aug 2008

This Blog is Directed at Lionel Richie
Current mood: cooky/wacky
Category: Podcast


Last night's show was our best one so far. Sadly, I was shit in it but it was fun watching the others being so incredibly funny. I'm genuinely lucky to be working with such funny, talented, really great people night after night after fucking night. And I couldn't be happier about the show itself. It's going really well and people are telling me they liked it. I'm sure you've seen it or heard the buzz about it yourself. In fact, it wouldn't surprise me if you were reading about our show RIGHT NOW.

Let's clear this up. I know I said bad things about a show that's running up here but it really wasn't all fucking embarrassingly tediously awful. Kerry Howard is great fun in it and the guy who plays the Bling Man (yeah, I know) is a great actor I saw in a play at the Hackney Empire last year. I also had a couple of gentle-ish digs at a sketch group in my last couple of blogs and I really had no right to as I had never seen them before. Now that I have seen them my comments are finally justified. Fucking Christ almighty, what were those bellends thinking? There wasn't a moment of their hour long show that I wasn't constantly relating to Elizabeth Fritzl and wishing 9/11 had happened to me instead of those blocks of flats in American. Apparently one of them actually really changed his name to Lionel Richie by deed poll. Does he have CUNT written on his forehead? No, he doesn't need to. Honestly, I can't really describe what happened in their show because I'm still in shock but, well, let's put it this way, it was, sort of, you know, like constantly being breathed on by The Rancor while your mum smiles and puts your dad's finger in you. 4 stars.

Incredibly, it wasn't the worst thing I saw in Edinburgh yesterday. That accolade belongs to a bunch of pikey looking dancers who were, you know, man, just warming up in the middle of the fucking coffee area of Bristow Square. You know, man, they were just so free and at one with themselves that they just thought it was fine to be utter pretentious, fitter-than-me cuntrapes and just do a totally spontaneous and utterly tedious dance routine in a public area where people are trying to relax and come to terms with the abortion of a sketch show they've just seen. I mean, really, why do people think they can just do a dance routine in public? Hello? Did I miss a meeting? Yes, I did and it's not called a meeting, it's a rehearsal. They were all such cunts....except two of them. They weren't dancing like twats in public. No! They were busy massaging each other in public. TIRESOME.

I also did The Stand's Best of Irish were I saw the incredible Bernard O'Shea and afterwards saw an amazing show by Count Arthur Strong. Can I please persuade you to vote for Isabel Fay who's got through to the final of Nivea's Funny Women competion because she's incredibly funny but mainly because she seems a bit embarrassed about it. The tag line of Nivea's Funny Women is ridiculously "Comedy is Beauty" which totally explains why Nuts Magazine's Funniest Man Competition's tag line is "Comedy is Too Spineless To Buy Pornography".

10 Aug 2008

Folding someone’s actual face.
Current mood: groggy
Category: Pets and Animals


Ah, what an audience we had last night. Drunk? Fuck me dead, yes! As soon as the show started a group of people decided that that was a great time to start talking, then people wandered in late during the second sketch, then two people wandered out early during the third sketch (I tried to leave with them) and then a cartoon of a Scottish drunk fell asleep in the front row. They all certainly put the turd into saturday night in Edinburgh. On a big plus side, we had about eight 65 year-old's in all sat together behind Dan Tetsell, the creator of Nicholas Lyndhurst. As soon as the light's went down at the beginning he heard one old lady say "I can't believe they've done a show about Daniel O'Donnell". We didn't stand a chance.

I saw some really great things yesterday. Stefan UnprounouncablenamefromBigCountry Talks About A Girl He Once Loved is excellent and nowhere near as schmaltzy as it looks but the big highlight for me yesterday was seeing Scott Capurro at the After Hours Show. He's just so genuinely controversial and confrontational and the point he's making is pretty obvious if you'd care to see it. Luckily, most of the audience did get the point and, even luckier, one man in the audience didn't. Scott basically took the word 'cunt' and smashed the man's teeth in with it.

Pretty much my favourite part of Edinburgh is finding flyers and folding them. Folding a fellow performers face so it looks like they're deformed has long been a hobby of mine during trips to the fringe. I'm off to be stared at by a bunch of free-loading fuckwits at Fringe Sunday now so let me leave you with some faces I folded yesterday.

Er....sadly for Myspace users you're going to have to look me up on Facebook to see these. Sorry.

11 Aug 2008

I am going to fight Tim Key.
Current mood: breezy
Category: Food and Restaurants


Last night's Clock Hour was fantastic. An audience that got it right from the word go. Plus "Thanks for turning up. We've got The Internet in tonight" is now my favourite new line. Well done, Zoe, and sorry for stealing it.

Yesterday I went out of my fucking mind and compered the God-awful, piss-poor, pointless dickery that is Fringe Sunday. Minge Sunday, I call it (HA HA HA HA, HAVE AT YOU!). It's basically a load of tight-fisted Earth Mothers and Real Ale Inventors sitting in a tent that insists rain passes through it while watching a bunch of cunts. It has to be said Steven Grant was full of Fringe Spirit (a drink I wouldn't touch) and the 400-odd people there really loved him. I wish I could find it in myself to be arsed to do as well as he did because he looked like he was really having fun. Remember fun? It used to be on in the middle of Magpie, I think. Anyway, Steven was really good as were a few other comics. Sarah Millican is excellent. But I turned up soaked, hungover and furious only to be told that we're over running so if I could just get the acts on and off that would be great, yeah? What's the fucking point in me being there then, you peace-loving, water-drinking, naturally organic CUNTS?

After The Clock Hour nothing short of a miracle happened. I'm so happy to write this and tell you about it because it looks like my Edinburgh story arc is starting to really happen. Last night....TOILET SPOKE TO ME. I've never felt so nervous in my life, it was like bumping into an old boyfriend while I've got no make-up on. He said some really nice things about the show and...get this... he said HE'D SEE ME AROUND! I'm so excited! I wonder where we'll go and what adventures we'll have? I told Marissa last night that at some point during Edinburgh I have to ask him to come to see a film with me then during the film I'm going to just subtly slightly touch his hand with my own. How long before he'll pull away? Will he pull away? Won't it be shit if he doesn't? I'm VERY excited.

