Sainsburys and Celebrities.

I've taken a lot from my Father-In-law of late. His swearing and his homophobia plus his insistence on saying the phrase "I only (FILL IN BLANK) on days ending with Y" about 12 times a day. But Wednesday was when he pushed me to the limit. While walking round Sainsbury's, one of Lewisham's biggest tourist draws, we happen to pass Les from Vic Reeves Big Night Out doing his shopping. I was extremely excited. I'm a huge fan of Big Night Out and you might remember Les' brilliant catchphrase "What have you got with the sticks, Les?" He was fantastic and even when doing his shopping he's still the same old Les that I used to love, in as much as he wasn't buying chives. I excitedly pointed out to my Father-In-Law who Les was and his only response was "So what?" I felt like killing him on the spot. My Father-In-Law will never be half the man Les is, pretty bad considering Les is fictional. His nonchalance towards Les put me in a grumpy mood instantly and I plotted a revenge. Later that night I took my Father-In-law to a pub quiz. That showed him! "Who played Tucker in the TV series Grange Hill?" Don't you know, you fucking American idiot? Ha ha! "In what county would you find the town of Paignton?" That's easy, you stupid foreign bastard! "How many grammes per kilometre are in the average Bowler Hat?" HA HA! You dozy penis, you weren't even born here! Fucking idiot. Anyway, to summarise, he doesn't care about Les and that makes me upset.

I'm glad he didn't join me at Sainsbury's yesterday. Obviously, since seeing Les there I've decided to go there every day in the hope of seeing him again and becoming his special friend. I didn't see Les but I did see someone that I didn't expect. I saw Katy Manning who played Jo Grant, the Doctor's companion, in Doctor Who in the early seventies. I immediately called Johnny Candon who said that I should go up to her and tell her I'm a big fan. To be honest, that's generally Johnny's advice about anything but this time it actually seemed to make sense. So, I went over to her and nervously asked if she was Katy Manning (well, I had to be totally sure, she's had a lot of work done) and she said yes. I told her I was a huge fan and she pretty much smiled and walked away. It was as if Les from Vic Reeves Big Night Out had gone up to my Father-In-Law and my Father-In-Law just said "So what?". I was mildly crushed. They do say that you should never meet your heroes but I think the same should go for people who worked with your heroes for a couple of years and hammed their way through a handful of terrible scripts (and two good ones). Good to know she's a Lewisham person. We've got Jo and Ace now. No doubt Sarah Jane, when all her Childless Adventures are behind her, shall move here soon. 

A bad gig doesn't matter if the journey there and back is fun. Not that last night's gig at the Showcase Cinema in Leicester was bad. It definitely wasn't, but it was very, very odd. A cinema isn't a relaxing place for a gig, not for a performer anyway. Firstly, people already have it in their heads that, because they're in a cinema, they have to be quiet. Very quiet. Plus, because it was quite a plush cinema everyone had a lovely big, comfy seat to relax in and the ceiling was so high it just felt that intimacy wasn't really on the cards. But it was OK. All acts were good, I was cheesey but brief and it was run by Ad who is very nice. All OK but it didn't exactly rock. I didn't mind because I got a lift up to Leicester with Martin Hill and Tom Deacon. I'd never met them before but they're thoroughly nice blokes and great to spend a car journey with. They're both pretty new so had the positivity, vigour and excitement about the comedy circuit that I had in the year 1794. They were almost too positive sometimes. They both thought that Peter Kay was good, so that gives you an idea how fresh-faced they both are. Don't worry, Grandpa Legge put them right. Then cynicism arrived. Tom looked up a loud, angry comedian's MySpace page on his young persons iPhone and we all howled with laughter at it's content. It was basically all about how much he could drink and the rules Bill Hicks "taught" us. Why do comedians do this? There is NOTHING cool about being a comedian AT ALL. It is immediate geek territory and I'm very happy with that. Bill Hicks wasn't cool. He was a brilliant comedian with terrible taste in music and a sideline in sanctimonious. Not cool. I really wish that Bill Hicks had never died because then he would have fucked up by doing an advert or a pro-Bush routine or something and all the people who play dress-up as him on the comedy circuit would never have existed. The way back from the gig was just as nice as I got a lift from Dan Antoploski who is just an utterly brilliant comic and, incredibly, not a stupid arse. I know it's not much of a driving story because really you need to be in a car with two nice comedians and one absolute cunt to make it a perfect journey (Let's play the "Worst Car Journey" game in the comments section now). But it was good to have fun enroute even though the gig wasn't spectacular. It was still well worth the trip.