No More Mr. Nice-Guy.

I'm not nice anymore. I think I lasted nearly a week and really enjoyed the upset caused by simply being friendly and intrusively courteous. But it's not me. I knew I had given up being nice on Saturday when I saw a man running towards the escalator in London Bridge tube station. He was going down, the escalator was going up. I saw him stride confidently towards it for quite a while knowing fully well what might happen but, instead of being nice and stopping him from embarrassing himself or falling or dying, I just watched him do it. It was fun. He looked a twat for about a second, I felt like a git for an hour. Balance restored.

But what is the point in being nice? Everyone else is a complete cunt so why can't I be? Think about it. Seriously. Do you know anyone who isn't worse than Hitler? You don't, do you? Everyone is a big, annoying, embarrassing, evil cunt so, fuck it, if you can't kill them, join them.

When I logged on to Facebook yesterday there were 5 fucking, fucking, fucking photos IN A ROW of comedians on stage at The Comedy Store with the logo behind them. WELL FUCKING DONE! You utter genius. You managed to phone up people who despise you and grovel for a five minute open spot and a friend who owns a camera saw you there. That logo isn't a smile, you know? That's a detailed picture of Don Ward's toothy sphincter that he uses to eat desperate acts cocks with. So please, new acts (and others who should know fucking better), don't put your head too far up Don Ward's arse, you'll be decapitated.

That put me in a mood, to be honest. So I thought I'd spend the day sorting my house out. I built a bed! Fuck, yeah. I'm a carpenter now just like Jesus and Harrison Ford and Karen and Richard. It's a good way to get all your frustrations out, putting a bed together. It's so fidgety that you have to scream your face off every 9 seconds. Very releasing. Very primal. Probably good for you. I was dumping some old bed crap in the bin when my neighbour pointed out that a fight had started at the corner of our street. Good old Lewisham. Such a civil place.

She was right. A man was grabbing a woman by the head and trying to shove her into a flat. She was screaming (obviously) and he was shouting the language of the pissed at her. I phoned the police while I approached them. He stopped hitting her and said everything was fine. I disagreed. Luckily, our country's finest only need to be told 85 times where the "disturbance" was taking place and they'd send someone round right away-ish. In the meantime, I stood by the angry, drunk man and listened to him dribble his explanation. I said that he needed to tell this to the police not me. He then hit her again. She went into the flat and closed the door on him. The police arrived! Then drove right past. Eventually they got out of their car and started to walk directly into my neighbours house. She told them it was the house at the corner they wanted. You know? The one with the shouty drunk man outside it. The then briskly marched to the house at the corner. It was the WRONG corner. Again, I pointed out that it was the corner with the shouty drunk man. Fuck's sake.

The man was cuffed and taken away. I saw him this morning (about 9.30) coming out of his flat drinking a can of lager. He said Hello but, to be honest, I don't really want him as a friend. I bet he DEFINITELY has a photo of him beside the Comedy Store logo on his Facebook page.

So, back to being a cunt for me. It's the only way to fit in. Shame because during my (near) week of being nice I met some really nice people that just seemed so friendly and lovely (though they're probably faking it) but since I gave up nice on Saturday I seem to be surrounded by cunts. Maybe it's me?

I said I'd leave the subject of Michael Jackson but I saw the latest copy of Q Magazine yesterday. Jackson is on the cover and the story inside is about his upcoming O2 gigs with the claim "The Comeback of 2009!" Also on the cover is a story titled "Dead Rockstars Exhumed". Surely they regret all of that?

www.twitter.com/michaellegge

Michael Who?

Well, everyone. Glasto 09 was totally wicked! The weather was incredible and the facilities were perfect for me. No queuing, clean-ish toilet and a proper bed to sleep in. Plus there were no hordes of out-of-touch with reality crusty smelly people who like to pain stuff on themselves, just perfect views of all the bands plus you could fast-forward through the tedious world music artists. There's such advantages to watching it on TV. Of course, if you were there then you would have missed terminal cunt Edith Bowman's tedious sycophancy on the BBC so you win.

The Michael Jackson being dead thing still seems to be going on but not in the way I thought it would. It's actually quite interesting. Sure, Michael Jackson fans are upset but I kind of thought that a lot more people would have pretended to care too like when Princess Diana died and everyone forgot how much they hated her before. Well done everyone for not losing your minds over this one. Sure, there were a lot of folks on Facebook that had their R.I.P. status updates like they actually knew him but besides that it just seems that the media are excited about it all but the public have largely got over it really quickly. The BBC went insane, really scraping the bottom of the barrel to find people to discuss the cultural impact of The Jackson. Uri Gellar was, of course, insane. Practically salivating at the thought of being on TV again even if it was to talk about a complete stranger who was best man at his wedding. Mica Paris prided herself in her own insanity when she said that Michael Jackson's death was more "important" than Princess Diana's. She didn't say who's it was more "trivial" than which is a shame. I would have liked that. "Michael Jackson's death", said popstar Mica Paris. "Is big. But, you know, when Howard Jones dies that's when we'll really start crying our eyes out".

My favourite really, really famous person to say boo-hoo to Michael Jackson on BBC news was definitely that man who used to be in 5 Star. He must have wondered what that noise was when his phone rang. Surely there was someone more trivial than him that the BBC could have scraped out of the desperate barrel? Was Owen Paul busy? Did Jim Diamond have other commitments? Fuck sake, I WAS FREE. Why did the BBC think that anyone, including the other members of 5 Star, would give a shitting shit what he had to say about Michael Jackson's contribution to popular culture? Fuck the guy from 5 Star. I want to know what Stephen Hawking thinks about it. Or God. Or, even better, Prince Philip.

I did a couple of Jackson jokes at gigs this weekend and they went down fine (one person booed one gag). In fact after one MJ gag a member of the audience shouted "I love you". I just don't think people connected to him the way the papers think. Still, he was quite good if you like that sort of thing but it's Monday now and that's the last I will talk about it.

King of Everything did the first preview in over 6 weeks last night at The Hob in Forest Hill in front of 12 people. They were 12 absolutely lovely people. We couldn't have asked for a better 12 people. The Apostles look like turds compared to our 12 people at The Hob. We were good too. Not perfect, far from it, but good. Still lots of work to do but that's part of the fun. Isn't it? Please come along to our next preview this sunday at The Funny Side of Covent Garden. We'll be singing. Don't let that put you off.

www.twitter.com/michaellegge

Sham Off.

What a brilliant day for death yesterday was. Farrah Fawcet, Jeff Goldblum (although that turned out to be a hoax) and Michael Jackson, the singing man.