My joy didn't and couldn't last long, of course, because a few moments later I saw Tim Key. I've met Tim Key a few times and he's always seemed nice and anytime I've seen him on stage I've always found him really funny but last night, for no reason, he just walked in with a beard. Like butter wouldn't fucking melt. He was acting like it was all ok to have a beard, which is ridiculous. Now, thanks to him, I've lost all rationality and hate the hair on the face of a man I barely know. At one point I saw him stroking it like he was thinking. Bollocks. Even if he's growing it to play the part of David Bellamy in that film everyone's talking about, it's still a fucking insult. I now have no choice but to fight him. I know I'm crap at fighting and he'll almost certainly beat me up but he has left me with little option. If he thinks he can Kitson around with a pretenious fanny on his face then I'm coming out with a Broadsword and a goblet of mead; I'm going to get medieval on his ass.

Today is Johnny Candon's day off and it's nice to see him getting a lie in this morning. There are only two things that are weird about sharing a flat with Johnny. The first one is that he sleeps with the door open, the second is that he sleeps above his duvet and naked. I feel a bit sick today.

12 Aug 2008

Oh Fuck, I’m Richard Herring.
Current mood: knighted
Category: Sports


Last night's show was fantastic. Even better than the previous night's show. In fact, it was so amazing that near the end of it I turned 40. It was really nice to have Richard Vranch in the audience because the Comedy Store Players were my big introduction to live comedy and when he said nice things about the show it made me feel like my Father had finally stopped beating me. He's a very nice man. He also told me that he's getting married soon (congratulations) to someone who is 25 years old. He told me this with a smile wider than the Cheshire Cat's! Christ, that was a bit daytime Radio 4. Why did I write that? Do you become a cunt the day you turn 40?

Anyhoo, this will be a quick blog because I want to go out and celebrate. I'm very happy that some people are reading my little blog and even happier to hear last night that the Scotsman are interested in publishing it. All I have to do is cut down on the swearing and make it slightly more positive. Actually, all I really have to do is tell the Scotsman to CUNT OFF. If they really think that I'd ever stoop to writing for a newspaper that gives someone like Brendon Burns a fucking two-star review then they can fuck off and then fuck off again. I mean, why the extra star? You sycophantic cunts.

Robin Ince just phoned me, said "You stupid old man" and then hung up. That might be the funniest thing I've seen in Edinburgh. I'd like to thank Bennett Arron for his help in this blog.

13 Aug 2008

Fletch 3
Current mood: argumentative
Category: School, College, Greek


Last night's show was pretty good. Very giggly because Jeremy kept making me laugh by screaming his lines instead of saying them. The only way to keep the scene together was to tell him to fuck off. It seemed to work. The best thing about the show last night was our guest star. I normally play the part of Murder the Butler in one of the sketches but last night the role was perfected by Fletcher, my actual butler.

Yesterday, Paul Litchfield, from The Pros from Dover and The Trap, helped celebrate my 40th birthday by hiring me a butler for the day. It's way up there as one of the best presents I've ever been given. I realised not long after having Fletcher in my service that power corrupts me. I got him to push Johnny Candon, to slap Des Clarke and to introduce himself to Paul Merton as Mr. Legge's butler. It was a very satisfying day. I asked him the time and when he said "4.45" I screamed "Not now. In 10 minutes." at him. Sure enough, in 10 minutes he told me the time. I did the Avis Sherman story at Lucy & Des Show Off and Fletcher accompanied me on stage simply to hold the book that I read from. He served me drinks, booked a table at a restaurant and carried my crap pretty much all day. I am now used to it and look down my nose at all you butler-less cunts like the festering scum you all are.

I'm really making a big effort to not get into any shows this year and so far it's going really well. Due to shows selling out, I've been turned away from Time Vine's show 5 times which is very frustrating, Issy Suttie's show twice which is really annoying,and Pappy's Fun Club once which is fine. I've also managed to be unable to get into Will & Greg, Kerry Godliman and Tommy & The Weeks. Not only do these people not want me to see them but they're rubbing my nose in it by being really successful. I hope they all get AIDS and become Maddie. There I said what you're all thinking.

It's our day off today, even though I'm compering The Stand's Best of Irish. I wonder what shows I'll be told to fuck off from today? By the way, did I tell you I got 4 Daleks yesterday? Well, I did. It doesn't make up for Toilet not saying Happy Birthday though.....

14 Aug 2008

Time, Lord.
Current mood: busy
Category: Goals, Plans, Hopes


I want to do a lot of complaining today but just don't have the time. I want to complain about how cunty the Pleasance are if you run 5 minutes over even if you're the last show on that day. I want to complain about reviews and, more importantly, reviewers and then complain about wanting to see a particular comedian for 10 years only to find out he was shit and then I want to moan about how Toilet has gone straight back to ignoring me and therefore is ruining my feelgood story of Edinburgh. I don't have time today so it'll have to be tomorrow. Fucking stupid time.

Here's some positive things instead. I saw Where's Yak? yesterday and found it very funny indeed. It's a clever mix of very surreal, unexpectedly brilliant lines and something for special children, therefore I loved it. See it at 2pm at The Counting House. It's free. I also saw Lewis Schaffer who was amazing. If you like your political rants peppered with Anti-McCann's sentiment then you can do no other than Lewis Schaffer, Lewis Schaffer.

I'm off. Expect upsetting grumpiness tomorrow.

15 Aug 2008

Fucking children.
Current mood: argumentative
Category: Pets and Animals


We've got 10 days to go and, I'll be honest, I'm starting to feel a bit worn out. I don't mind the late nights and the drinking and the doing three gigs a day things but I'm not sure how long I can take everyone else who is up here. If they would all just fuck off and leave me on my own I think this festival would be very nearly perfect. Honestly, if I get one more fat tranny walking up to me in the street and shoving a leaflet into my eye I'll rape them. And not in a good way. Actually, worse than fat trannies are those tiny little cuntfucks you normally see at circuses and pantomimes; children. Fucking 12 year olds who come up to you while you're innocently fuming your way up Cunt Street (Royal Mile), and try to actually perform part of their play that they've been forced into, need to be put up against a wall and poisoned. I was approached yesterday by some underage prick with shit on his face and wearing very clean rags saying "Will ye be free te see me play, teday, me squire?" The little accident didn't know the meaning of the word seriouslyjustfuckoffimmediately. And when I told him that I had just come out of jail for multiple child-related sex crimes, he thought I was joking. I was lying, yes, but I wasn't joking.

