Posts filed under 'life and stuff'
Once again…
….haven’t updated this in a while. It’s sort of like a tamagotchi or a child (I’d imagine) in that the novelty soon wears off and you really can’t be bothered. But for some unknown reason I am awake at 5:55 on a Friday morning and have been for the last two hours. Having got bored of poking and prodding my girlfriend’s sleeping face and having resisted the temptation to draw on her I thought now would be the ideal time to update my blog.
It’s been strange in that I had more gigs last week than I did in the whole of October. I had a rather beautiful weekend at the Stand in Glasgow. Normally I’m not that big a fan of the Glasgow Stand as it’s generally full of Glaswegians. They tend to be quite a hard audience. Well they are for a middle class, Aberdonian ponce like myself. Except last week the Glasgow audiences were really rather perfect. I did new stuff and it got a nice reaction. The other acts (Henning Wehn, Ron Vaudrey and Antony Murray) were brilliant and it was the best back stage atmosphere I’ve experienced at a gig.
I can remember at one point looking at Antony, who was on before me, performing to a crowd of 250 odd and all I could think was why the hell would you do that? Then as soon as I buzzed off stage after I remembered why. Really is no feeling on earth like it all.
On the Thursday night there was a huge Daily Mail staff party in the audience, and do you know what? They were proper lovely. Not at all dickish. I didn’t even have to do my Princess Diana/Gypsy/illegal immigrant material.
Then on Monday I had nothing. My first proper day off in over a week and a half and I felt awful. I had a huge comedown from the gigs and just felt really depressed. In a way it reminded me of the orchestra trips I used to go on with school. You’d spend a week playing music with friends and having a good laugh and then you’d come back to normal life and it’d be dull, not even black and white. That’s seriously how I felt at the start of this week. What a tool.
Mark Gatiss of the League of Gentleman and Doctor Who was in town on Wednesday and I got to interview him in front of a live audience. That was fun. I don’t think I ballsed it up. Maybe I could have been a bit more confident but it was quite good to hear an audience react to my questions and the answers given by the interviewee. I really hope I get the chance to do more stuff like that. For the record he’s not going to be the new Doctor Who and he wouldn’t say if he knew who it would be.
There were two proper old ladies who sat in the front row that hadn’t read the book and just turned up for something to do who talked throughout the entire thing because they couldn’t hear properly. There’s something quite fun about saying ‘fuck’ and talking about man to man bum sex in front of pensioners. I’d recommend it.
By the way, I write these in wordpress and then Facebook cleverly picks them up and reproduces them. Except it forgets to add spaces and makes me look like even more of an illiterate fuck wit than I actually am. Just wanted to get across that it’s not my fault.
The Attic Lights were in session for me last week and apparently they’ve been chosen by Channel 5 to play the theme tune for the new series of Minder. I asked them and they were only too happy to play it for me. Have a listen below as it sounds superb.
2 comments November 21, 2008
Some gigs…
Hmm, haven’t updated this for a while.
It’s been a strange few weeks. I’m slipping further and further into poverty. Well, as long you accept my definition of poverty as being in a house with heating and food but not being able to justify spending an hour in Starbuck’s every day reading the Guardian.
I’ve just got to face up to the fact that I need to get a job. I do feel like a bit of a failure. I think it was right to leave my last job. I had stopped caring about it as much as I should have done and that wasn’t fair to boss who had been very good to me. And living the life of a care free artist has been fun. But I seriously have no money. I’ll take anything. Waiting on tables, working in a shop or temping in an office. The only stipulation is that I don’t have to wear a hat. I’ve spent enough years in jobs with hats. In fact I think I may still have both the KFC and Burger King hats at home. Perhaps I could ebay them to some young people as hilarious retro festival wear.
What has been reassuring is speaking to other people who do the same kind of thing as me who are also having to supplement it with real work. It’s nice to know other people aren’t doing well.
Anyway, I’ve just updated my Myspace profile with the gigs I’ve got booked between now and Christmas and I’d thought I’d share them here.
The most exciting one is on the 19th of November where I’m interviewing writer and League Of Gentleman member Mark Gatiss in front of an audience. It’s a new thing to do which is always good fun and I can pretend I’m Parky.
|
Fit O’ The Giggles @ The Argyle | Edinburgh | ||
|
Trader Joes | Glasgow | ||
|
The Stand | Glasgow | ||
|
The Stand | |||
|
The Stand | Glasgow | ||
|
Chat with Mark Gatiss @ Waterstones | Aberdeen | ||
|
Absolute Beginners @ Mercat | Edinburgh | ||
|
The Stand | Edinburgh | ||
|
Breakneck Comedy @ The Blue Lamp | Aberdeen |
Add comment November 5, 2008
something about gutters and rainbows
Haven’t been updating the blog as much as I should. Sorry.
I’ve spent the last two weeks feeling very sorry for myself. I had a job interview for a job I didn’t really want. Because I couldn’t really care I was much more relaxed and confident in the interview than I probably would have been had I wanted the job. Then when I got the call to come in for a second interview I thought, ‘You know, actually, this could be quite good. I’d quite like this job’. Which is probably why I didn’t get the job. That and they asked me questions that I didn’t have answers to.
