The Emotions of Writing

Sorry I haven't written a blog for a while. I genuinely am sorry. I should have made the time and I feel guilty for not doing it. The problem has been I've been having too much fun. That's kind of how I am with writing. I write best when an emotion overcomes me.

I'm not the only comedian who's like this. Last night I was chatting to a comic who confessed he writes best when he's angry. I can totally see his point. I need different emotions for different types of writing.

I write my best standup when I'm angry or pissed off, or a combination of the two. Standup, for me, seems to come from a sense of frustration. An audience relates to that feeling of hopelessness when you can't seem to catch a break and a situation turns against you. Then they want to live through your anger or revenge, even if they know the situation is made up, because they want to hear about someone getting the upper hand in exactly the way they wish they had.

I write for TV and radio shows much better when I'm feeling poor. It's not that I don't enjoy writing for other people (it is a little) but I tend to lack any focus and discipline with my writing. When I need the money and can't afford to get fired for not doing anything, that tends to focus my mind and dramatically increases my output.

But to write this blog I need to be bored or in need of a distraction. Thing is, I haven't been bored lately. I've been having a lot of fun and I've had too many other things going on to distract me. That's not to say that you're not important to me too. It's just that the sun has been out and that means picnics and that means drinking wine. It's raining this week and so I'm writing this blog, and drinking wine. Wine is the constant in my life.

Professionally I've been really busy. I've been writing a show with my wife. It's called 'Mr & Mrs' and we're performing it at the Adelaide Fringe and the Sydney Comedy Festivals next year. It's about how we're both standup comedians and the strain this puts on our marriage. If I'm being honest we fight more when we're working together than at any other time in our marriage. So I haven't been able to write the blog because I've been writing the show and I've been getting yelled at. And you can't write a blog when someone is yelling at you, that just tends to make them yell more.

I've also been doing a few more gigs. It's been fun to get out there a bit more lately. I've been writing new jokes and stuff. It's always exciting when you do new material, it give you a real jolt of adrenalin. So I haven't been able to write a blog because I've been too self involved.

A little while ago I planted a little herb/vegetable garden and I've really enjoyed pottering about with it. I've been eating lettuce, basil and mint that I grew and that's made me stupidly happy. Also we got a new BBQ. This is a triumphant event in an Australian man's life. So I haven't been able to write a blog because I've been growing, cooking and eating stuff. And a well fed man is not bored enough to write a blog.

This isn't just a writing thing. A friend of mine admitted a little while ago that when he's on holiday he only takes photos when he's bored. He said that that's why his photos are always there dull scenery shots. It's because when he's doing something awesome and exciting he's too busy having fun to take photos of it. I always thought that about the people who always take photos of everyone when they're down the pub with friends. I never take photos of friends when we're down the pub because I'm enjoying the moment too much to interrupt the fun by taking a photo. These people spend a whole evening watching fun through a camera lens and have to look at the photos the next day to make sure they had a good time the night before.

So why am I writing this blog? Guilt. I felt guilty. It's not like I've had loads of messages from people asking me where my weekly blog has been the past few weeks. I've actually only been asked 3 times and given how many people I get reading my blog it's a little insulting that only 3 of you noticed I wasn't around. But I've felt guilty because I told myself that I would write this blog each week and as a lack of discipline in my writing is one of my many flaws I need to actually write each week.

So I'm back and I'll be back to writing this thing each week. Or at least until I get a new distraction, or I get yelled at. Given that the show is currently in the editing phase that's a possibility.

Don't forget to follow me on twitter: @counterproduct
And check out our website with details about the show and things:
http://counterproductives.tumblr.com

Pick Your Targets

I make my money from making fun of people. Sometimes it's not clever but it's what I do. It's not all that I do, on occasion I also tell carefully nuanced stories and comment on the struggle of life... but often I resort to making fun of people because it gets a laugh and that's what I'm paid to do.

That's not to say that I have given myself a license to make fun of everyone. Yes, for the record, I am in charge of issuing licenses entitling the holder to vilify a target of their choosing, what of it? Even so, there are certain groups of people that I don't make fun of, or if I do, it's not because of their association with that group.