Speaking of children who deserve to be our sexual playthings, let's talk about reviewers. Why the fuck do bog-rolls like The List, Three Weeks and The List again insist on using teenagers to review shows up here? Of course, they don't get it, they don't get anything, because NOTHING has happened to them yet. How on earth can they possibly review a play about love when the nearest they've got to love is rubbing up against another depressed abortion-wannabe at a My Chemical Romance gig? How can they review a stand-up comedian's show about world war when the only war they can relate to is the one inside their own lonely, self-obsessed head? How can they review The Clock Hour when they are a ball-aching cunt? I actually have a lot more to say about the reviewer but it's all been spoiled by the Metro giving us 4-stars yesterday. Thanks for that, Metro. You've ruined everything!

The show yesterday was very good. I'm very lucky to be working with the four brilliant people in the show, they certainly know how to be extra stunning on the nights when I'm very much not. Last night was one of those nights. A bit depressing really. I knew from the beginning that I wasn't clicking with the audience and I lost all my bottles. It was OK when I was in the sketches but being Avis was a cunt and a half last night. I need to stop listening to other people's advice because, although they mean well and are only thinking of me, they're morons. I did Best of Irish yesterday and for once just put aside the fact that I'm the least Irish Irish person ever and just enjoyed the gig. It turned out great, I was very happy. I also did The Late Show after The Clock Hour and...fucking hell, this is really sounding like a comedians blog. This will NEVER happen again. Did I tell you that I saw a comedian the other day that I had been dying to see for over 10 years? He was fucking appalling. It was like Carrot-Top had forgotten all his props. Fucking hyped piece of shit.

Until tomorrow, bile bile for now.

16 Aug 2008

Fucking Women.
Current mood: hot
Category: Automotive


What's the fucking point of a comedy competition? Who in their right mind would get into comedy so they could win an award? What a soul-less, pointless, insulting exercise it is and none more so than the aren't-girls-pretty load of shit that is Nivea's Funny Women. A woman who is funny shouldn't be a shock to the system but some people feel the need that we should give a funny person a crap trophy and some make-up money just because they're bollock-free. Luckily, a lot of female performers saw this too and dropped out of the competition. I know that Isabel Faye dropped out because she has more dignity and Watson & Oliver dropped out because it was for the best. So good for them. The winner was Janey Godley which proves how mad this competion is. I'm not saying Janey's not a funny woman, I'm simply saying she has a penis.

But this industry is full of idiotic ideas idiotically thought out by idiots. Idiots rule this business. Yesterday, a lobotomised prick from Avalon, a producer no less, told me how much she'd love to see the show I'm in because she liked the big swirly piano on the poster. When I pointed out the the big swirly thing on The CLOCK Hour poster was a fucking clock she said "Well, I didn't really pay attention to it, but I really liked it". And that's how Avalon get all their acts.

I'm very sweaty in this internet cafe so must now leave. Sorry.

18 Aug 2008

One Careless Lazy Arsehole.
Current mood: crunk
Category: Movies, TV, Celebrities


Yesterday did not start well. Basically, the first thing I did when I woke up was to wipe comedian Johnny Candon's congealed shit off the top of the toilet seat. I don't know how many of you have had to wipe Johnny Candon's congealed shit off the top of a toilet seat before but for those few who haven't, trust me, it's very unpleasant. I know that men famously occassionally miss the toilet when urinating due to our hilarious penises but Johnny's ability to miss the toilet with his fucking arse beggars belief. And the most horrible thing about wiping Johnny Candon's congealed shit off a toilet seat was the depressing realisation that this is not the worst thing that has ever happened to me. How's that for dark?

Well, we've just started the final week of Edinburgh. The show is going well and people are turning up to see it. You can't ask for much more than that. I mean, Michael McIntyre did last year when he screamed at one of the if.com judges/pricks because he didn't win their funny man present, but I'm not going to stoop to that. Don't get me wrong, it must be horrible to be as ignored as Michael McIntyre is, especially when you have as much talent as he has, but screaming about it won't help (unless you're BrendAn Burns). In fact, Michael is just as funny off-stage as he is on, unfortunately. The last time I saw him he walked up to me and said in a cod-Irish accent "Michael Legge! No Surrender! Top O' the mornin'". What a funny, funny, fat faced, fame-addicted, stunted, "STAR of Have I Got News For You", media-felating, looky-me, shoe-wearing cunt he is. But he is not alone (well, he is, no-one likes him) because up here everyone is feeling the tention of the last week as this week is AWARD WEEK! Imagine; you too could write and rehearse a piece of art, art that you really love and poured your heart into and crafted and honed down to what you thought could be a comminicative connection between yourself and an audience only to bend it over and rape it because you allowed it to be put into a competition. Let's face it, if you win the Perrier/If.com award, you'll be following the greats; Simon Fanshawe, Ben Keaton, Laura Solon and all the other household names that sold themselves for...well, whatever it was they sold themselves for. Don't really know why I'm complaining, I'll never get nominated. And, obviously, if I do, this gets deleted. A bit like Simon Fanshawe, Ben Keat...etc.

I've seen a few more shows that I really liked in the last few days. Best of which was Scott Capurro's show at the Underbelly. If there's a better stand-up working in the UK today then there isn't. He's utterly brilliant and he's definitely not for everyone which makes him more utterly brilliant. I can't wait to see him not get nominated due to talent. I also saw Kerry Godliman's show which I loved, she's effortlessly funny. You should see that, you should. Tommy and The Weeks Show was lots of fun. Ed Weeks is my new you-should-see-him-he's-funny person. They obviously work well together but Ed doesn't look like he should be funny so when he says his funny lines it's even funnier. Does that make sense? Anyway, this blog is getting far too positive. Time for some warm Irn-Bru and some deep-fried fat, see you later.

