The Lamb & Foxy.

I've had three Curb Your Enthusiasm moments this week. One is too visual to explain here, one is too disgusting to explain ever and just a few hours after that happened this happened. I was standing at Ladywell train station waiting for, you know, a train. I was very early. I had another 15 minutes to wait for my train although I was BANG on time to see the train I really intended to get leave. 15 minutes to wait with nothing to do. BOOOOOOR-ing! But wait. There's someone I know on the opposite platform of this tiny, wee south London train station. It was Foxy. Foxy is the name of my cleaner. She's fantastic, Foxy. That said, I have probably ruined our professional relationship for ever. A few weeks ago I saw Foxy in the street and my immediate reaction to the delight of seeing her was to hug her. And I did. I'd never hugged Foxy before and she definitely felt awkward about it. Not as awkward as I did though because the second I started hugging her was the second that I realised "Aw, fucking hell. You stupid ball-ache of a man. You've made friends with her now. She'll never clean anything properly again and you won't be able to say anything because she's your friend and you can't be horrible to friends. Except Bennett". Maybe I shouldn't have said it out loud but I have noticed a definite decline. She's still great though and I was really happy to see her on the opposite platform during my 15 minutes of being on my own and bored. So excited was I that I called out "Hey! Foxy!". She looked up and, like the Ross Noble of Southampton, she clearly wasn't Foxy afterall. She looked at me and smiled and I responded with "Oh. Not you". Not, "Sorry, I thought you were someone else" but "Not you". as if to say "Christ, love, don't you get sarcasm? There's nothing foxy about you apart from the FACT that you trail through bins late at night. HA HA HA HA HA!". She gave me a look as if to say "If you're not too busy could you drop dead and tell your ghost to go fuck itself". The thing is, that's exactly what I wanted to do. Maybe my eyes are going? That's normal when you start getting old, right?

Another good thing about getting old is that you're allowed to nap any time you frigging feel like it. On Monday I spent the best part of the day in bed drifting in and out of sleep. That was fine except I had a very terrible dream. I dreamt that the whole of Britain had voted for me to apologise to cunt DJ George Lamb. I don't know what we as a nation did that meant one of us had to apologise to the talentless, thick, ignorant prick but I'm pretty cross with everyone for voting me in even if it didn't actually happen. I think everyone should now apologise to me. Or, at least, punch George Lamb. In the face. With the entire Kinks back catalogue.

I very much hope you're going out to celebrate the murder of 2008 and the c-section drag out of 2009. New Years Eve is my favourite of all the annoying, forced-fun nights of the year. There's always a lovely feeling of Thank Fuck That's Over about it. I'm going to get drunk and start writing lists of my favourite and least favourite things of the year. If you're reading this then you're in my favourite list and I love you. Happy New Year!

Mnd Yr Lnguge :).

I'm very excited about the latest Stephen Fry's Podgram. This is basically another recommendation pretending to be a blog but if you haven't listened to Stephen Fry's Podgram you are seriously missing out on something very, very special. The latest one is about language and its evolution. As you can imagine, with language as a subject Fry is in his element and is frequently eloquent and funny while discussing it. Discussing it? Well, he discusses it with himself. Fuck. That's terrible grammar, I have learned NOTHING. He gets very excited about how language has changed today and made me feel like a grumpy old curmudgeon, which admittedly isn't very hard. I'm very much of the stupid, blinkered opinion that modern vernacular, "text speak" and changing a words very meaning means that you're thick. I thought Stephen Fry would agree with me, buy me a Wispa and ask me to replace that scruffy arse on QI. I am very wrong. He seems very much excited by the change in our modern language. If Stephen Fry thinks that then I must be wrong because he's Stephen Fry and I'm not. I'm not even Ben Elton, which is depressing. Not that I totally agree with everything Fry says. For instance, if you write "I should of" in stead of "I should have" then you are clearly as thick as a short plank made of pig shit. Anyway, believe it or not, Stephen Fry talks about all this better than I can so give it a listen. It's on iTunes and costs nufink.

I spent practically all day yesterday in bed. It was great. Another recommendation. I listened to lots of new music that people kindly recommended and watched telly. Lying in bed makes you feel like you're doing something really wrong even though you're not. You can hear the outside world being all busy and getting things done and only you are aware of how you're letting civilisation down by lying in your own lazy flesh and watching the Morecambe and Wise Christmas Special from 1971 on iPlayer. I survived only on Tayto Cheese & Onion crisps and pretending I didn't need to piss. Basically, I contributed nothing to the 29th December 2008. Let's make it an annual event. But not if you always lie in bed all day.

Not much swearing in this blog. I think I'm really maturing. Back to bed now.

I Stink.