For instance, I would never attack someone for being gay but I would point out if someone, who happened to be gay, was being a dickhead. Whatever the joke I made wouldn't be based around their sexuality but on their action that, I felt, made them seem like a dickhead. On one particular occasion I told a joke about a conversation I had with a gay person I knew. In the story I didn't once mention that they were gay because it wasn't important for the story/joke so I left it out. This didn't detract from making it funny but it did detract from making it mean. Maybe I'm old fashioned but if the audience doesn't have to work out if they're 'allowed' to laugh at something it allows them more time to actually laugh at something.

A few weeks ago I told a joke around the topic of anorexia. The joke wasn't about anorexia specifically but was about a woman who voiced her objection to the joke before I had told it. She was offended by the topic before I had finished the joke and my piece was lampooning her reaction. I took great care to avoid voicing any opinion or criticism of those suffering from anorexia for 2 reasons, firstly because I know very little on the subject and secondly because I don't think it's right for an ill-informed jester to poke fun at people suffering from a mental illness. But that's just my opinion.

Many years ago I was told that a joke that I did about a conversation with my then girlfriend (who later became my wife) was misogynistic and that, by implication, I was a misogynist. The joke was about a conversation with a specific individual who happened to be female and never once generalised the view of any gender or group. I hadn't stated or implied that my girlfriend's reaction was 'typical of women' nor anything of the sort. The only reason the audience knew her gender at all was because, by stating she was my girlfriend, it quickly addressed why we were lying naked in bed at the time, which was important to the joke.

The person who said this to me, who's gender is not important, told me that she (whoops) didn't like the joke and that I should change it because it was offensive to women. At the time it upset me and it still makes me angry that someone could construe that because of this joke that I was misogynistic. I think that it's just as offensive to avoid telling a joke about an individual because they are a part of a subset of society as if you generalise about the entire subset. I continued to do the joke because I thought this person was wrong and hey, sometimes women over-react (that's a joke - the author would like to state that both men and women are equally prone to over-reacting).

What i've noticed on the circuit lately is comedians telling jokes that are really mean and disparaging to people who have lowly paid jobs, simply because they have lowly paid jobs. People such as cleaners or staff in fast food restaurants. Again, not every joke that mentions these groups of people is offensive.

A friend of mine has a fabulous story about ordering food in a Red Rooster and the ridiculous events that followed. But that is a specific persons actions, my friend doesn't generalise and say that he did this because he is part of a group. It's very clear that the actions of the person working in the store are the actions of an idiot. Comedians can make fun of people who act like idiots, it says so on our license... which I issued.

What I'm saying is, pick your targets. Don't make fun of someone because they are a cleaner. There could be a thousand reasons why this person didn't become a brain surgeon and instead works the nightshift in the office you work at. To do so is insensitive and mean. But if that individual cleaner does something or says something that is funny then feel free to tell me about it.

I'm just a bit annoyed by people being mean to groups who didn't do anything as a group. If they act as a group then the can be judged as a group but if they act as an individual don't belittle them just because it's easier for you to be lazy and judge them collectively. A good example is the train drivers who work on the underground (tube) in London. They are often criticised by comedians as a group, but they also act as a group and take strike action as a group. It is their willingness to act as a collective that justifies them being judged as a collective. Of course you can judge groups as a whole but do it fairly. Another example, I don't think it's right to say that all Catholics are 'something' but I think it's entirely appropriate to say that the shared actions of the catholic church are hypocritical and harmful to humanity.

I'm not really sure what I'm getting at. I guess the hypocrisy of comedians annoys me sometimes. Comedians do some shit jobs to 'pay the bills' while they wait for their career to take off. It makes me angry to see a comedian on stage call someone a moron because they have a retail job when they themselves work in retail. I love comedy but let's keep it funny, too often people are mean because they're too lazy to write a better joke. It does get a laugh if you're just plain mean. There is a shock value that generates a laugh from an audience but that's lazy and you should aim to be a better comedian than that.

If you focus your jokes on your interaction with the person as an individual or an organised group it's harder. It takes time to find the personal twist that makes that interaction funny but it's also the way to write truly brilliant material. Pick your targets and lampoon away, make fun of the right targets as much as you want, I'll give you a license for that.

Social Mobility

The need for social mobility has been one of the only things that, for as long as I can remember, all of the political parties in the UK have agreed upon. Everyone agrees that it needs to be improved but there isn't a consensus as to what the required level of social mobility is, only that we aren't there yet. All of the parties have their plans to improve social mobility and will go to great lengths to tell you why the other parties aren't doing enough to increase it.