19 Aug 2008

Cunt-E-Oke
Current mood: grumpy
Category: Goals, Plans, Hopes


What is this new Edinburgh thing of having to go to the bar to buy your own drink? About 10 times since I've been up here I've bought a round and when it comes time for the fucking leech to buy theirs (if they fucking bother) then they say "Can I give you the money and you go to the bar yourself?". FUCK RIGHT OFF. If you're not going to buy me a drink then just don't buy me a drink (I'm used to it up here, tight fisted pikey bastards) but don't ask me to go myself. When did this sort of behaviour seem OK? I am obligated to say CUNTS.

Joke-E-Oke. Heard of it? Me neither, but I was deeply unfortunate enough to meet the two American, giggling spastics who run and host this "show". They were both pissed out of their special-needs minds the other night at the Gilded Balloon and they felt it was absolutely fine to not only hand me a flyer about their fucking haemorrhage but also to tell me all about how hilarious it is. I'll warn you now, it isn't hilarious. The idea, like it's creators, is a fucking prick; an ordinary member of the very ordinary public stands on stage looking at a screen that scrolls a piece of classic stand-up comedy and that ordinary person reads it out ordinarily. What a night out that must be. I'd rather boil my own plums than sit through a second of that. The flyer, honestly, even boasts that the show features classic material from Sam Kinison, George Carlin and Harry Enfield. WHAT? The dickheads finally left me alone after I read the flyer out loud at them. "It's the hit of the San Francisco club scene". "No, it isn't" I said, "The hit of the San Francisco club scene is buggery". One of them genuinely and pathetically replied, "Why does everyone keep saying that?"

I saw two great shows yesterday. Krapp's Last Tape is a truly moving but funny piece all about loneliness and, importantly, the silence of constantly being alone. Well done, the cuntingly awful rock opera in the next room who tried their best but couldn't spoil this fantastic play. Fucking Assembly Rooms cunts. Then I saw John Gordillo's Divide and Conga, a fantastic piece of stand-up. He taught me everything I know. That's just a warning. I'm at the Best of Irish at The Stand today. Come down. Oh, and there's only 6 Clock Hour's left to go...

20 Aug 2008

Tom Hughes is a fucking twat.
Current mood: Not Racist
Category: Not Racist Pets and Animals


Yesterday a little Edinburgh golden moment happened to me. It was really lovely. Four years ago John Voce and I took our show, The Conversation, to Edinburgh and during our run a critic called Tom Hughes gave us a one-star review on Chortle. Leap to 2008 (yesterday at about 3.30), I went to Robin Ince's Book Club and saw an extremely funny comedian who pretended to be Brian Blessed, the brilliant Johnny Candon, the glorious Sarah Bennetto and a very, very unfunny prick. This arse-disease of a man took to the stage and immediately turned my blood to flame by basically stealing from Josie Long and pretending that everything in the world is so amazing and twee-ing out a load of fucking wow!-isn't-Ballamory-a-brilliant-tv-show bullshit that you'll wish Hitler had done us all a favour and killed everyone four times. Who was this pathetically wet mangina? None other than ex-Chortle critic Tom Hughes. It goes without saying, I hope, that I thanked him for the one-star review and told him what I thought of his stage-mess. He went red and said "Sorry. I didn't know as much about comedy as I do now". I pointed out that that was impossible and he left. I feel we're now evens and I'm now ready to be Tom's best friend if ever he will allow me. John Voce still thinks he's a cunt.

Later that night I became racist. At least I think I did. Is this racist? I went into the loo at Brooke's Bar and the only two other people in there were two black gentlemen. One pointed to me and said to his friend "Now, this guy loves chocolate". I'll admit, dear reader, that I thought "Fuck, I'm going to get raped". Is that racist? I didn't mean it to be. The guy then explained that he'd seen The Clock Hour, which has a chocolate-based sketch (sort of). So, you see, it all turned out nice. Not all black people are awful, well done, guys. Thumbs up. (Just in case you DID think that was racist, I just checked with Paul Litchfield. He said it's OK.)

This blog has just depressed me because I realised that yesterday I did fuck all. 5 shows to go, people. Bye bye.

21 Aug 2008

Who Will Win the Debt Collectors Sponsored Comedy Present?
Current mood: sleepy
Category: Friends

And the nominals have been announced for this year's If.Comedy Award and, as a result, I am furious. How did these talentless purveyors of arsery get shortlisted for such an incredibly prestigious and morally suspect award? Look at the names; Rhod Gilbert, a man who has to steal an accent from genuine Welshmen like Mark Watson or the poof from Little Britain. David O'Doherty, pissing whimsy once again into his magical pot o'comedy. Russell Kane, who, judging by every picture you ever see of him, has only been photographed once. And finally Kristen Schaal, who has the same accent as Robert Shaw's fingernails did in the blackboard scene from Jaws. I'm sure they're all over the moon to know that their art has been judged and approved by Intelligent Finance, a mortgage company and creator of poor people. Maybe they can take all the nominee's egos and consolidate them into one easy to manage super-ego? They did it last year. Right, BrendAn?

So, today I went to City Cafe, mainly because you have no idea how much I want toast right now. But City Cafe is not the place to go to if you like frivolous things like service, courtesy or a cafe. It's a fucking ball-hole. Today I only had to wait for half an hour before the 7 year old walking semen that runs the place came over to take my order, but before I've had to wait days before any of the staff would notice me. Or anyone. Or anything. City Cafe is something of an Edinburgh instituion but then so is heroin and fighting. At least when you fight while taking heroin there is a slim chance of getting some food, not so when you go to City Cafe. Then, when your lottery number comes up and they actually feed you, they forget how to add things up so you have to wait even longer on the bill arriving. It's like a cafe run by a 1000 Patrick Monaghan's. All you do is wait and wait and wait and, in the end, it's fucking disgusting. But I really, really fancied toast so I had to go. 3 stars.