Personally, I think Farrah is the greatest loss. Charlie's Angels was a coming of age eye-opener for me and there will always be a tiny, tiny, really tiny part of me that owes a great deal to Farrah. But the news seems to be more fixated on Michael Jackson, the twirly dancer. I bet Jeff Glodblum is happy he's not dead after all. He'd never get a look in on the telly dying on the same day as a man who had a fairground and a monkey.

All hail Twitter. Twitter was the first to break the news last night, way before BBC and SKY. Sadly, some people on Twitter think that a comedian making a joke is unsuitable. I got a good few nasty comments wishing for my suicide because I made a joke about a man I, or they, had never met. "about the whole mj dancing with dead people - why don't you cut your wrists and find it out yourself : - P", said one angry fan of a middle of the road entertainer. Not that I could be offended by anyone who finishes a sentence by drawing a face but I'm pretty surprised that anyone who would follow a comedian would be offended by a joke. The great thing about Twitter last night was that our little community all came together, all shared the breaking news and then all shared jokes. No-one was saying "HA HA HA! Michael Jackson is dead", it was just a lot of very clever jokes (and some stupid ones from me) being shared. We were having a laugh. Strangely, not many people were tweeting tributes to the self-appointed King of Pop. Anyway, my favourite Tweet came from a charming chap who wrote "Comedians thinking that they can joke about this are completely wrong. Far far too early! You should be ashamed. And @michaellegge is a prick". Not even a face at the end....

He is wrong. Comedians can joke about anything at any time. It's up to you as to whether you're offended or not. Personally, I loved reading the funny comments last night. The best came from Richard Herring, Tiernan Douieb and some utter classics from Johnny Candon. Check their Tweets out.

I saw Michael Jackson in 1987. He was good. He sang and danced and cried. Just like he's supposed to. He did Wanna Be Starting Something and that made me happy because I really like that song. Can't really think of any others of his that are that amazing but the Off The Wall album is generally great. It was a good gig. I went there with my friend Dotes but we were more interested in seeing the support act (Kim Wilde) and getting off with two girls we met on a bus.

Anyway, if you stop reading this now and watch the news you might catch some report about the death of the man who sings and wears hats and has a funny face and is "friendly" to children.

www.twitter.com/michaellegge

I Think We're Going To Need A Better Blog.

I'm nice now so I thought I'd do you a favour and recommend a couple of films to you.

The first is a film that I beg you to see and implore you to ignore. If you can do both then this is the film for you. It has a dream cast: Mark Hamill, Christopher Reeve, Linda Kozlowski and Kirstie Alley. Could you ask for better? NO! NO, YOU FUCKING COULDN'T SO SHUT UP. The film is Village of the Damned made by John Carpenter, a man who got lucky a couple of times, in 1995 and tells the every day tale of a cloud that rapes women, impregnates them and their children grow up to be blonde. Terrifying. What is more frightening is Mark Hamill as a priest trying to organise a village fete. He's the son of Darth Vader for Christ's sake. At times you can really see the Hayden Christensen in him. Plus you get to see creepy children make grown adults put their hands in boiling water WITH THEIR MINDS and, as pointed out by Tweetolla, this is probably Christopher Reeves final 'walkie'. Recommended (but not very highly).

Jaws is a different matter. I saw it last week for the first time in years and I've thought about it every day since. It has had a huge impact on my life anyway. The first time I saw it was during a family holiday in Dublin when I was six. Basically, I haven't set foot in the sea since. I'm genuinely terrified of the sea and it's Jaws' fault. After my evil parents forced me to watch it when I was just a baby (sort of) I was actually too scared of turning on a tap just in case a 60 foot shark came out (I wish I was making that up but it's true). Sometime in the 90's my then girlfriend, Hairy Maude, persuaded me to go into the sea via a pedalo. The pedalo was in the shape of a smiley duck and, after explaining that I might not be comfortable in the sea, I stupidly got in it. We were six feet from shore when I started to panic. I screamed at her, called her a fucking bitch and, generally, lost all fucking reason. We didn't speak much after that day. It's hard to look at your boyfriend after he's called you a fucking bitch while sitting in a big duck.

The thing is, there's no fat on Jaws. It starts really quickly. There's no slow, mysterious beginning. It just starts. BANG. Naked woman runs to the sea, dives in, gets eaten. That's the first minute of the film done. And the way she dies is just horrible. It's not a cartoony sort of death-by-shark, you can hear her drowning as she struggles to get away from a million razor sharp teeth. Her lungs are filling with water and blood and you can hear and feel every bit of it. Horrible.

All the characters are amazing too. Our hero Chief Brodie's flaws and mistakes are the driving force of it. He is scared of the sea but, hey, he's basically to blame for the death of at least one shark attack victim. That doesn't look good to the rest of the classic Spielberg suburbanites on the island. Can you have suburbia on an island? FIND OUT. Anyway, luckily Brodie has a twat and a prick to help him find and kill the shark. They're a fantastic twat and a brilliant prick, though. The scar-comparison scene on the Orca is classic.

The main thing Jaws has going for it is that it's exciting from beginning to end. When people aren't dying you think they're about to die or they're already dead. That's a lot to constantly take in. Obviously, it would be nothing without good characters and the fact that Brodie is with two shark hunting experts for practically the whole film just lets his character drag it's way out of it's comfort zone. He permanently looks like he'd rather be anywhere else doing anything else while the other two revel in the thrill of the chase. And the shark DOES NOT look shit. You barely see it and when they remake Jaws with a CGI shark you will be mourning the loss of Bruce throughout the entire shitty, forgot-about-the-characters, soulless, Zach Braff led pile of regret.

Recently, I met someone who hasn't seen Star Wars yet. I didn't think that they were stupid for missing the greatest film ever made, I felt jealous that they had this piece of utter perfection still to see. Jaws is the same.

www.twitter.com/michaellegge
www.twitter.com/tweetolla

Michael Legge (Pretentio).

Actor and, in a way, comedian Michael Legge began his career back in 1971 when he used to get money from complete strangers by doing impressions of his mother. His furious mother then decided to send him to stage school and that put him off wanting to perform for the rest of his life. That said, Michael did attend a Shakespeare In The Park play last night and it may have somewhat influenced him and his blog.

Michael has received no formal training (1968 - date) in anything whatsoever but was very excited to meet an old acquaintance, Silas Carson, who performed last night in As You Like It (1599), a play about mistaken identity and people marrying their cousins. A real fucking departure for Shakespeare, the bald, dead cunt. The play was very good indeed and the meeting with Silas, although brief (11:31 - 11:34), was fun. Michael and Silas performed together in Eircell Mobile Phone Advert (1999) along with the comedian Paddy Lennox. It took place over an amusing three days in Ireland where, only at the end of the filming, Silas revealed that he was not Irish and had been faking the accent the whole time just to get the job. Fucking brilliant. Silas also revealed during those three days that he would be starring-ish in the then upcoming Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace (1999). Michael felt that he had met his hero (he had yet to see the film, obviously) but the two never saw each other again after the shoot until last night (Yesterday).