Last year my wife and I had a frank conversation about the direction we felt the the UK economy was heading and what it meant for our personal prospects. Then, like rats deserting a sinking ship, we emigrated to Australia. We've since been back to the UK for work and have remained keen observers of the UK both politically and economically (although currently, politics seems to be solely dictated by the economy). I mention that I live in Australia because last week I was having a conversation with some friends about social mobility that made me question whether social mobility in the UK is in need of being increased at all.

My Australian friends had a hard time understanding social mobility because Australians generally refuse to acknowledge the class system that exists in Australia. What one of my friends actually said was that, "Australia doesn't have class". Which, whilst true in a literal sense, is untrue in practice. Australia, like the UK, has haves and have-nots. The have-nots want to join the ranks of the haves, and the haves want to have more. Just because the UK has a formally recognised class system doesn't mean that it's the only place in the world where social mobility is an issue. This battle to have more is the common understanding of what social mobility is.

In my observations of the UK I have concluded that, despite conflicting statements from almost every politician, social mobility in the UK is at an all time high. But in this era of austerity how is that possible? Quite simply because we, like the politicians that pander to us, need to properly understand social mobility. It is the movement from one class - or status group - to another. It is not, to use our simplified definition, the battle to have more. Social mobility is our battle to have a different amount. Mobility is not defined by its direction but by its ability to move. Sure it can move up, but it can also move down.

For generations education has been seen as the key to social mobility and it still is. However, in years past, UK students would graduate and get a job. This job would be a better job than they could have achieved without a tertiary qualification and thus their journey to upward social mobility had begun. This was their right, irrespective of how poor their grades were. Graduating university virtually guaranteed upward social mobility.

Today, for middle class students, the absolute best case scenario is that graduating university will mean they avoid social mobility altogether and stay right where they are. Unfortunately for most graduates, the high levels of debt they graduate with and the complete lack of employment opportunities means an almost certain downward social move. Working class youths are now not only being priced out of tertiary education, they are now competing with middle class graduates for poorly paid unskilled jobs. For those who don't go to university, moving up is not an option, so stagnation is also the best case scenario.

What about the post baby boom generation who have worked hard their whole life and sensibly planned for their retirement? Well the markets have crashed, Europe and America are broke and that retirement fund, if it doesn't go bankrupt, won't be worth what you thought it would be by the time you retire. Oh, and you'll probably have to retire many years later than you planned thanks to new laws and lack of options.

Due to the housing bubble, who knows what your property will be worth when you want to retire so you might not even be able to fund your retirement by selling that. Graduates and non-graduates are all equally unemployed so the chances of them buying their own home, one of previous generations other keys to upward social mobility, is a distant dream. Get used to renting kids, because owning your own home is becoming just something your grandparents used to do.

It might be better to voluntarily take some downward social mobility now just to get used to it. If fighting it is futile then why bother wasting your energy on it? For generations we have aspired to be better off than the generation before and, up until now, that has been possible. Unfortunately, like a balloon, this constant expansion isn't going to end well so, in order to avoid the bang, let's voluntarily let a little air out of our dreams.

We've been told for so long now that we should be doing better that we've come to demand it. But now that we are starting to realise that we won't be able to do better, maybe it's time to start embracing the long forgotten concept of the noble working class. We simply can't all be wealthy. Being poor isn't just something you should get used to, ultimately it's something you've always wanted.

For decades, when you asked a teenager what they wanted to do when they grew up, there were always those who didn't really want to do anything. Well congratulations, your dreams have come true, now you don't have to do anything. Since there are no jobs for you you can stay unemployed, it's trendy now and you won't be alone.

We love a rags to riches story. We always have. We love reading about how Jay-Z grew up with nothing and had to sell drugs to survive. How he lived in 'the projects' and how he achieved so much when he started with so little. Well the good news is that, if the UK continues on its current path, the UK will have more and more children starting life with the same advantages as Jay-Z. Imagine how proud you'll be of your child if they achieve greatness now.

Don't listen to the politicians, the UK currently has record levels of social mobility. Unfortunately everyone is moving the wrong way. But the future is looking bright. Soon you'll be so low, you'll only be able to move up.

