Autonomy.

Television is just crap upon crap upon crap. Crap to define you and crap to confine you. Last night I settled down to watch Live At The Apollo and was surprised to see Peter Sissons doing 15 minutes. They don't normally have newsreaders on Live At The Apollo, as far as I'm aware, and it was really odd seeing him on there. Why is he on there, I thought, and I was soon made aware that I was the only person in the entire world who thought that. I went on to the dying toilet cubicle of desperate scrawl that is Twitter and it turned out that lots of people were delighted at seeing Peter Sissons on Live At The Apollo and others were offended by what Peter Sissons said on Live At The Apollo. I, alone in my dark flat with just monochrome flashes and the vague memory of warmth for company, wondered why an opinion had even been formed. What Peter Sissons had said on Live At The Apollo was boring. It was pedestrian and obvious. Old observations that everyone surely knows. But no one asked why? Not one single person. Why was Peter Sissons there? I'm not saying that a newsreader can't be on Live At The Apollo, I'm just saying that if he or she or they are performing stand up comedy on Live At The Apollo then they really better have some knowledge of the craft. Some of the younger people reading this blog won't remember Sandy Gall's disasterous 5 minutes of total silence on Saturday Live in the 80's ("Belgrano? BelgranYES, bitch!") but at least then people wrote to Channel 4 and asked WHY WAS SANDY GALL ON SATURDAY LIVE? People were more active then. They didn't question his material. They didn't support it or condemn it. They just asked, to my shy awkward teenage ears, the only question that needed to be answered: WHY WAS SANDY GALL ON SATURDAY LIVE? He's a newsreader, for Satan's sake. This isn't his place. And I am NOT having a go at newsreaders. I know they have enough on their plate, especially female newsreaders who are often (unfairly) criticised for not being serious. All I'm asking is WHY? Why was Peter Sissons on Live At The Apollo? Of course, like the rest of the handsome and poor of industrial Britainnia, I watched every minute and you could have heard the washed and clueless across the land put down their velvet, vegetarian copy of Das Vormund and gasp as Peter Sissons became controversial. "Why did the chicken cross the road?", a simple straightforward question and one that would put most of the middle-classes at ease, knowing fully well the answer would be pleasant enough to share at pilates if the morning spared them. But his answer was not what they Ocado ordered. It was "I don't let my chicken cross the road. I've never let my chicken cross the road". My weakened frame trembled with the smell of the nails being petitioned into Peter Sissons's coffin. Initially it was all support. YES!, they bored on Twitter. WHY SHOULD THE CHICKEN CROSS THE ROAD? WHAT'S IN IT FOR US? THANK YOU, PETER SISSONS, FOR SHOWING US THE WAY!!! And it went on. Praise neatly stacked on Peter like brown towels kept in a hot press and only used for visitors, and why not? If he's made some people happy, then why not praise him? It's not like he's an ex-drug addict who has a long history of treating women like shit. No. Definitely using someone like that as your moral compass would only make you have a long hard look at yourself if you were in any way clever enough to do so. But the praise was then hit by dissent. Twitter became ablaze with Sissoffs (it's basically Sandy's joke again), all brandishing pitchfork emoticons and capitalizing until their throats hurt. NO!, they bored on Twitter. YOU HAVE TO LET THE CHICKEN CROSS THE ROAD. PEOPLE THREW THEMSELVES IN FRONT OF TOMMY TINDER'S PANTOMIME HORSE FOR YOUR RIGHT TO LET YOUR CHICKEN CROSS THE ROAD! IF YOU DON'T LET YOUR CHICKEN CROSS THE ROAD THEN ALL THE RIGHT WING COMEDIANS WILL GET IN. Poor Peter. All he wanted to do was go on a programme that he most definitely shouldn't be on and do something he's in no way cut out to do. Both sides treating him like a sinning saint, shouting wrongs from all angles. The reason that the right wing comedians will get in is because the left wing audience have lost faith. They don't have the voice they once had. The horrible right wing audience get their comedians to the top of the polls because they DO have a voice. The hate in Mrs Brown's Boys, London Irish, Citizen Khan...and then the uncomfortable safety of so many comedies of 2013. Where can the left go? I have voted for left wing comedians in the Chortle Awards who have ended up going to the Middle East and doing appalling things. Then the big chain clubs fail to pay them and the "lefties" bail them out by still agreeing to do their clubs. Say what you like about Roy "Fatty" Brown but he didn't say yes to Arthur. And THAT is not the point. The point is how come this was a talking point? Peter doing (no matter what way you look at it) really obvious material and NO ONE saying surely a comedian should be inspiring us to laugh, not a newsreader. HE'S A NEWSREADER, not a revolutionary comedian. Why would we want him to be anyway? The revolution will be televised and sponsored by Fosters and, if you miss it, it'll be on again soon on Dave! I'm just saying that a proper comedian should have been on that programme in the same way that, I dunno, maybe a politician would be on something like Newsnight and inspiring us to think. That's where the left fail. I think if you've been made to think by someone incredibly unqualified talking on a programme they have no reason to be on then that's probably just a case of you not being that into thinking. Still, at least it's got us talking. And a big grey sorry for the glamour of this blog. I've been reading a book. It wasn't even written by an author but it's made me very excited. It's easily done. Now, let's see if Natasha Kaplinsky is on Alternative Comedy Experience....