Not only has Silas been in all three Star Wars awfuls but he has also been the voice of The Ood in three episodes of Doctor Who (1963 - date). Fucking hell. Silas fucking rules, doesn't he? During the brief meeting last night, even though the pair had not seen each other in 10 years, Silas said to Michael "I always knew you were a cunt". Not only did Silas use Michael's copyrighted catchphrase but it also means that, in a way, The Ood have called Michael a cunt. Michael feels dizzy.

FILM
Michael is confident that this part of his life will be made into a Danny Wallace-esque film entitled The Man Who Was Really Nice For A While starring Han Solo as Michael. He is looking forward to the scene, created just yesterday, where Michael goes into a local WH Smith to buy the current Doctor Who DVD, Delta and the Bannermen (1987), and when the shop assistant cheerily asks him how long the series has been going Michael overly-cheerily tells him. In detail. For ages. Holding up a queue and making the shop assistant sweat with embarrassment. Michael is childishly proud of himself.

TELEVISION CREDITS
Michael does not credit television.

www.twitter.com/michaellegge

My Beautiful Laundrette.

Just a quick being nice update.

Although I've generally been trying to be horribly pleasant at all times since yesterday there have only been a couple of highlights. I've been doing a spot of gardening over the last couple of weeks and have now built up a massive pile of twigs and branches to burn. I love setting fire to things.

Sadly, not everyone likes me setting fire to things. They just don't see the beauty in destruction by flame like I do. Remember that next time you invite me round to your house. Anyway, the fire was going really well and I was standing beside it laughing maniacally when I heard a knock on my back gate. No-one has ever knocked my back gate before and that was enough to set Jerk into a mental frenzy. It was one of my neighbours, although one that I didn't recognise, and she wanted to complain that her washing was getting all smoky because of my beautiful, beautiful fire. That's fair enough, I certainly didn't want to ruin her washing, and she pointed out that "you're not supposed to start fires until after six". Although she pointed this out from a distance while Jerk barked fury at her. Jerk does not forgive or forget door knocking easily. The "no fire before six" thing might be true so I assured her that the fire was under control, it was going out now and I wouldn't be throwing anything else on it. I apologised for any trouble caused. Of course, I did. I'm nice. OK, maybe I didn't need to ask her what her full name was and what house she lived in, but that was just me being friendly. I even offered to wash her clothes for her. Why she said no to a man who laughs at fire and has a dog that's having a nervous breakdown is a mystery to me. No manners, some people.

Later that night, I was in a service station loo. When I walked in I apologised to the man who was already in there. It was my reflection in the mirror. I'm taking the whole being nice thing too seriously. It's just not me. Can I be a cunt again?

I had big plans for this blog today but it'll have to wait until tomorrow. Put it this way, I've watched Totally Saturday. Oh, Graham, you stupid cunt. It's OK to say "No", you know?

www.twitter.com/michaellegge

Nice To Be Trying.

Being nice all the time is going quite well and quite badly. It's going quite badly because, due to my nature, I keep forgetting to be nice. It's not like I go around punching people but I must tut more per day than most people do in a lifetime. In a way, it's everyone's fault except mine.

Friday had a couple of good I'm-nice-now moments. I was on the train on my way to Cardiff and I decided that if there was any wankers on the train then I would be overly-nice to them so that they would freak out and fuck off. There wasn't which just proves that train-wankers are train-cunts. AND THAT'S SCIENCE. I was trying to look over some King of Everything stuff but my mind kept wandering to what my next nice encounter might be. Then the Ticket Inspector arrived. Hallelujah. It had been hours since I was last nice (I said "And a very good day to you, too, Sir" to a shop keeper who handed me my change and said nothing) so I was really looking forward to making this man's day for him. I had my ticket ready and when he saw that I was going to Cardiff he explained that there were delays at Newport.

"Oh, really?", I said. "That must be terrible".

"It might be fine by the time we get there", he replied.

"But what time will you get home for your dinner?"

"Erm...Should be the normal time".

"Is there anything I can do?"

"Don't think so. (TO MAN NEXT TO ME) Tickets, please".

And off he went, suspiciously quicker than he arrived. I brought my swimming trunks (DO NOT THINK OF ME WEARING SWIMMING TRUNKS) with me on the off chance that the hotel would have a pool. It was a Holiday Inn and they usually do. I started my smile about 40 yards away from the hotel to make sure that I had it right by the time I got to reception. It pretty much made the receptionist jump. After checking in I asked her if there was a pool.

"No, Sir. I'm sorry".

"That's fine", I said. "I don't like swimming. Do you?"

She didn't answer in English but rather in a series of coughs and clicks. I like her.

By yesterday I had pretty much given up on being nice all the time but only because I was around lots of people who were genuinely nice and didn't have to grotesquely fake it like I do. I was "working" (I love it when comedians say that) at the fantastic Glee club and Lee and Dale who work there are two of the nicest, friendliest people you could ever wish to meet. Lee talked about cricket for about half an hour and was never once boring about it. I even asked him questions about cricket. THAT is how nice he is. The line up was excellent. It was great fun to listen to the confused stories of Joe Wilkinson, the energetic blarney of Ian Coppinger, the ballsy confidence of Junior Simpson and the topical and topicalish material of Alistair Barrie (he's like watching Have I Got News For You. On Dave). All very, very funny and fun to be with. Pity the fire alarm went off during Junior's set but, hey, who wouldn't want to stand out in the freezing cold watching security experts looking baffled at an alarm system while your audience continue to come up to you to tell you that you're "not as funny as (PUT COMEDIAN'S NAME HERE)". It's what I dreamt of when I started. Not that I'm complaining. It was a great weekend.

I'll be back to being full-time terrifyingly nice as of tomorrow. I have lots of people to deal with for Edinburgh that I can't wait to upset with my faultless manners. How are you getting on with yours?

www.twitter.com/michaellegge

After You.

I've decided to try an experiment and I think it's quite a revolutionary one. I'm not going to lie to you, I've long run out of ideas for this blog. Complaining constantly is not as easy as it looks. Sure, it's a piece of piss when James Corden has a sketch show on TV but when he's hiding in his flat, crying and defecating on his own reviews, there's not much to complain about. I've even started looking for complaints. I walk the dog every day in the hope that all the idiots will be out and doing their big mental park thing but there must be an idiot AGM on because they all seem to have left. Trains are just dishing out gold, like children getting stuck to businessmen and squealing Freemasons, instead of stinking of dinosaur piss and polluted with mobile phone music. Even two nights ago, I tried to start a fight and it got me nowhere.