As Old As You Feel

So we had my parents staying with us this weekend. Whether you're a teenager or an adult your parents can sometimes make you feel like a child. It's not something they do on purpose, it's just what happens sometimes. Parents start their relationship with you well before you become an adult. Sometimes they forget that, in the intervening time, you have become an adult. I can report that this week my parents didn't make me feel like a child at all.

They stayed on our sofa bed and we had a fantastic time. The only reason I mention this is because on a weekend where I was expecting to be made to feel young, I ended up feeling old. I'm not old and I know this to be true. Equally I'm not young and I had this made clear to me on Friday night.

It was about half past seven on Friday evening and my wife and I were at home. We weren't going out, but some young people occasionally don't go out on a Friday night too... don't they? I was getting the DVD player ready to watch the final season of Sopranos, which is a show that young people also like, nothing unusual there. My wife was cooking Kung Po chicken and she realised that we didn't have any peanuts. Everyone, no matter their age, knows that Kung Po chicken needs peanuts so I went across the road to the shops.

As I got to the traffic lights there were two girls handing out flyers. They seemed to be old enough to get into a bar but not old enough to like any bar that I would want to go to. I passed by without them offering me a flyer. I figured that this was because I was very clearly not wearing the type of attire that would be suitable for whatever club they were handing out flyers for. Personally I feel that tracksuit pants with a hole in the knee and a Minnesota Vikings jersey make a very fetching outfit and this mystical club would be lucky to have me. It couldn't have been because I looked too old to go to their club. Surely not.

As I was standing there, waiting for the lights to turn green and not crossing illegally, like a responsible adult, I heard these two girls speak. They were obviously not friends but had been thrown together by their common desire to earn minimum wage. As they stood there, getting to know each other, I listened. The tall one spoke first, she had the tone of someone who would find handing out flyers to be a mental strain, and she said, "so, I turned 20 last month, right."

I have assumed that her use of "right" at the end of her sentence was merely a linguistical tick of todays youth and not her attempt to form a question. Her colleague, the short one, replied, "Really?"

This was a question. I'm almost certain of it. What exactly she was questioning I'm not sure. She was either trying to confirm the accuracy of the tall one's statement or requesting clarification as to what a number was. Either way, she was shocked. The tall one acknowledged her shock and responded, "I know, but I always say that you're only as old as you feel and I definitely don't feel like a 20 year old."

Don't feel like a 20 year old! What do you mean, you don't feel like a 20 year old? The disdain in her voice towards her ever growing years made me want to punch her. I had a little aggression built up at this point anyway because, by this stage, I had worked out that the reason they didn't give me a flyer was because I was clearly too old for their stupid club. How could they cut me so deep with their eyes? Their youthful, judging, hate filled eyes.

I would love to be 20 again. Twenty year olds are now children from where I'm standing. I have my parents staying in my house this weekend and you're not going to give me a flyer because you're feeling over-the-hill? It's important for me to restate, I'm not considered old by the majority of people and I'm aware of that. But, at that moment, I felt old.

Earlier that evening, while my wife was preparing the vegetables for dinner, I was in the bathroom and after trimming my beard I realised that I had to trim my ear hair. This is not something that I've had to do before. It's not be a big deal, it's just part of the ageing process. But on the evening when you trim your ear hair for the first time, and you're faced with the reality of your decaying body, you definitely don't want to hear some pretty little twenty year old bitching about her impending retirement.

After buying the peanuts I went home and for the entire weekend my parents treated me like an adult. But I'm not an adult. I'm young, immature and reckless goddammit!!! Why didn't my parents just tell me to go to my room? Or threaten to cut off my allowance if I didn't do my chores? Why did they pick this weekend as the time to treat me like an adult?

So this weekend I learned two things. Firstly that Kung Po chicken tastes better with peanuts and I'm glad I went across the road to get them. Secondly I learned that I'm getting older. I'm not old yet, but I'm definitely on my way. If you're only as old as you feel, this weekend, I felt old. However those girls are young. I don't care if they feel old, they're young. They may not have come across as the brightest people I've ever encountered, but they're young... for now.

To Character Or Not

Lately I have been performing some of my stand up 'in character'. It's been a lot of fun but I'm not sure if I'm going to continue it or not. I'm not expecting you to answer this question by the way, this isn't a cry for affirmation... well not for any more than the normal amount of affirmation I need to get through my week. The act of writing a blog is a massive cry for affirmation, as is performing stand up. I'm aware of my neediness, no need to point it out.