This is more of a recommendation than a blog. I've got two friends from America staying with me at the moment. They're called Heather and Scott and are very nice, easy-going and funny. Those mentally together type of Americans that us comedians often pretend don't exist (I even saw Mark Thomas, of all people, do the dull "Friendly Fire" gag about two years ago, I immediately bought a two litre bottle of Coke). The good thing about having friends over is that you can take them to all the kind of secret, cool places that you think only you know about and last night I took them to my favourite restaurant. First we went to a pub near me where my friend Will was playing Nirvana and the Hawaii 5-0 theme on a honky tonk piano and then we went into town to eat and drink at the beautiful Garlic & Shots. This place is pretty much my favourite thing to do in the world. Everything has garlic in it. The food, the beer, the staff. Everything. If you don't like garlic, don't worry, you can always fuck off. I had lots of garlic beer, garlic chilli, garlic noodles, garlic bread (BRILLIANT catch phrase), garlic vodka, garlic cheese and an actual bulb of garlic. Just in case you didn't think that was excellent enough, the establishment is also run by a group of Swedish Hell's Angels. It's very charming. The food is great, the booze is the best and the people who work there are heavily tattooed and pierced and look like they could kill you with their pencil. If you haven't been then please go. It's in Frith Street. If you have been, it's great isn't it? You stink for days afterwards. I'm literally lying in bed oozing. That's what I do for fun these days.

On to more important things. Can you recommend a good tune from 2008 that I might not have heard? Music's been a bit dull this year and my anal and annual chat about the previous year's music come January is going to be very sparse. Please help. And DON'T say Glasvegas. Thank you.

This Blog Is Cancelled.

It's an odd gig, the one between Christmas and New Year. Usually pretty quiet although with enough of the aftermath of Christmas parties to just about make it a chore. Last night was different. It was great. It was in Bath, a beautiful British town that I had never been to before. The venue was incredible, a 150 year old theatre fully restored and beautiful to look at. But best of all, it cancelled. Don't get me wrong, it looked like it would have been great fun to play but all cancelled gigs are waaaaaaaaaaaaaay better than an actual gig. You've got to understand the buzz we comedians feel when we're about to go on stage, adrenalin pumping through our bodies, our minds electric with anticipation, when the owner turns round and says "Sorry, we're going to have to pull it". It's such a high. Sometimes I don't come down from that for days. It's like that was the reason we all got into comedy in the first place. And when the owner says "You'll still get paid", well, that feeling of glory, excitement and semen dribbling down your leg is something the likes of Billy Connolly, Frank Skinner or Ricky Gervais haven't experienced in years. There must be a part of them that misses that wonderous moment. When Ricky's limo turns up at the Royal Albert Hall only to be told by the manager that a football match is on and that's why they haven't sold any tickets but "Don't worry. We'll still pay you". He'd love that. Last night's Bath Komedia gig was cancelled thanks to the incompetence of today's good old British electricians. The power went. Thanks for that.

It was really for the best that the gig cancelled. Firstly, the venue was so utterly perfect for comedy that I was bound to die on my arse and secondly because the hotel I was staying in was broken. The place itself was very nice, a very much above average, modern B&B but the telly was broken and everyone knows that the only thing worse than not having a telly is having a broken telly. I had to be moved to another room because my TV kept switching itself on and off like it was the world's least imaginative poltergeist. Then the second, and final, room I went to had a TV that froze constantly like it was slowly downloading telly. The only channel that worked was Virgin 1, which isn't as good as it sounds. Still, it taught me a lot about When Sports Go Bad. Do you know how many men have died from hitting themselves in the head with their own golf club while trying to putt the ball into a hole eight feet away from them in the last fifty years? One. And he's a fucking idiot. The hotel was OK though. At least it had free WiFi which, as I had my iPod Touch with me, excites me greatly. I was like a proper young person! Hanging out in ma crib downloading tunes from da iTunes, innit. To be honest, I actually downloaded only one tune and it was Mr. Ozio's Flat Beat. I'm getting very nostalgic for shit at the moment. I'll be downloading Stiltskin next.

Of course, thanks to the gig cancellation, I didn't have to stay overnight and got a lift back to my house from Matt Blaize and his, frankly too good for him, girlfriend Fiona. But I did have enough time in my room to catch this nightmare that might actually rival Ewan McGregor's empire of bellendity. If you can, look at this: http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=iwmbmJ_WqAU&feature=related

God, don't you feel all dirty?

Things To Keep In Mind For Next Christmas.