A man pushing a bicycle was walking in front of me in Leicester Square. All of a sudden he turned round and the front wheel of his bike hit my leg. "Fucking idiot", I said. He stopped and yelled back. Brilliant! Something to complain about!!! "What did you say?", said the angry cyclist (who couldn't actually ride a bike). This is when I got aggressive. I said "You just hit me with your bike. I have every right to call you a fucking idiot". He then said "Fair enough" and smiled.

The fucking cunt. Doesn't he know I have a grumpy blog to write? Doesn't he know that I need him to be horrible so that I have something to write about? Why did he do this to me? CUNT! I hope he's dead.

Anyway, that's when I came up with my new plan and maybe you'd like to join me in it. From now on I'm going to be the nicest, most overly-polite man you have ever met. I am going to be so well-mannered it's going to border on pig-rude and psychotic. So far, it's been working well and I'm really enjoying it.

I went to Sainsbury's and silenced a man at the till. He said "Hello". HA! First big mistake, you cheery ball-ache, because Nice-Guy Legge is in town. I said "Hello to you". Not "Hello", that's just rude and dismissive. No, I went for happy-happy "Hello to you". In fact, it was such a cheery "Hello to you" that it was actually more like "Hello. To. You". I wanted him to know exactly what I was saying and who it was directed to. He looked nervous. BRILLIANT.

His next question was "Would you like a bag?" and the old me would have said either "yes" or "no" but I'm a lot friendlier these days so my answer was "Do you know what? Normally I'd say yes to that but today I've brought a bag with me so, Thank you, but no". I said all this with a huge smile. He now looked terrified. This made me happy. As he helpfully put my Quorn Burgers in my bag I asked him if he thought that they would be "Tops" (I really said that) for a family barbecue? He mumbled that he didn't know and then, and I have no idea how he did this, he lowered his head and hid his own face in his own face.

I won! I left Sainsbury's feeling great. The till man had been cheery and chatty but I guess I'm just friendlier than him and he couldn't take it. Prick!

The rest of the day yielded similar results. I asked a train employee what time the next train was from London Bridge to Charing Cross and then congratulated him on it running on time. He looked raped. I RAN to open doors for two people (that really freaks people out) and the bus driver who I thanked and said "Lovely bus too, by the way" just seemed relieved that the bus-nutter had got off without causing too much trouble. My favourite piece of good manners came late last night on the train home. I stood up and offered my seat to a man aged about 25. He said it was OK but I insisted. His face was the reddest thing that has ever existed. He looked like an angelic, terrified Satan. Eventually, he offered the seat to a woman in her 50's standing next to him (I'd seen her obviously but I just felt it would be more fun to offer it to him) but that was a fatal mistake because now that the woman was sitting down it meant that he and I were standing next to each other. Perfect for chatting. He made it clear that he didn't really care how lovely the London Eye looked at night and after a while said he had to call his girlfriend. How rude.

That's what you'll come up against when you're a really friendly man like me. Not everyone is as nice as I am, I've discovered. But I still urge you to be as overly pleasant as you can be. Give it a week. If you end up in hospital then I am sorry.

www.twitter.com/michaellegge

Stop Watching.

I just tried to watch Big Brother. I failed, obviously, because I am not a massive fucking idiot. I didn't expect much but I also didn't expect a prick crèche. They are quite possibly the most despicable people in Britain, a country where Ian Huntley, Gary Glitter and Margaret Thatcher all live. I'd say that they're the most despicable individuals in Britain but there is nothing individual about these cretins. They are, basically, the same lump.

I don't know their names but by the sounds of things none of them have names. They go by monikers such as Angel, Half-Wit and Arsehole 12. They're just so selfish, horrible, egotistical, insecure, weak, thick and aggressive. Why anyone would vote to have one evicted is beyond me. We do not need these cunts back in society. The thing is, it's too hard to pick just one to get rid of anyway. They're all worse than each other. You could start with one of them (say, Fuckteeth, for example) and you'd think that you'd seen the worst person ever but somehow the next one is even worse and the next one worse still. This would continue until you came back round to Fuckteeth who, after 2 seconds in the cunt's company, you would have no choice but to think you were right all along. He is the worst one. And then you see the second one.....This goes on for all eternity. And for all eternity they'll be screaming, fucking, dressing up, sitting in a jacuzzi, being thick and irritating the globe. This is in it's 10th series. If you ever write something for TV and it gets rejected please remember that.

I got about 25 minutes into it. Please don't watch it. There are way better TV shows on such as...oh. Well, I heard The Incredible Human Journey is good. And Arrested Development is still available on DVD.

www.twitter.com/michaellegge

Can Someone Lend Me Some Funny?

It's been a fun last couple of days. Johnny, Dan Mersh and I have been working on King of Everything and have some new ideas that are going to be fun to play around with. Last night we previewed three sketches.

It should have been four but....well, it was shit. We were part of The Fix's sketch comedy night at the Wilmington Arms in Clerkenwell and I still don't really know what went wrong. What I do know is that the very second I set foot on the stage that the gig wasn't right, that it was going to be tougher than I thought. Still, not to worry, our sketches are funny so we'll be fine. The audience did not agree. The cunts.

It sounds shitty but I was actually glad that other people didn't do that well either. It meant (to me, in my head) that it was the audience and not us even though it was very probably both. At one point during the excellent Two Episodes of MASH's set, Joe Wilkinson actually aborted a sketch halfway through. He even sighed as he got off the stage. I know how he felt. In fact so did the audience while we were on. During one sketch we did a purposely bad joke that an audience member though was real and his sickened sigh was the loudest noise anyone in that room had made so far. I wouldn't have minded but he was with my friends. Still, he's got a cunting ponytail so I definitely win.

I wasn't happy after the gig but stayed long enough to watch a double act called Britain's Best Mates. They're utterly fantastic and I can't recommend them highly enough. They're just what I suspect sports fans to be really like anyway. Then Johnny and I left to find ourselves on the greatest train journey of all time...

I wrote a blog recently about a business man getting a little girl caught on his jacket and thought that that might be the best train journey I'd be taking for a long time. I was wrong. This was way better.