I've really been enjoying my performance lately and that might partly be down to mixing performing the character with performing as me. To explain, for those of you who haven't seen it or heard me talk about it, the character is a drunk, recently divorced stand up comedian who is reassessing his life and is bitter and angry about where he finds himself. Personally I love a good breakdown and this is a fun persona to play with.

The idea of the character came from watching the multiple comedians I've known over the years who have gone through a divorce. They all seem to spend a couple of months (sometimes longer) drinking heavily and being really bitter and angry. They then naturally take it on stage with them. It obviously affects their performance but because they're normally seasoned professionals they tend to 'get away with it' just enough for the gig to turn out okay. Then they normally get through to the other side, get their life back on track and get back to being hilarious comedians. I can think of one or 2 exceptions who have just stayed bitter and angry for years... they aren't the fun people you want to hang out with.

I however love the energy they took on stage with them. I love the bitterness and stream-of-consciousness that comes out of their mouths, the unedited emotion. So the character is my attempt to harness that emotion but to have some killer jokes to go with it. Thing is, I am really happy with how it's coming along.

There have been a few gigs where the audience hasn't worked out that it's a character. There have been 2 particular gigs where my acting has been so unfortunately convincing that even other comics, that I know quite well, have come up to me afterwards and asked, "are you really drunk or was it an act?" Hear that casting agents - I'm awesome at acting!

There were always going to be teething problems. I have spent the last 9 years learning how to be 'me' on stage, so I can't expect to have a completely different persona perfected after only a couple of handfuls of gigs. But it is definitely getting there. I need to let the audience in on the fact it's a character and I'm learning how far I can push the boundaries. Granted, I'm learning where the boundaries are in a retrospective fashion after I've clearly crossed them but hindsight is a fantastic teacher.

There was the time that I was on stage, in character, and chatting to a girl in the audience when I asked her, "how many cocks would you say is an absolute maximum?" There was context, but I'm not going to tell you what it is... I also closed a gig by saying that "I didn't want to get a divorce. Sure I hated ever second I was with her, but I really liked the idea of watching her slowly die." You can see why the audience reactions may have been mixed when it wasn't obvious that this was a character.

But if I'm getting so much out of performing as a character why am I considering stopping it? Two reasons really. Firstly, I'm not sure where it'll go. I don't think I want to take it to a full hour show and tour it so is it worth it? And secondly, it's taking so much time and I'm not convinced that that time wouldn't be better spent on improving and expanding my stand up. Which I would like to get back to touring. I've missed the occasional international gig and the sad lonely weekends spent crying in hotels. For some reason I'd love to get back into doing them again.

There are only so many hours that you can focus on writing and then only so many gigs where you can try it out. I've had about 10 minutes of new material (for me) written out for weeks now that I haven't done. Every time I go to an open mic room I end up doing the character, so I haven't tried this new stuff out. It's been fun writing the character but I earn my money performing as me and I want to continue to expand that.

I have a new found energy for stand up. I think that has come from doing something different, so the character has been good and I can always come back to it. For next year's Adelaide Fringe Festival and Sydney Comedy Festival I am going to be doing a joint show with my wife. It's kind of a play crossed with stand up. We've performed it before in the UK but we're in the process of editing it. That takes time to do too. Then there will be rehearsals and all the other fun that comes with a new show. So I've got stuff to do, more than enough to keep me busy.

I would rather work hard on the show and on my stand up whilst ignoring the character than to do all of them and not have enough time to do any of them well. Plus I have this blog to write.

Writing a Sitcom

I have decided that writing a sitcom is harder than it looks. We've all sat on our sofa and thought that the sitcom we were watching was rubbish. Maybe you've even said those famous words, "I could write something better than this". I've always wondered just how tough it would be to write one myself. So I did and I'm starting to realise that it's not as easy as I originally thought.

I started writing this sitcom long enough ago that I can't actually remember when I started writing it. It's not like I've been writing it non-stop but I've been giving it enough of an effort to be further along than I am. I'm kind of sick of writing it now, I never thought it would take this long. And I'm only writing the first episode!! It's not like I'm writing the whole series, it's just the first episode.