I've been awake too long so let me plug some things and go back to bed. I saw Johnny Candon's One Careless Lady Owner for the fourth time. It's changed a lot. He has, by far, the best gag at the fringe and his show is pretty solid. It's even nearly an hour long! Also, I saw Rob Heeney's No Pressure last night. Very slick indeed and, hey, it's free. Go see them then. Bedtime now.

22 Aug 2008

Unpleasance.
Current mood: bored
Category: Movies, TV, Celebrities


Let's start off with something nice. I'm in my favourite Edinburgh internest cafe right now. It costs twice as much as some of the others and I had to walk through the pissing rain to get here but it's all worth it as this is the only internest cafe that I have ever been to that is totally run by children. Not young adults; children. Proper little kids. And they are the politest children you could ever meet. This place is called 5 Star Mobile. It's very strange.

Last night we had our lowest audience count yet by some incredible margin. Luckily, they were really nice, even though I felt I was ruining the whole show by constantly going on about Sketchatron. I went on and on about Sketchatron for a good reason though. Sketchatron is a a show featuring several different sketch groups all doing their very best material, it's even billed as "the best of the sketch shows at the Pleasance". The fucking cheeky cunts. Were we invited to perform? No, fucking way. And what time was this show on? Yep, same time as ours. If that's not the biggest "Fuck you, we have your money" from the Pleasance then I'd hate to think what is. It costs about £10,000 to put on a show here at the cunting Pleasance and they also take ALL of the box office profits, then on top of that they tell you that you're not as good as Fucking Idiots of Fucking Ants. They are thieving cunts. On top of all this they say every year that they never make a profit. Hmmmm.... £10,000 per show, 8 shows per room, 25 rooms per venue.....That's £960,000+ box office. Well, where the fuck is this money going? Not only that, it's the smuggest, most overly-worthy place here at the festival, and that's saying something. Mind you, they did give us a bottle of home-made wine that was sieved through Christopher Richardson's dead dog's colon a week after we arrived, so they're not all bad.

Every time I come to Edinburgh I love it. I enjoy all the excitement of being up here to the full and get pissed off with the jaded fuckers who complain that they're bored and want to go home. This year is different. I am now a jaded fucker who wants to go home. I am sooooooooo bored. The same fucking tedious thing every day in the same tedious fucking place with the same tedious fucking people in the same tedious fucking rain. Last night, this thought was raped home to me by my patronage of the So You Think You're Funny? party. Free booze is all well and good but getting stuck in a shouting-conversation with the least funny Lionel Richie while being hilariously fingered by Dan March as Dont'Cha by The Pussycat Trannies is injected into my ear is not my idea of a fun night. I went home to sit alone and write poetry. You'd be surprised at how many words rhyme with cunts. Toilet wasn't even there. It's only a few days to go so I must befriend him soon. Brookes tonight, then.

Can you tell that I'm not sleeping well?

23 Aug 2008

Can I interest you in my ego?
Current mood: tired
Category: Sports


Only two more shows to go here at Edinburgh's glorious money festival. I'm all grumpy about being up here now but I know this time next week I'll really miss it. Not the people, of course, they're awful, but just the general drinking and performing and drinking while performing and being drunk while performing and shouting at my own performance. I'll miss all that.

I've really been noticing other people's flyers for their shows recently. They're fucking grim. I saw one flyer for a show at Peter Buckley Hill's Free Breakdown that made the cardinal sin of having a photo of the "performer" standing in front of The Comedy Store sign. You fucking little prick. You did an open spot and you know someone with a camera. Big shitting whoop. The flyer also boasted an incredible press quote that the rest of us mere humans would have deleted rather than print it on something that was supposed to be publicising us. It made no fucking sense: "Surely worthy of five stars" ****- Three Weeks. Jesus wept. My favourite quote on a flyer is from an act who is appearing at the Stand. It made me howl with laughter when I read it: "He certainly has some jokes I wish I'd written" - Ed Byrne. Not that funny in itself, granted, but printed just below the quote was this: "THINK YOU KNOW MORE THAN ED BYRNE? I F***ING DOUBT IT". Egotism and cowardice all in one? Ambassador, you're spoiling us. If you're going to swear then swear. No-one is offended by the spelling of a word, for fuck's sake. Loads of comedians are using quotes from other comedians up here this year. Just looking at all the posters and flyers up here has made Jimmy Carr out to be a charlatan and a liar. It appears he thinks about 8 different shows are the funniest thing he's seen at the fringe and about 12 different performers are "genius'". Pick one, Jimmy. Stop playing with us. I even saw a flyer with a quote from Robin Ince on it. I'll definitely go to see that show now that I know it has the approval of the shifty looking man who nearly played Stuart Foot in The Office for five seconds.

I had 4 hours sleep last night. I got back just as daylight started and woke up not long after because Johnny Candon was trying to break the world record for shouting into a mobile phone as well as limbering up for an upcoming door slamming competition. I only saw Toilet for half a second yesterday but I now have a foolproof plan that will ensure he'll become my lifelong friend. If I can stay awake tonight, Toilet and I should be the best of buddies by tomorrow morning...

24 Aug 2008

Wham!: The Final
Current mood: energetic
Category: Movies, TV, Celebrities


Christ, I've woke up all funny today. It's the last show tonight and I'm all excited about what "last night larks" we're going to get up to. I know Paul is planning on putting his own shit into Margaret's pocket and Jeremy has dropped the odd hint that he's going to blow his own brains out during the Anniversary sketch, so tonight shough be HIGH-larious. It's the last night, so if you haven't seen the show yet, you're a cunt.

The if.comedy awards party was held last night and, obviously, I shunned it due to it's lack of morals and I didn't really know where it was. In the invitation I recieved it billed itself as "The Unofficial Oscars of Comedy". Well, everything in the world is the unofficial oscars of comedy if you say it is, you fucking parasitic creators of the homeless. It's also the "Unofficial Olympics of Comedy" and the "Unofficial Moors Murderers of Comedy" and the "Unofficial Jade Goody Will Die In Three Months of Comedy" if you want it to be. Fucking pointless. What it definitely is is the officially most embarrassing thing about the Edinburgh Fringe, which is an incredible achievement in itself. Having an award sponsored by a finance company? How extremely un-cool is that? Isn't that like having your Bank Manager hanging out with you for the rest of your fucking life? That said, David O'Doherty and Sarah Millican are both excellent and their talents deserve to be applauded but maybe by a better company. Can't Arrested Development Series Two on DVD sponsor the award next year?