Johnny and I got on the tube at Angel and were joined by four older men all in their 60's except one who may even have been in their 80's. Their conversation was priceless. They talked about drinking and shagging and fighting and it didn't take Johnny and I long to figure out that they were all Freemasons. Very indiscreet Freemasons. They started talking about all the other members of the "Chelsea Lodge" such as Joe Pasquali, Bernard Breslaw and seemingly every tedious bollock in British Light Entertainment. They gossiped and bitched about them all. Who could drink the most, who took what drugs, who shagged which Miss Worlds. It made me think that when the Masons say that they do not control businesses and persuade politicians to change their minds while helping the careers of their friends but instead are simply a private social group for men, I think I believe them now. They were just a bunch of chattering old queens who liked a laugh. The best came just before we got off the train when one of them said "Remember the piano player in Chelsea? You know, the one that used to fuck (NAME REMOVED ON ADVICE FROM LEGAL TEAM)".

We then went to the Five Pound Fringe launch party just in time for it to be over. Follow them at twitter.com/fivepoundfringe as, not only are King of Everything performing at one of their venues, but they are doing a really good thing for the Edinburgh Fringe Festival ie Not ripping performers off.

God, I'm unfunny today.

www.twitter.com/michaellegge

Cunts with Cocks.

And you know who the worst of them all was, don't you? MAN.

That was a quote from a film. Don't know which one but it's bound to be in one of them. And whatever film that was, it was right. Men are bastards. They're too big, too stupid, too ugly and too loud. And there's way too many of them. Yesterday I saw the worst kind of men and I pitied us all. This is what we've let happen.

I was working last night in a comedy club tucked away in the back of Tiger Tiger in Haymarket. If you've never been to a Tiger Tiger before then simply turn the heating in your living room up to 50 degrees, invite everyone you hate round and have them all fling their own fat dung at you. That's pretty much it. Just walking through the bar to the club is terrifying. You might get into a fight or, even worse, a relationship. You can't walk through a Tiger Tiger without praying to Jesus to make Muslim rule mandatory. The gig was fine but on the way out I knew I'd have to walk through the mess of Tiger Tiger again. That was OK. I knew where the door was so in just a few seconds I'd be out of here. It was then pointed out to me by a member of door staff that I was exiting through the wrong door. Did the member of door staff tap me on the shoulder, excuse himself and then politely point out my error? Not quite. The cunt grabbed me by my stomach and shouted "That's in". For a second I assumed I'd been raped by someone with the world's smallest cock but no he was simply an awful dickhead who doesn't know how to behave in this modern world. He grabbed my stomach like he'd grab a pie or a football or a copy of Nuts and just shouted his tiny-penised rules at me. The "out" door was just a few feet away. It wouldn't have been a big deal for him to just point it out but as he has nothing in his life, ABSOLUTELY NOTHING, except his own emptiness he had to grab my stomach and shout. Luckily, I am blessed with great wit and japed "Get your hands off me, you fucking cunt" before departing the cunt's company.

After a lovely gig at The Hampstead Comedy Club, I met Johnny Candon at Euston station. His train was a couple of minutes late so that gave me enough time to see a huge man scream at his girlfriend. It was a really sickening thing to see.He towered over this crying woman and shouted "You fucking ruin everything. You have to ruin everything, you stupid fucking bitch. You're a bitch. A fucking bitch. Why can't you just fuck off? You fucking bitch. You ruin everything". He screamed and screamed and got redder and redder while his girlfriend cried and apologised. He pointed right in her face and shouted "Bitch. Bitch. Bitch".

He was wearing a Superman T-Shirt.

Soon, his friends would lift him and drag him away while shouting at him to wise up. I would have done it myself but I was busy pouring all my runny excrement into my pants. He was horrible.

But that's Saturday night. If you go out then you're surrounded by horrible, nasty, violent men but if you stay in you're faced with John Barrowman and amateur singers. It is shit.

The whole evening wasn't that bad. At least I saw the coming of age of a boy while waiting at Euston Station. I saw this boy (aged about 12) looking at the screaming man and the crying woman and the disgust on his face was heavier than Motorhead. He actually rolled his eyes. Then he saw a poster for The Take, a new TV series starting on Sky One. The poster featured a woman in a tight red dress looking...well, slaggy, I suppose. He stared at the poster for ages not caring if anyone else saw him. It was like he'd just realised that women existed. At least this lad seemed to adore his girlfriend...

www.twitter.com/michaellegge

Not Going Underground.

It's all gone wrong. But where to start? Let's start with the tube drivers. I HATE TUBE DRIVERS. I haven't looked into why the tube drivers have decided to go on strike but I am still perfectly willing to scream an irrational knee-jerk insane response to it all.

They don't get paid enough. OK, that's a good reason to go on strike. Their starting pay is £40,000 (apparently). Hmmm...not sure that that's such a low wage. I mean it must be a dull job and you should get paid more if you're going slightly insane all day but I think £40,000 is quite good. Like I say, I haven't looked into it and have no intention of looking into it so these are the only "facts" I have at my lazy, lazy disposal. Either way, the drivers are still cunts. I was in Paris a few years ago and the Metro drivers were on strike but, instead of being pricks about it, they all went to work as normal and just didn't charge people for using the system. That got the public on their side. But this is Britain and we do things differently. Let's annoy the fuck out of everyone, hold them at ransom and demand more stuff. It took me an hour and a half to get from Shepherds Bush to Waterloo last night. Which meant I couldn't get to Kings Cross in time to do The Book Club and see Alexei Sayle and sickeningly fawn all over him. This strike totally ruined mine and I'm sure a few other people's chances to watch Robin Ince flap about on stage but could they fuck up the England football match? Of course not. The stupid cunts couldn't even do that. The tube drivers do not have my support (even if they do genuinely deserve a pay rise, like I say I've done no research whatsoever, I'm just blindly furious) and they never will. They made me late for a gig which meant I missed the gig which meant I couldn't hang out and drink at the gig which meant I had to hang out and drink in central London which meant by the time I got there pubs were closing which meant that there was nowhere else open except....THE FUCKING PLAYERS CLUB.

I went there a couple of weeks ago and got into a case of mistaken identity with an idiot. I met Johnny Candon and we went down for a quiet pint. I forgot, of course, that it's impossible to have a quiet pint at The Players Club. It's normally full of drama students circling a piano and screaming out show tunes. This time the drama students were joined by every drunken twat that works in the City. Nothing was more hilarious to them than singing Somewhere Over The Rainbow because it's gay and gay is stupid and fictional. Apparently.

Still, at least Johnny and I could talk, well we could shout, about our upcoming preview at The Funny Side of Covent Garden this Sunday. It was why Johnny is currently staying with me. It was why Johnny and I are meeting every day to work on it, re-write it and get direction from Dan Mersh. Then I got a text message from David Bourn, my ex-friend who runs Funny Side... Apparently we got the date wrong. The preview isn't until 5th July. God, I HATE the tube drivers.

www.twitter.com/michaellegge

Classical Mistake.