Maybe this is why so many sitcoms on TV suck. Who knew? Just because it's hard is not a valid reason for a TV station putting shitty sitcoms on but it does explain it a little. There are a lot of jobs that are hard but a surgeon is never excused for sucking at their job because it's hard (I was really close to putting a joke here about a porn star sucking at their job because it's hard, but that would have been crass). I'm not giving up just because it's hard, my sitcom is going to be awesome... eventually.

'Eventually' is a fabulous word to use because it doesn't actually lock you in to a specific deadline. And I'm unlikely to meet any deadline I set so I can confirm that I'll get it done 'eventually'. I'm still doing standup and I'm also rewriting a play for next year's Adelaide Fringe Festival and Sydney Comedy Festival. So I've got other stuff to do but I'll get it done, promise.

I've written the outline and the characterisation is pretty much locked in. Oh, and I've already written the damn thing with 3 subsequent rewrites. But after showing it to my agent I now have a heap more work to do on it. I didn't show it to her until I was happy with it, why couldn't she say it was perfect? I was expecting to get a little feedback with a little tweak here and there but she came back with a lot of changes. What really annoys me is that they're all really really good suggestions. They're either things that I hadn't thought about or things that I just didn't care about. But what I really wanted to hear was, "this is brilliant, let's sell this to a production company and make you some money".

The evolution of this sitcom has at least been encouraging. If I'm being honest the first version sucked ass. When I started writing it I had an rough outline and kind of made it up as I went along. I didn't have any idea of what I was doing and didn't even write out the character descriptions until after the first episode was written (even though I've never done this before I know that's back to front). The only thing that I carried over from the first draft to the second draft was the names of the characters, and one of those names has changed anyway. You have no idea how odd it is to have a conversation about why one name is funnier than another or why that character just doesn't sound like a Simon.

The second draft at least had a decent structure but it was still a long way away. The third draft was better but wasn't nearly funny enough. It's awkward for a comedian to look at what they've written and to realise that it's not funny. And before you say anything, I realise that this blog isn't very funny, sorry. But it's not as if this is the first thing I've written that wasn't funny enough. I have a box somewhere with roughly 40 notebooks of some of the most unfunny ideas and rough scribblings ever stored in the one place.

The 4th draft was all about putting jokes into it. I think it's got the jokes in now but now my agent has identified all of the flaws that need to be corrected. So not it's back to work. I have to change some of the character motivations and highlight a few things that I thought were obvious... apparently not obvious enough. But I'm really enjoying it. I know I seem to be complaining about it but I complain about everything so this shouldn't come as too much of a surprise.

I tend to enjoy being creative. I don't think it really matters what form it takes. For example I recently directed my friends Sydney Fringe Festival show and I had a great time doing it. The show turned out great but even though I wasn't writing it I just enjoyed being part of the creative process.

Maybe I should become a director full time. It's way easier to tell someone how to say a line and when to walk across a stage than it is to start with a blank piece of paper and write 15 drafts to get the dialogue just right. So if you've got a show already written and need a director you should give me a call. It'll be a good distraction for me. Although I've got to have the next draft of my sitcom written 'eventually'.

Guiding My Blog

Hello from sunny Scotland. I'm in Edinburgh this weekend doing some gigs and I'm kind of enjoying them. It's nice being back in the UK. UK audiences are very different to the Australian audiences. Neither audience is necessarily better than the other but they react differently to certain jokes which means that you have to be aware of it and, to a certain extent, taylor your set to suit where you are. I don't dramatically change what I do but I tinker around the edges a little.

But being in the UK and the gigs I'm doing aren't what I want to talk about in this blog. This blog is about 2 specific things that have happened to me in the last couple of days. Firstly there was the woman in the Girl Guides Shop who refused to sell me any Girl Guides Badges and secondly there was the radio interview that I did to promote this weekend of gigs.

I should probably address the Girl Guide story first as I've just realised that my previous description may have raised more questions than it answered. Today I was walking along the streets of Edinburgh by myself and I happened to walk past the Girl Guide Shop. I had a genius idea - why not pop into the shop and by my wife a Girl Guide Badge, I was thinking maybe a home-maker or cooking badge, wouldn't that be a funny and cute gift.

So I went inside and asked the woman behind the counter if they sold the badges there. She said they did and I said that I wanted to buy my wife one of the previously mentioned badges because she had them when she was a kid and it'd be a funny and cute gift. The woman did not think it would be a funny and cute gift. She was very aggressive to me, remember that I'm in Scotland so she had a level of unjustified aggression that you simply don't see in the civilised world, and she informed me that these badges were 'earned badges' and they couldn't simply be bought by someone looking for a funny and cute gift.