I'm at the Best of Irish today for the last time and The Clock Hour has it's last show tonight at 11pm. This blog will close tomorrow.

25 Aug 2008

The End.
Current mood: happy
Category: Quiz/Survey


A couple of days ago I blogged about flyers and their egotistical press quotes but I forgot one of my absolute favourites. Luckily, an eagle eyed, handsome reader reminded me of it. Dan March's My iTunes Baby has a great quote on it's poster; "Can't wait to see it"-Adam Hills. Hilarious. Not only is the quote saying I HAVEN'T SEEN THIS but it's also the opinion of a man without a foot. In summary, Dan March's show has not been seen by someone who is not all there. Brillianty.

Thanks all of you for your congratulations for me winning the If.Comedy Award this year. It certainly came as the world's most boring surprise to me, I can tell you and have done. For those very few people who don't know, the cunts at if.comedy gave the Panel Prize (normally awarded to Mark Watson or some other person who will force their own grandmother into an envelope for fame) to every performer at the Edinburgh Fringe. You lazy, insulting cock-burns. My undying respect to Richard Herring who immediately asked for his £20 of the £4000 award money. Basically, what this mortgage lending nightmare are saying is this; NONE OF YOU IMPRESS US. I have never felt prouder of my talents. And another thing, DON'T put "Winner of the if.comedy award 2008" on your poster next year. As the beautiful, warm, missing-her-boyfriend, lonely, mum-to-be Margaret Cabourn-Smith said "That's what they want you to do". She may be a paranoid husk but I think she's got a point. If.comedy written EVERYWHERE? You can't buy that publicity but, apparently, you can steal it.

This is my last Edinburgh blog and I feel I would have cheated you if I left you without a satisfactory ending to my story. At the beginning of this blog (or thereabouts) I vowed that I would become best friends with Toilet, a man who was VERY friendly with me a few years ago but ever since only says Hello when he feels like it. It's a pretty insulting feeling but he appears to be a man so heavily wrapped in his own ego that that sort of thing would hardly matter. I'll be honest, I have failed in becoming his friend and last night was my last chance. It didn't happen. I even saw him leave the building before I got the chance to talk to him. But then something deeply beautiful happened. Before he left, he turned back. He came right up to me. He put his hand on my trembling shoulder. He looked into my loving eyes and he said........"I enjoy your vitriol". Friends, TOILET READS MY BLOG!!!!! I couldn't be happier! I don't know why he ignores me but I don't care anymore because he's been paying me attention without me knowing about it. He...he...knows who I am. I am registered by Toilet! Dear Readers, my story has an ending and it's beautiful. I love you, Toilet, and now I know that you love me! I could have danced all night, I could have danced all night and still have begged for more.......

Thanks for looking at my angry little notes and even bigger thanks if you actually came to see The Clock Hour. I have really loved doing the show. It was packed with brilliant jokes that I looked forward to every night and it was packed with the greatest people in the world. Not a trace of the cunting ego that Edinburgh inevitably inspires. Genuine thanks to Zoe, Margaret, Paul, Jeremy, Miriam & Ben who all make me very happy indeed. Thanks again and again to Muki who, quite rightly, forced us to do this and to Christian who worked damned hard at getting us an audience and he succeeded brilliantly, none of us are easy to sell but he got us people in so he must have told some excellent bullshit. Thanks sincerely, Christian. If you're still reading this, I'd finally like to thank all our flyerers. They went way beyond the call of duty day after day and we would have been royally screwed without them. They are the best people at the fringe by a huge margin and I love them. Finally, (are you still here?) thanks to everyone at Prospero, for all their help. I barely saw them but I know we got some good reviews so they did their job, ta very muchly.

Thus endeth The Clock Hour. If you have enjoyed the blog, I have been Michael Legge. If you haven't enjoyed the blog, then YOU have been Michael Legge and you all write a blog that you HATE. Goodnight.

28 Aug 2008

My Two Haircuts.
Current mood: tired
Category: Web, HTML, Tech


Don't you think it's a bit wimpy that angry, political, shouty Doug Stanhope has just done a gig called the Pimms Summerfest? FUCK YOU, BUSH! I'M GONNA OPEN UP AN ALRESCO CAN OF WHUPPASS JUST FOR YOU as soon as I've finished my lovely picnic. Stanhope plays Pimms? Wrong. That's an establishment handshake on the scale of George Carlin playing the Republican Party Conference or BrendAn Burns accepting an award from a mortgage lender and then playing the Assembly Rooms. Which would NEVER happen.

Good to see that Edinburgh Fringe fuck-nut Jon Morgan has quit his job as festival director after only one year. Basically, he's a bit embarrassed because the ZX Spectrum that he programmed to run the box office kept crying but he says that the real reason he's quitting is because "the role of fringe director has taken (him) away from his first love" which is, apparently, not being a useless Edinburgh Fringe fuck-nut. Actually, is it libelous to say that Jon Morgan's first love is fingering children and photographing it? Really? Oh well, luckily this is only on a computer and he can't work them so he'll never know. The snap-happy old paedo!