I made a terrible error yesterday. They say that you should do something every day that scares you and this did scare me. It also bored the arse of me. Yesterday I agreed to go to the Royal Festival Hall to watch a piano recital. Christ Almighty.

I loathe classical music, it does NOTHING for me. I have tried and tried to get into it since I was a child but I have failed every time. In my early 20's I even joined a classical CD club which meant that every month I got a new CD that I would never listen to. It was pointless. The main reason I don't like classical music is the same reason that I don't like football; it's the people who love it put me off it. Why the fuck would you go to a concert and sit in miserable silence while "enjoying" music? I'm a bit more celebratory when it comes to music and classical music fans seem to think of their gigs as museum pieces. They sit there with their dripping-candle faces pretending that that they don't wish they were somewhere else while listening to the silence between movements. Everyone looks so serious and miserable because the musician has demanded no smiling during his 7 hour performance. Some punters even close their eyes while the music is being played and I can only assume that means they are asleep because surely closing your eyes to listen to music at a gig makes you even more of a cunt that the other silent dead in the room.

It was shit from the moment I arrived. I love the Royal Festival Hall. I've seen some great gigs here; Robyn Hitchcock, Brian Wilson. It's a beautiful venue but they act differently when classical music is being performed there. Apparently I wasn't allowed to bring a drink into the venue. I HAD TO WATCH THIS SHIT WITHOUT BOOZE. That makes no sense. I saw Gang of Four at this venue and you were allowed booze but you can't have a glass of wine while slipping into a coma during Andre Preview? Fuck off.

Then, after I'd sat down, the rules were shouted at us. No photography, no leaving the auditorium until the end of the performance, no mobile phones, no Irish, no Blacks, no dogs. Now, some of that was fair enough but then came this ridiculous rule: "The artist will perform both movements in succession and has requested that the audience keep all applause until then end of the third Cornetto". FUCK OFF. The reason I hate classical music is that I consider it to be like listening to maths, there is no emotion there to me but fans of this type of music have always told me that it's all about emotion. THEN SHOW THE FUCKING EMOTION. Cry during the piece, smile during the piece, cheer during the piece, drink during the piece, hug the person next to you during the piece, APPLAUD DURING THE PIECE. Don't just sit there silently praying for it to end.

Plus the music itself was just shit. That cunt could play the piano, I could see that, but did he know a full song? I don't think so. It just seemed to be little tiny bits of a million songs some of which he so obviously forgot because he kept going all quiet. Prick. No wonder people drifted off. The only thing that was keeping me from going postal was the architecture of the building. Where I was sitting, when I looked up the private boxes of the Royal Festival Hall looked like a bunch of nosey robots looking over a fence. That made me smile. I was obviously asked to leave.

I went home and listened to My Perfect Cousin by The Undertones. THAT is music.

www.twitter.com/michaellegge


Nosey Robots Looking Over A Fence, Yesterday.

London/Edinburgh/Stumpy.

What a lovely day Sunday was. Perfect, in fact. I woke up early, washed the candle wax from my hair and headed out to the Udderbelly which is a massive purple cow with a comedy venue in it that currently resides on London’s Southbank. Normally, it’s in Edinburgh during the fringe festival and seeing it set up fully with the bar area “pasture” and cow-print seating made it feel totally like I was actually at Edinburgh. I even wanted to punch a juggler. That’s how accurate it was. Of course, being in Edinburgh and seeing the London Eye just over your shoulder was a head fuck but at least there wasn’t a bunch of utterly cunty dancers rehearsing and massaging one another. That would have been too much.

I was there to see The Early Edition, the topical show starring Marcus Brigstock and Andre Vincent. Their guests were Phill Jupitus and Lewis Black and they read from the papers and took the piss. It was that simple and extremely funny. I laughed a lot. At a comedy show. At noon. I didn’t think that was possible but it happened. Everyone was funny, of course, (Andre’s “Honk Honk, Mugabe!” was the highlight for me) but the big surprise for me was Lewis Black. It didn’t surprise anyone else that he was that funny because they’d all heard of him because he’s famous and a legend of comedy. Basically, I am shit and have never heard of Lewis Black. I’m an idiot who has missed out on something very special indeed. Pretty much every noise the man made made me laugh. I say noise because words seem to fail him a lot and his own fury at everything keeps him from actually finishing a sentence. It was like working with Clunk, said Andre.

I’m looking forward to seeing The Early Edition again before the end of its run at the Southbank. It’s well worth getting up early for plus sitting in the pasture drinking beer in the sun (and rain) was just lovely. I’m in love with Sunday drinking and want to marry it. I certainly want to shag it, at least. There is a lovely, well-presented, unique and massively over-priced market nearby too that I went to for food but just ended up buying a glass of wine and swanning around the Southbank drinking it. I felt like Lord Prick and it goes without saying that I was fast asleep before 4 o’clock. DRINKING!

Yesterday was different. I woke up in dread. I was scared and didn’t want to get out of bed. I knew as soon as I opened my crusty, stupid eyes that later that day I would be on stage at a new material night doing….NEW MATERIAL.

I’m terrified of new material and new material nights but most of all new material audiences. At these nights, designed for comedians to either experiment with ideas or for new comedians to figure out their act, the audience is just as new as the act on stage. They’re very different to audiences at a regular comedy night. They’re shyer, slightly more awkward. Supportive, yeah, but geeky and less confident than a normal night. You have to be so aware of that as a performer. This might be their first time ever in a comedy club or the first time they’ve ever heckled or clapped and we must give our support and nurture them into being a proper audience, hopefully moving on to bigger gigs on down the line. I met someone who had seen me perform at a new material night five years ago and now he’s seen gigs in Manchester, Glasgow and Birmingham although he said he’s still having trouble getting into Jongleurs. But he’ll get there. You just need to keep going to these nights, people, and we comedians will soon give you the confidence to go to Jongleurs, The Glee or even The Comedy Store (you’ll be calling it “The Store” in no time!). Anyway, last night’s audience were so new, so naïve, so RAW that they completely forgot to turn up. So I got all nervous ALL FUCKING DAY FOR NOTHING. Cunts.

Still, if I hadn’t left the venue really early without doing a gig then I wouldn’t have seen Stumpy. I doubt I’ll ever get over Stumpy.

www.twitter.com/michaellegge

Pathetic Don.

There are some rough gigs in this country. Some that would terrify you. There are gigs in Nottingham, Cardiff and Belfast that you just don't care how well you go down, you're just happy that you got out alive. But of all these drunken, violent hell-holes perhaps the very worst is, of course, The Lawn Tennis Club in Hampstead.

