I Hate Martin.

Horne and Corden; a brand new sketch show starting soon on BBC3.

Sorry. I really did want to start this blog a lot more positively but I just saw that sentence and thought if I’m going to be depressed all day then you should be too. Sorry again. The last couple of days in Dublin were fantastic. King of Everything wrote new material, figured out a better way of writing together and finally got round to making its stage debut. The show was very good but, obviously, not without its flaws. I forgot a line, some gags didn’t work and the CD player decided to break just as it was needed. On the plus side, our ten minute spot extended to nearly twenty minutes, although the act on after us might not have thought of that as a plus. I really must thank our director, Dan Mersh, as his input so far has been invaluable and I’d like to say that Johnny Candon and I owe him a lot. I’d like to say that but I can’t because Johnny Candon no longer exists. The man is alive and well but Dan and I decided to change his name from Johnny Candon to Jongleurs Camden and we hope that you will only think of him as that too from now on and forever. It will definitely help his career now that he has the same name as a comedy club and that is all that Dan and I were thinking of when we kindly renamed him. Please change his details accordingly on your mobile phone now.

Besides working, it was mainly boozy in Dublin. We did a lot of bar hopping and generally it was fun. Dublin is, unsurprisingly, a good drinking town. On Wednesday we all woke up just a little bit hazy and hungover. That wasn’t a good way of feeling that particular Wednesday because that particular Wednesday was Ash Wednesday. For those who don’t know what Ash Wednesday is it’s a Holy Day of Obligation were the insane put ash on their actual foreheads and walk around proudly showing it off as if it was totally normal. Just being hungover and seeing EVERYONE you passed having a smear of black shit on their heads was just too weird to take in. It actually looked like every single person you saw had had the exact same accident just happen to them. Like they all had accidentally bumped their heads on the same fireplace or had all put their heads in a fire to light their cigarettes and didn’t check their reflections afterwards. They looked liked dicks. God must hate them. I don’t though because I’m much more forgiving than God plus they all made me laugh a lot. Thanks for that, weirdos.

I arrived back in London yesterday evening and went straight to a gig in the city and then off to one in Covent Garden. Both went OK despite my head being broken thanks to the Dublin booze. I quite like doing two gigs in one night but maybe not so much when I’m feeling like I only have half a pint of blood in me. The gigs were part of The Funny Side… empire and had the same bill playing at both of them. Poor Greg Burns had to watch me twice, but to be fair I watched him once so now we’re evens. As crap as I felt, Greg found it very easy to persuade me out to The Phoenix Bar for more totally unneeded beer. I’m glad I went really because, via Greg, I met some really nice people and A FUCKING CUNT.

Martin is the manager of The Phoenix Bar and a total evil fuckwit. If you know him, punch him. If you don’t know him, find out who he is and punch him. I got a round of drinks in. Greg wanted a brandy. He was given a drink that looked like whisky, smelled like whisky and, I think this is the important bit, tasted like whisky. But no, it was brandy. The fact that it was whisky from a bottle with the word whisky on it didn’t seem to matter to manager Martin. I asked for a brandy and, to him, I got a brandy. No amount of reason or fact was going to change Martin’s mind. In the end, Greg went up and bought himself a brandy and the whisky was poured into the sink. This just got on my goat’s nerve’s wick a bit and I decided that I must have a word with Martin. I was even relatively friendly about it. Then he said “I told him and now I’m telling you, you’re not getting you’re money back” to which I replied that I thought he was being a prick. He asked if I wanted to be barred and when I said “yes, please” he mumbled and walked away. The truth is that I would love a law to be put in place that meant my entry to The Phoenix Bar was illegal. Maybe those photos of people all round the bar itself are people who Martin has previously barred. That would explain why they’re up there. It’s not like any of them are in the least bit remotely famous.

When I got home I saw my Chortle Award. It does exist and it wasn’t a wind up. Omid Djalili was right after all. I looked at Chortle’s footage of the night and I’m particularly glad that my carefully prepared acceptance statement was read out (a single word “cunts”) and was thought of as unfunny by so many. By the way, Richard Herring was robbed blind. I haven’t seen Tim Michin’s show or indeed Tim Michin’s act, in fact I absolutely refuse to even spell his name correctly, but there is no way that it was better than The Headmaster’s Son. Mind you, Zoe Gardner’s Fault was even better than that and it wasn’t even nominated so really Zoe was the one who was robbed blind. Fuck you, Steve Bennett, you wouldn’t know a fucking decent on-stage comedian if they came up and fucked you just to get a three star review. That said, when it comes to off-stage comedians your taste is immaculate.

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