The fringe has been over three days and I can't figure out if I'm missing it or I'm just bored because I'm still not home. I'm in Glasgow to play four nights at the excellent Stand Comedy Club but, good as it is, I'm going mad with boredom during the day. So far I've watched four shit films; Jumper (bollocks), Forgetting Sarah Marshall (embarrassing), Definitely Maybe (pointless) and Bee Movie (cunt). Just today I ventured out of my room to see Star Wars: The Clone Wars. Everything George Lucas does is a fucking dissappointment these days but, thankfully, due to The Clone Wars being just dull we fans can still successfully say "The Phantom Menace is still the worst Star Wars film ever made". It's a kids film but it still has that very recognisable George Lucas wit running through it so it should appeal to drastically retarded children too. The most exciting thing I've done in Glasgow just happened a couple of hours ago; I had two haircuts. I had to. After playing Avis Sherman in The Clock Hour every night I decided it was time to get rid of my mad hair so I went to a proper oldy-worldy barbershop. Sadly, the barber was an oldy-worldy mad old cunt. He was furious that I wanted a haircut, a bad sign from any barber, and his shouting at me made me feel tense. He then decided to relax me by telling me that a woman died in his shop recently and that he still feels drunk from last night. While starting to cut my hair he then went on to say that he thought that Gary Glitter shouldn't have shaved his beard off or had sex with children. Funny order of priorities. After a few minutes I said I loved what he'd done to my hair (nothing) paid him £6 and left. I then went to a "salon" where my hair was successfully shaved by a scottish woman who had never heard of Scotland.

Don't know if I'll bother going out tomorrow. I'm working with Tom Stade and Andy White tonight. They better be shit or I'll have nothing to blog tomorrow.

29th August 2008
Drunk & Live!!!!!
Current mood: drunk
Category: Life


Hello everyone. I feel like I have to be a bit nicer to you. Mainly because two Idiots of Ants fans used their chunky fingers to write their anger at me because I mentioned their idols in a blog that no-one but them reads but also because the very few comedians that read this seem a tad upset over nothing.

Let me start properly. This blog is entirely influenced by the fantastic Collings & Herrin podcast in as much as in Edinburgh they recorded their very first ever live podcast in front of a loving audience, and as a response I am writing my very first ever drunk blog. I am very drunk indeed and feel like I could swoon at the sight of nothing, much like an Idiots of Ants fan. (THAT IS A JOKE).

My main (drunken) beef is this; WHAT THE FUCK IS WRONG WITH COMEDIUANS? Yeah, there might not be a U in comedians but that's how this drunk blog rolls, motherfuckerman. Yesterday, I wrote a stupid blog mentioning the American equivilent of Paul Foot, Doug Stanhope. Apparently, he is Jesus and you can't make fun of Jesus no matter how superfluous Jesus' shouting is. The thing is, he seems like a really good comic but other lesser good comics think of him as like, maybe not Jesus, but as a really nice Hitler. They worship him and feel they need to tell me about it because I dared to make a joke about a comedian. Two comics left messages on my blog (I don't think one was as adjuration filled as the other) and I respect that they gave their opinions but 5 other comics sent Facebook messages instead. Very cowardly and the people in question shall remain nameless (no, they will, they're going NOWHERE). I'm sorry if I've upset you by pointing out that a very good political, anti-establishment comedian has fully decided on his own to link his name to a drink that makes Blush wine sound butch but I just thought it was funny. You know, a joke. Remember them? They were here a long time before shouting at politicians you didn't understand ever were. The even funnier thing is that Stanhope, to give him his full name, went on stage drunk. NO-ONE gets drunk on Pimms. That drink is the definition of the word squiffy, but drunk? No fucking way. I remember a time when comedians liked jokes and made jokes and weren't offended by anything and certainly didn't worship anyone in fear of making fun of them. It was yesterday before those 5 cunts wrote to me. Maybe I should use my maturity and not get upset by them and just delete their spineless messages. Maybe.

I am drunk.

30 Aug 2008

Fizzy Shit.
Current mood: happy
Category: Fashion, Style, Shopping


Well, I was about to totally give up but Adrian Rox coming out of retirement to say "Keep on keeping on" was all the inspiration I needed to blog the shit out of the internet one more time. High five, Adrian!

I think it's fair to say that I'm in a pretty good mood today. I'm happy because Scotland is a beautiful country and it's an amazing place to spend five long, long weeks in but mostly I'm happy because tomorrow at 7.50am I will be leaving Scotland FOREVERish. Sure, I'll miss the deep fried Irn-Bru, the complete lack of customer service and the Scottish comedians who get standing ovations for mentioning a street in Aberdeen I've never heard of. But after a while, even those three baffling things loose their shitty, shitty sheen. So, it'll be nice to go home so that I can miss the wee bonnie, bonnie land one more time, are ye Ken? (I think that's the phrase)

One thing I'll miss about as much as the food is my lovely room at the Ibis. My view out the window is a big fucking brick wall, the wardrobe and bathroom are the same thing and here "Do Not Disturb" means "For The Love Of God, Will All Of You Knuckle-Dragging Vocabulary-Free Hunchbacks, Please, Disturb Me As Much As You Fucking Can?" That said, I've just finished watching No Country For Old Men while lying in bed so that was good. I liked the bit were Woody Harrellson wasn't in it. It's such an utterly tense and violent film and Javier Bardem is my new favourite foreign man film star. He's like a young Ralph Macchio. No, hang on. I've still got the spirit of the fringe; He's like Ralph Macchio on acid!

The Stand was very good last night but I thought I was a bit shit, to be honest. The audience seemed to like me but I felt I was just annoying. Andy White was excellent and John Gordillo made me actually a bit depressed. He was so good and all I'd been doing was hacking my arse off to please the drunks. I'm feeling very hack at the moment but it's something I'm slowly but surely trying to iron out. I haven't given out Pot Noodles for weeks so that's a step in the right direction. John's so at ease on stage and so confident with his stories that it's a pleasure to watch. What's not a pleasure is listening to the whining little pretentious cunt telling us how shit he was afterwards. Plus today he left a message on my voicemail and he called himself Gord. Gord is a nickname. If either me or John Gordillo is going to give John Gordillo a nickname surely it should be me. NO-ONE gives themselves a nickname. I mean, he's not fucking Burnsy.

Last night at The Stand tonight. I'll try to pull my finger out and be a bit better. If you come along please stand just for a moment at the corner of the street outside The Stand. I can't really explain it but, on just one small spot outside there, it smells of fizzy shit. I had two witnesses last night and they agreed; fizzy shit. Nasty.