Cumberland Lawn Tennis Club to be precise. Last night I gigged at the Funny Side of Covent Garden (traitor Dave's gig) first. Right at the front were a bunch of people in from Newcastle who were drunk but utterly delightful. It was a fun gig in a room that's always a pleasure to play. Then it was off to Cumberland Lawn Tennis Club to do a gig that, I assumed, was going to be posh and well-mannered personified. How wrong I was (a bit). On my way to the gig I got a message from Nick Doody who had just come off stage there. He said that they were very nice and very quiet. That sounded good to me. Nice is good. When I arrived there Hils Barker was on stage and doing very well indeed. Nick was right. This audience were lovely. A little bit quiet but definitely very lovely. I was stupidly looking forward to going on stage.

Half an hour later and it was my turn. I was feeling very energetic last night, or as energetic as I can be, and that feeling seemed to then go through the audience because they definitely got a bit more vocal. It was fun. I was bantering back and forth to a man from Derbyshire sitting in the front row and the room seemed to really like it, as did he. Then I spoke to people on the table next to him. They were VERY vocal. They were fun and funny and it was a treat to just bounce things off them and have a laugh. Sadly, one of them decided that he wanted to bounce something off me too. He threw a candle at me.

It was the single most pathetic attempts at violence I have ever encountered. The man was called Don. He was laughing a lot and having fun but something in him just snapped. I'm still confused as to what it was but I think he was basically fucked off that I was making his wife and friends laugh. He decided that he didn't like me and wanted to show it by throwing a glass at me. That could have been very dangerous. He could have cut my face or even taken one of my lovely, lovely eyes out. Pathetically, for Don, he grabbed the glass by the top not noticing that there was a lit tea light inside. As he prepared to throw it he burnt his hand and dropped the glass right in front of him. It smashed on his table and, although I was completely safe, a tiny little piece of candle wax splashed on my face. The room went silent. I just felt slightly embarrassed for him, I even thought he'd seriously hurt himself while trying to glass me. He told me to just "get on with it. You're not funny". Why he wanted me to get on with it when I wasn't funny is a bit bizarre. The room turned on him but he remained aggressive right back so I very calmly apologised that he wasn't having fun and then told him to leave. The room applauded as he went. I didn't like doing this because I really liked the people at Don's table and by telling him to leave I knew I'd lose them too. I was wrong. They stayed. That says all about Don that I ever want to know.

The rest of the gig was excellent. The audience's support during Dongate was just fantastic and ensured the rest of my time was fun. Afterwards pretty much everyone in the room came up to thank me followed by either "I'm very sorry about what happened" or "I don't think he's a member". I then found out that Don's behaviour is legendary. He's a pretty violent and aggressive man quite often, by the sounds of things, not just when he has to watch me tell some jokes.

It was a lovely gig with a lovely audience so I really don't have a thing to complain about, which is a shame because I'm sure if I sued Cumberland Lawn Tennis Club I could have got a few quid out of them. One lawyer after the gig even offered to represent me. I then went off for drinks with some of the audience and friends of the promoter. It was a lovely night. My only regret is that, due to the sensitivity of the audience, I didn't say what was on my mind when Don "threw" the candle on me and his hot, dripping wax splashed all over my face. I think you can see where I was going with that.

www.twitter.com/michaellegge

Judas Dave.

You think you know someone and then they betray you. You can be best friends with a person for decades then, all of a sudden, they run off with your partner or steal your money or vote BNP or do all three. I've known David Bourn for nearly 20 years but that cunt is DEAD to me now. I hate him for what he has done to me. Over the last two decades that BASTARD has made me like him and respect him and last night I found out that he likes...sport.

I thought he was a kindred spirit, someone who knew that only bellends like sport. I thought we had things in common. After all, we both like Morrissey and Sparks so why shouldn't we both hate sport? WHY HAS HE DONE THIS TO ME? Did all those nights performing improvised comedy in front of four people mean nothing to him? What a prick. And it's not just "sport" that he likes. It's more specific than that. And I wish I could say it was football that he loved. But no, he wouldn't even let me have that. I'll never understand anyone who likes football but at least I can easily hang my lazy hat of hatred on that peg. David likes cricket. CRICKET. Is there more of a boring, knob-end of a sport than cricket? Besides golf, obviously.

Surely watching cricket must be torture? I mean, fuck all happens and people clap apathetically at it. And the scores are insane. Figuring out the rules is mad enough but surely the most powerful mind on Earth would be shattered well before understanding what those scores mean. 100 for 4 Not Out 12 Ran is not a fucking score. It's not even a sentence. It's a mathematical raping, is what it is. But at least the people who play cricket PLAY cricket. They get to run a little bit and throw a ball once in a while. They don't WATCH it. They'd never do that. They're not that stupid. The people who made Lesbian Vampire Killers probably had a right laugh making it but they wouldn't watch it, obviously. Why are you doing this to yourself, David? WHY ARE YOU DOING THIS TO ME?

It irks me beyond belief that sport takes up so much of our lives. Watching it, of course, not playing it. I have no problem at all with people playing sport. I bet it's fun. Well, fun-ish. Beside golf, obviously.

Losing David has been quite a blow. I've known him a long time and to watch him fade away from my vision while he talked about his love of someone else's hobby was sad. Still, at least this week has brought some good news, something I can be proud of. I am quoted in this week's issue of Time Out Magazine as part of their article about Twitter. Basically, I got the word "cunt" in big, capital letters into London's leading listings magazine. What an achievement. If I do nothing else in my life (and that's the plan) I have done that and called Richard Blackwood a cunt on Channel 4. I can't imagine topping either of these monumental achievements. Plus I'm mentioned in the most recent (and extremely hilarious) Collings and Herrin Podcast and I'm NOT referred to as a cunt. So, that's good too.

www.twitter.com/michaellegge

Michael X.

I always get up early on voting days. It's a lovely feeling walking down the street knowing that today you're going to make a difference, that your voice will be heard and that things will change. It's also good to snort space cocaine off a dodo's nipple while banging away at a pair of Porn Twins on top of a rainbow on February the 31st but it's not going to happen. When I went into that Polling Station yesterday and looked down at that list of political candidates my heart sank and the Porn Twins did a runner.

What a bunch of cunts. The political candidates, I mean, not the Porn Twins. They're lovely. One of them helped me move a wardrobe. Just looking at that list is a problem in itself. Essentially, you're voting for the least cuntyish cunt. There is BNP right at the top which genuinely gave me a start just seeing their logo. Christ, I thought, they actually do exist. These deluded idiots are real. But who do I choose?