Secondly, it’s been a quiet month for stand up. I’ve got plenty of gigs from November to the end of January but I’ve only had one this month - and it was on Thursday to seven people. I mean they were seven very nice people and they laughed in all the right places but it would have been nice if the audience had hit double figures.
Thirdly there’s the radio station. Cutbacks all round mean that I’ve lost a shift which means I’m losing money and is forcing my hand to go and get a proper job. Also, one of my comedy chums came on my Saturday breakfast show last week and said something which almost got me the sack. I kept my job but said comedy chum is never to be allowed on air or indeed mentioned on the station again.
Fourthly my Evening Express Column hasn’t appeared for the last two weeks. My editor keeps asking me to send it in but it hasn’t gone online. I’m not sure if much is going to happen there. Hopefully it will.
I knew when I quit my lovely, well paying job to become a freelance ‘light entertainer’ that things might be tough but Christ, this is a bit much. I have this reoccurring nightmare where I end up back doing the same job in KFC I was doing as a 16 year old spotty child. I can’t do it. I just can’t do another job where I have to wear a hat.
That plus the miserable hideous weather and the impending end of the world has just left me a bit down. Still, I’m sure something will come along which will make me cheer the fuck up.
Perhaps it’ll be this afternoon when the fantastic Punch and The Apostles come and do a wee session for me. You probably haven’t heard of them but they are another Scottish band destined for great things. Have a listen.
Add comment October 25, 2008
if J.M.W. Turner did star wars
From the always brilliant B3TA. Right, back to work.
1 comment October 3, 2008
things that have floated my boat this week
The reviews this is getting on Amazon.
Original 106 won the pub quiz last night. Take that BBC, STV and Aberdeen Journals.
I have been paid.
I have a job interview.
Jim Gellatly’s new music podcast.
Things that sunk my ship this week…
The bank.
Death.
General Cuntery.
Ikea on a bank holiday Monday.
1 comment October 3, 2008
Zap…
Take some ska, a bit of Christianity some genuinely creepy lyrics and mix together to get this…
He taught me how to turn my cheek
when people laughed at me
I’ve had friends before [note the past tense]
he’s one who’ll never leave you flat
Clearly some issues there. You know fine well that at least one member of the band has been responsible for the death and mutilation of many a non believer. Think my favourite line is the one that compares Jesus to a mountie.
1 comment September 23, 2008
traffic and fringe
I’m doing the traffic report for the drive time station today. More through being in the office rather than any expertise on my part. Things I have learned from this experience:
1. There is a difference between a gas leak and a gas explosion. Gas leaks cause traffic delays and gas explosions… well gas explosions cause other things.
2. Reading things out that make no sense to you is fairly difficult.
3. There are lots of places in the North East of Scotland that have stupid names like Bogbrae and Battledykes (which sounds like a Nuts TV version of robot Wars)
Was going to write a sort of big final piece on the Fringe, and I still might, but Alan Sharp has done a much better job of that here
1 comment August 27, 2008
fantabulosa!
I and Producer Dave entered the world of club DJ-ing tonight. Great fun it was too. The only thing that could possibly have improved it would have been if anyone had turned up. It was an initiative between Grampian Police and The Tunnels to get the kids off the street and stop stabbing the fuck out of each other. Unfortunately no one seemed to have told the kids, or perhaps they did but when weighing up the choice between doing some stabbing/being stabbed and listening to me DJ the kids opted for to spend time with Mr Stab.
Apart from that life has been mostly preparing for the Edinburgh Festival and trying to find accommodation. I did have somewhere sorted but it rather suddenly went to shit and so now I’m probably going to have to spend the three weeks sleeping in my car. Of course I’ve been honing my rapier wit and coming up with some new jokes. I’ve been writing some new material about how Gordon Brown has the same look of ‘life is a bit rubbish’ in his eyes as you might find on a 50 year old porn star. It should hopefully be funny, but then again it might not. I note that because after working for a Labour politician and being heavily involved in the Labour Party for over three years this is the first time I’ve done any material which might be seen as a dig at the Government. Of course to balance this I shall go down to Glasgow East this weekend and campaign hard for Margaret Curran.
Perhaps this blog is where I mention the meetings I had with Wendy Alexander to write jokes for FMQs… No. I’ll save that. It also isn’t very interesting.
The other highlight of life this week was finding this brilliant video of Feist on Sesame Street.
Superb. The only other thing of note is that I seem to have upset a great deal of the Aberdeen Comedy Collective. I shall probably blog about this at some later date.
Add comment July 16, 2008
Poor Davina…
I don’t know if it’s because her chat show went a bit tits up or if it’s because Big Brother’s not quite as big this year but seems as if she’s gone a bit Norman Bates. Quite sure when we hear her mum, we’re actually hearing inside Davina’s head.
Add comment June 25, 2008