I said that my wife had earned them roughly 25 years ago (it has been suggested that I should have said 15 years ago but I refuse to let my wife's threats interfere with my journalistic integrity) and so technically I could buy them. She again told me that I couldn't buy them and I don't think I helped matters when I replied, "yes I can buy them, they're right there behind the counter, on sale for £1.70 each."

This wasn't going to be a long interaction as I have never had an argument with a Scottish woman that ended well so I didn't think it was worth the effort. But wow!! Imagine if this woman worked in one of those army memorabilia stores. You walk in and ask how much it is to buy the Victoria Cross in the display cabinet, what would she say then? She'd make you explain why you deserved it... if you asked to buy the Purple Heart Medal she'd probably sell it to you but then shoot you just to make sure you deserved it.

The other thing that happened this week was me doing a radio interview to promote the run of gigs I'm doing this weekend. I've done loads of these over the years and they're pretty straight forward. They want you to say something funny so you try to slip in the one clean joke you have but since it's over the phone the timing is always rubbish and they tend to talk over the punchline. But like anything, the more you do them the better you get at them. So whenever I'm asked to do one I always say yes because I figure it'll be helpful to be good at it when I become famous (at my current career trajectory I optimistically expect that to happen around the year 2187).

So I got the phone call from the radio presenter (I prefer to say 'radio presenter' because I've never felt comfortable calling them a DJ) he tells me that he's been reading my blog and that he'd like to ask me some questions about it, then at the end we'll plug the gigs. Easy! This is the first radio interview I've done where the presenter has read my blog so I was excited because I thought it would mean I wouldn't get all of the usual questions about comedy, maybe we'd be able to talk about something a little more interesting. Nope. Same questions, but with a slight twist.

He kept on quoting bits of my blogs back to me but phrased as questions and then asking me, "is that a fair thing to say?" Of course it's a fair thing to say, I FUCKING WROTE IT!! What radio presenters need to remember is that I'm using 90% of my concentration just trying to not swear. You being a dick and quoting me back to me in a way that makes it sound like you're taking the credit for having an insight into comedy is just going to annoy me, which will make the 'not swearing' part even harder. At least he remembered to plug the gigs at the end. I've done interviews in the past where they forget the most important part, but he plugged them so hopefully the gigs will be busy.

After the weekend of gigs I've got some time off. I'm going to see some friends and drink some booze. Then I'm flying back to Australia, with my wife. Hopefully she'll be over the little joke about how long ago she earned those Girl Guide Badges by then or the long flight will feel even longer. I'll let you know if something interesting happens.

Sacrifice One

In life we make choices. Sometimes we pose questions just to see what our answers would be. A test, if you will, to identify just where our moral boundaries lie. We have all played the game. Questions such as, "if you had the chance to kill Hitler as a child, knowing what he would become, would you kill him?" The simple premise of the question being, would you sacrifice one to save many?

I've been asked that question several times, granted, normally after a lot of alcohol, but I've never felt comfortable with the question. It's not the concept of sacrificing one that I disagree with. I have always thought, that if you had the knowledge that far in advance of what Hitler would become why not just take steps to change his morally reprehensible thinking. Give the guy the cuddle he so obviously needed and teach him the beauty of humanity. He was clearly a charismatic and powerful leader, so if we could have changed his doctrine he may have become a unifying force instead of a destructive one.

But that's my solution to that particular moral quandary. Why am I thinking of these questions? Quite simply, because I've currently got a lot of time on my hands. I'm sitting on a plane from Sydney to London. It is, if you pardon my bluntness, a shit of a journey. It takes roughly 24 hours and it seems that you somehow arrive in London the day before you departed Sydney. I'm sleep deprived right now so if you were to tell me it's got something to do with the bending of the space time continuum, I would probably just nod and agree.

Ever since the introduction of on-demand movies this journey has become marginally more bearable, but only marginally. I've watched back-to-back movies for the past 13 hours and yet I still find myself to be a little angry. That may be due to the fact that I watched The Green Hornet, and several other films that have Seth Rogen in them, but that isn't the entire reason. If I'm being honest, I've been a little angry ever since I got on the plane. I should also include a disclaimer that I have had a few of those handy mini bottles of wine - although I think I'll probably agree with my suggestion sober as well.