02 Sep 2008

Come On! Come On! It’s Good To Be Back!
Current mood: grumpy
Category: Music


Fucking bunch of fucking rude, blind, cunting pushy pricks who don't give a fuck that you're carry two suitcases, they'll just walk all over you to get on a boiling hot train filled with more cunts just like them. It's good to be back in London. It's sooooo much more sophisticated here in the nation's capital. Up in Scotland if you ask any public servant anything at all the answer is always "No", but not in London. I was here merely seconds when I heard a 13 year old Underground "assistant" say the magic words "I don't know". Much more helpful.

Of course, the worst thing about being home is that horrible realisation that the second you put your bags down that you now have nothing to do. Even though I'm an If.Comedy award winner I'm still going to find filling my days over the next few weeks pretty tricky. My paranoia that everyone in comedy is doing better than me ( a FACT) led me to spend pretty much the whole day on sunday rather pathetically looking at other comic's MySpace/Facebook pages to see if any of them had blown their own brains out after the festival. That would have made me feel a lot better. But no, everyone seems to be doing brilliantly. Little Britain is about to start in America (let's hope Gustav saves a few million poor people from that fate), the If.Comedy big winners have got their own radio shows and Andrew O'Neill's status says he's back on the circuit, a pain I share with him. The only thing that cheered me up was this Sphincter-tasting clip:

http://vids.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=vids.individual&videoid=41672714&searchid=82be0741-4ded-4489-a53a-42e747b6517d

Good to see someone finally sticking it to Droopy. That animated, long-faced cunt has got away with it for too long. Of course, the really bad news in comedy this week has been the deaths of Geoffrey Perkins and Ken Campbell. Very sad to hear about that but, remember comedy fans, if we can get any glimmer of hope from the passing of two legends it is that these things happen in three's. Due to law, another comedian MUST die. My money's on Eric Sykes. Or Gavin & Gavin.

Basically, I had a crap day on sunday because I'm paranoid and it feels funny being back. Monday was much better. I went to Margate and picked up my dog, Jerk. Jerk's been staying with my friends and four other dog's for over 5 weeks. She's played on the beach every day, swam in the sea every day and generally been looked after brilliantly. Taking her away from all that is the only joy a bastard like me can get after coming back from the festival only to realise that I have NOTHING. It's very nice to have her back and one day this week I'll take her for a walk. Maybe. Then last night I met up with some friends from America, then a quick business meeting (very quick, I don't think I was even registered) and then quickly saw some other friends. You know the Rounds System? It's were you buy someone a drink and then they buy you one back. It seems to break down a lot after the first bit.

Sorry, this is all just moaning. Don't worry, listener, I'm doing my first gigs since returning soon so I'll be back to bitchy bile in no time. I thank you for your patience.

03 Sep 2008

I would so fuck The Brain of Morbius.
Current mood: cantankerous
Category: Food and Restaurants


I can't believe how down I was on Sunday after returning home from a month at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival. I thought I'd miss it so much it actually got to me quite badly. There was no need to feel that way at all because the Edinburgh Fringe Festival is all around us if only we'd care to look. Since I've been home I've been soaked in the rain, been ripped off by bills and fucking terrible comedy shows that make me pray for door-to-door suicide bombers to visit Lewisham? Well, I just switch on my telly.

Last night, I shook hands with the Devil and watched The Kevin Bishop Show. Holy fucking Christ on a bike, that is surely as bad as it gets. It's so good to see in 2008 a Channel 4 TV show taking a cack-handed swipe at that vicious bastard Bruce Forsyth. Especially by the only impressionist in history who can't do an impression of Bruce Forsyth. The premise of The Kevin Bishop Show is this; each sketch eye-rollingly lampoons our love of channel hopping but the twist is it's a cunt. The main "joke" seems to be replacing any word that rhymes with gay with the word gay. For instance; 28 Gays Later, Howard's Gay, Gay It Forward, Gay (that's Ray, apparently). I don't want to slag it off too much (I do) because I know viewing figures keep dropping every week due to suicide but also because I don't really think it's Kevin Bishop's fault. It's not a bad idea but TV companies are really into homeopathy when it comes to a good idea. Channel 4 have obviously taken Kevin's first draft script, grinded it down to dust then diluted it and diluted it until there's nothing left. I'm pretty sure Kevin knows that too. Look at his face next time he's on. He's practically begging us all to end this now. He looks so unhappy. Don't say yes to a second series, Kevin, it's only you I'm thinking of.

After that I watched Katy Brand's Big Ass Show which came across as I, Claudius in comparison. Of course, I genuinely laughed at the latest Armstrong & Miller series because they are old and I am old and we old people are very under-represented on TV these days. Bring back Mike Yarwood, I say. I'm pretty sure he'd still be up for doing Brucie.

There have been more things that have happened to me in the last 24 hours other than telly, you know. I did a 20 second voiceover that had to be done in 47 parts because I cannot read or breath properly, I had an argument with a cross-eyed ball-of-walking-Thrush in Sainsbury's because I stupidly wanted to pay for my shopping, I realised I find my Doctor Who DVD collection erotic, I picked up excrement (hey! I'm just like Channel 4!) and I made christmas dinner. What an exciting life I avoid.

04 Sep 2008

I Have Made a Huge Mistake....
Current mood: happy
Category: Podcast


I have just eaten a "health" bar. It claims it is Wild Fruit flavour but it actually tastes of dust, sand and Ian Huntley's signed confession. It's all I have left to eat after coming home drunk last night and eating all the lovely unhealthy food I normally keep in my kitchen. I like being drunk. I like being drunk because Dan Mersh's idea of sketch group The Trap and I writing a show together called El Quattro Cunts seemed like the greatest idea that any human has ever had ever. It's also the great thing about being a bit thick because I still think it's the greatest idea that any human has ever had ever. I don't know what Jeremy Limb thought of it because he's very clever and he was only drinking water last night. I know, he's going through a post-Edinburgh Prick phase. Paul Lichfield attended.

I'm in too good a mood to be grumpy today. Sorry. I'm sitting on the sofa with my dog, I'm watching Arrested Development and I'm in pants-only mode. I'm in my happiest place. Don't worry, I'm out drinking tonight with Bennett Arron so I'll be back to furious in no time. In the meantime, can comedians who carry satchels in their publicity shots fuck off now? Thank you.