Not Conservative, I'm not right wing. Not Labour, I'm not right wing (yes, indeed). Not The Green Party, I'm not insane. I agree with some Green Party policies, of course. I think if you're going to do anything with this planet then saving it should be very thing. They're not big on science, which scares me, plus they're already our representatives where I live and refused to speak for us when the council closed and bulldozed a special needs school to make way for a travellers' site (You couldn't make it up, unless you're the editor of the Daily Mail). The travellers' site wasn't even built in the end (what an insult to my street) so now we've just got a massive pile of rubble and asbestos lying in the corner where a school used to be. Thanks, "Green" Party.

In the end, I reluctantly voted fucking, fucking, fucking Lib Dem. I voted for a party I know basically nothing about other than they didn't say yes or no on Spitting Image. They just looked like the least cuntyish cunts and I don't see how we can hope for better than that. I almost voted for Socialist Labour only because Arthur Scargill's name was right beside it and I don't think you should vote based on nostalgia although, as BAFTA member Bennett Arron said "That's how almost everyone votes anyway".

Will it make any difference? No. No fucking way. All the good that I can get from it is that I've said no to Labour and, more personally, my current idiot representatives where I live. Oh, and the BNP. I think it's best that they know that not everyone is a cunt.

www.twitter.com/michaellegge

Escorts Bestcorts.

"Is there anything you actually like?"

Those were the words sent to me by a fan called David Ashe after I made my feelings clear about John Barrowman on this blog. I call David a fan simply because he hated me so much that referring to him as a fan might be the thing that tips him over the edge so I had to do it. Thanks for reading, David. I'm glad you're my fan.

But my fan, David, has a point. What do I actually like? Wispas, Jerk, Doctor Who, Morrissey and hating everything. Those are a few of my favourite things but is there anything better than Mr. Jolly Lives Next Door? I'm not sure that there is. I came home quite drunk last night and watched it, something I have done countless times before since it first aired on Channel 4 in 1987. 22 years on and I still find it funny. That says something for how good it is and says a lot about how simple I am.

Mr. Jolly Lives Next Door is simple: A pair of drunks try to drunkenly kill someone while drunk. It's a fantastic plot. So simple yet so effective yet so stupid. Rik Mayall and Adrian Edmondson run the DreamyTime Escort Agency and make money by drunkenly driving Japanese businessmen around London while pointing out the tourists spots. Everything they do is all part of life's long drinking binge including being paid by a gangster to "take out" Nicholas Parsons. It's a plainly stupid story of mistaken identity but there's enough violence, insane drinking and great lines to make this an absolute classic. Everyone in it is brilliant, including Nicholas Parsons. When Parsons delivers the line "I'd like to spend an evening with Nicholas Parsons because never ever ever bloody anything ever" I giggle like a child. The joy of grown adults (alternative comedians, no less) revelling in their childishness still makes me happier than practically anything that's ever come since. Horne and Corden should be forced to watch this and then shot. All I'm saying is that if you haven't seen Mr. Jolly Lives Next Door then I'm jealous because you are in for such a treat. It's part of a 300 disc DVD box set of all The Comic Strip Presents...films. Mr. Jolly Lives Next Door is on disc 4. The other discs in the set make fine coasters for your coffee table.

Speaking of Mr. Jolly, yesterday I saw the first two episodes of Psychoville, a new BBC2 comedy series written by and starring Reece Shearsmith and Steve Pemberton. It's fantastic. It's horrible and funny, just like Mr. Jolly, and, just like Mr. Jolly, has a character in it called Mr. Jolly. It has the same feel as League of Gentleman but pushes the eeriness much more than the gruesome horror (although there's plenty of that too). It made me laugh out loud numerous times which is incredible considering the amount of creepiness in it and me being a miserable bastard. You should watch it. You'll like it. I'd tell you when it was on but no-one at the screening seemed to know.

Jonathan Ross hates me. I don't know what I've done to upset him (I doubt that you can offend a man who's nearly 50 but makes phonecalls to the elderly telling them about who's been in their granddaughter) but upset him I have. He has actually blocked me from following him on Twitter. I really like Jonathan Ross but getting blocked by him has somehow made me quite proud. I think it's my insistence that his friend James Corden be shot dead that upsets him most but that's just a guess. Still, I see that he's just had a £3 million pay cut. That will happen to anyone else that thinks of blocking me.

www.twitter.com/michaellegge

I Love 1989.

Saturday was Patti's last day in London and we pretty much did the same thing we did the day before. We just wandered around Belsize Park talking about how exciting it was to move to London for the first time in 1989. Living in a beautiful flat in Hampstead, hanging out with famous people and being the envy of everyone. That was how I wanted to live, but didn't. I lived in Finsbury Park and then Walthamstow, vaguely knew the ex-lead singer of Iron Maiden and had the pity of everyone. I knew that I had arrived in an exciting and interesting city back in 1989 when my landlord walked through my bedroom wall to collect rent. My second landlord, in Walthamstow, used to delight in letting his dog piss in my flat. But Patti lived in Belsize Park and rubbed shoulders with the wealthy. One of them was Joe, a nice bloke we had lunch with on Saturday.

Joe is the son of Sting and Frances Tomelty and was 12 when I met him. At the age of 32 he somehow looks exactly the same but looking very youthful is not why I'm jealous of him. I'm not jealous of his good looks, his band, his house on The Heath or his regular trips around the globe. I'm not jealous of his new album that he's currently mixing or his lovely long hair and certainly not his bicycle crash helmet. I'm jealous of his eccentricity. I'd love to be an eccentric, it would so suit me. Can't you just see me walking around wearing a crown, leaving Sherlock Holmes novels out for the birds and writing letters to The Sea? I'd love all that. Joe is utterly charming and funny but, my God, there's such an air of the brilliantly odd about him that I can't quite put a finger on. He dressed half as a postman, half as a soldier when he met us. He sat on his knees, ate cheese from other people's plates and told us that he only got an hour's sleep the night before because he just woke up "and remembered Primrose Hill". I often forget Primrose Hill too, perhaps that's why I sleep like a baby. Sadly, Joe is very classy at being an eccentric and I doubt I would be. Writing your own name in shit while wearing a tutu won't make you Salvador Dali, I've found out.

Then Patti left. Such a shame she doesn't live here because I selfishly want her to. I haven't seen her in years but anytime we meet in never really feel like time has past. We're still just as immature and thick.

And then it was back to normal life. Luckily, normal life for me yesterday was getting a bit drunk and scaring my dog by chopping down a tree in my garden and setting fire to it. I did this all in the midday sun. I'm taking my first steps into eccentricity. Cheers, Joe.

I've been thinking a lot about 1989 over the past few days and what a great time it was. I was drunk all the time, spent all my money on crap, spent too much time trying to get into The Comedy Store and generally went around London annoying people. I don't know how I did that, certainly couldn't do it now. Still, I looked great back then.

www.twitter.com/michaellegge