It's Boxing Day today, so called because we put all our celebrities who died on Christmas Day in a lovely box to take to Jesus. I think you get a much better class of celebrity death at Christmas. This year we were treated to the double whammy of Harold Pinter (who I thought was dead) and Eartha Kitt (who I would have bet my house had been dead since 1995). The people who die at Christmas just seem to be a bit more worthy than those other boring celebrities that die any other obvious time of the year. It's as if they're so special to us that they feel they must ruin just a tiny bit of our happy day by giving their own life. And so they should, they're worth it. Harold Pinter, one of this country's playwrites, Eartha Kitt, she was Catwoman and had a massive head, Dean Martin, he drank and sang songs, Charlie Chaplin, he fell over a lot, and WC Fields, he basically called everyone a cunt but in a really clever way, all died on Christmas Day because they are all achieved greatness in their chosen field (and some of them had cancer). Not like Jeremy Beadle (30th January 2008), Charlton Heston (5th April 2008) and Peter Kay (4th January 2009) who were utter bellends unworthy of choking to death on their own talent during A Sharks Tale and making our Christmas so much more poignant. Yes, being born on Christmas Day must be a pain in the arse presents-wise but imagine the glory of dying that day. Christmas Day is a time for happiness and joy and, by dying, you would ruin all of that. Harold and Eartha, I salute you.

Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas.

It's Christmas Day so how's this for a Dickensian tale from Christmas 2004? http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/news/article-15331863-details/Dumped:+seven+pups+of+Christmas/article.do

One of those dogs is Jerk so really that evil wanker did me a favour. Sorry I don't have a totally feel-good yuletide story but....well, it's me. I'm not good at happy. Read my blog from the 2nd November. It's the closest I've got to being nice. It'll never happen again and it's here: http://michaelleggesblog.blogspot.com/2008/11/ava.html

Have a really lovely day.

'Tis The Season To Kill Everyone.

I may be stating the obvious but, seriously, aren't people just an abomination? I've just come back from shopping and I'm ready to kill everyone. OK, in a way, I was asking for it. I mean Sainsbury's in Lewisham on Christmas Eve was never going to be, you know, lovely but I just wasn't expecting that amount of bastardry under one roof. I don't know if you've been to Sainsbury's in Lewisham but I'm confident that you have a picture of it in your head right now. You might need to boil your head after reading this to get rid of the thought. It's basically a cross between Waitrose and 28 Days Later with a frisson of screaming ball cancer. I don't like going in there at the best of times (not sure when the best time to go into Sainsbury's in Lewisham would be but it would definitely be post-apocalypse) but on Christmas Eve that's when Santa's helpers all come out to get in your fucking way and take all the trolleys. It took me nearly 25 minutes to find a trolley today and when I got it, you won't believe this, but one of the wheels was wonky and always went the opposite direction from the other three. A comedian should make a joke about that. Anyway, back to me. I'm amazed at how brainless people are when they get inside a supermarket. It's like they immediately forget how to walk, communicate or think on any level. The amount of times I said "excuse me" to shuffling fuckwits in my way only to be responded with a docile, mouth-wide-open stare and a single "uh?" made me angrier than Hitler's piles. I'm not mad on Christmas, I fucking hate supermarkets and people are just the most annoying, pointless spunk by-products ever mistakenly created. And every single one of the stupid fuckers, me included, decided to shop today. Pricks.

In previous blogs I mentioned that Lewisham Council, the very benchmark on which all other incompetent bags of useless shit must be judged, decided to close the special needs school at the end of my street. That's bad. Especially bad as they closed it so they could bulldoze it to the ground and build a £4 million site for "Travellers". The residents of my street have been using solicitors, other Lewisham residents and angry, sweary letters to get this stopped but to no avail. The school still got closed and it still got bulldozed. It's a very sad sight to see. I'll be very honest with you, I'm all up for alternative lifestyles and I'm very happy for travellers to have a temporary place to stay in towns and cities throughout the UK but I'm not happy about a school having to close for that to happen. It's pretty disgusting if you ask me especially as there is a big enough piece of waste ground in Lewisham that currently goes unused. Mind you, that's right by Lewisham Council's offices so you can clearly see why that didn't happen. Anyway, there's been a twist of fate recently and I'm not sure how to feel about it. No construction work has happened on the site for weeks so I wanted to know why. It turns out that the Travellers don't want to live in my street after all. They've contacted the council and are demanding a different location. The cheeky fucking cunts. What's wrong with my street, you fucking slate-stealing cunts? My street is lovely. You should be on your knees and sucking all our cocks for letting you live here, you awful sack of unlucky heather. I've never been so insulted in my life. I was told by the council that the price of my house would go down because thieving gypsy bastards are moving in and now I've been told by them that where I live isn't good enough for tinkers. The fucking smelly, gypo, pikey, choosy cunts. Or maybe they've just seen the local Sainsbury's. In that case, fair enough.