The problem of air travel is that you board a plane and have to walk through first class and then business class before you get to the shitty, uncomfortable-as-fuck economy class. As I boarded this flight there were three 10-14 year old brats sitting there playing their handheld games and complaining about wanting to put their bed out now, even though they've been told they can't do that until the plane has taken off. As these little 5 foot tall dickheads are moaning, their dickhead parents are drinking champagne and watching my 6 foot 4 inch frown as I walk through to my economy seat designed to be 'just big enough' for a garden gnome.

So my proposal is that each flight should have a lottery for the economy-class passengers. A 'Golden Boarding Pass' if you will. Just one per flight, one winner per flight should be enough for the general mood of the economy ticket holders to be raised exponentially. But how will, what is essentially, a raffle help on a 24 hour journey? You haven't heard the prize yet... and no, it's not a free upgrade.

The winner of the Golden Boarding Pass is notified when they check in. I haven't worked out how this would work with online check-in but I'll figure it out. They're notified at check-in that they've won, that should give them enough time to prepare themselves for their prize. And when they board, the Golden Boarding Pass holder is entitled to punch someone in first class in their smug little face. Just one punch, I'm not malicious.

Then, and this is the real genius of the plan, footage of the punch is available on demand throughout the flight via the in-flight entertainment system. That way, when ever someone in economy is feeling a little angry, they can turn on their 2 by 2 inch screen and watch someone they want to punch in the face getting punched in the face.

It's a perfect example of how sacrificing one could benefit the many. I am aware that in this blog I have let a young Hitler live and punched a relatively innocent and potentially lovely person in the face. That's what happens when you've been sitting in economy for this long. I'm not a bad person, I'm sometimes irrational, but I'm not bad. I just want some sleep and to be able to extend my knees. Oh, and I really really want to punch the guy who sneered at me when I walked through first class. He was about 40, wearing tan chinos and a navy polo shirt. So if you've got the Golden Boarding Pass, punch him.

Too Many Ideas

This may not be the normal thing for a comedian/writer to complain about but if you've been reading my blog you'll be aware that I can complain about pretty much anything. It's not that I'm a very negative person, I'm not, but I do tend to concentrate on the minutiae instead of the big picture. That's how I write my stand up too, I pick a situation, then I look for the little snippet of information that we all just take for granted and pick it apart. This strategy seems to work pretty well for me, most of the time.

I guess it works well for me because I fixate on an event and let it stew in my head for a while before writing about it. I'll have the makings of a joke churning around in my head for days if not weeks or months before I write it out and it becomes an official joke. That makes it sound like all jokes have to be written out and approved by the council, like planning permission for a joke extension.

Until a joke is properly fleshed out it's not funny enough, it's just a casual observation. And I just can't seem to flesh out ideas on paper, only in my head. This method of writing has failed me this week because, quite simply, I've had too many ideas.

I have had loads of ideas over the last week and they're all too far away from being funny for me to write down. My wife says that I should just spend a day writing them all out and then I'll have loads of new jokes that I can add punchlines to later. But I don't write that way! I write most of it in my head, I edit on paper but if it's not almost there by the time I write it down I will never make it funny. Again, I know this sounds stupid. It's kind of a superstition of mine, that if I write down an unfunny idea it'll never become funny.

(I am also aware that I'm going to be getting a lot of comments and emails pointing out that most of my jokes are unfunny etc... I'm waiting, do your worst.)

With too many ideas floating around in my head I haven't been able to find the funny bit in any of them. When I only have one or 2 ideas in a week it's great because I can be really neurotic about them and find an angle that others haven't noticed. But this week I've been drowning in an ocean of unfunniness.

That's not to say I don't often have unfunny ideas. I have loads of them. But I don't write them down because after a week of thinking about it I tend to notice that it's not funny. I also have loads of ideas that sound a lot funnier in my head than they ever sound said out loud. I had a joke this week about Steve Jobs resigning as CEO of Apple that I thought was hilarious on the day he resigned, but when I said it out loud to an audience that night, they chose to disagree with me. For the record, here's the joke:

"So, Steve Jobs resigned as CEO of Apple today. The Telegraph newspaper ran an article entitled, 'Steve Jobs - A Career in Pictures'. It was just a series of photos of Steve Jobs getting gradually thinner."

I thought it was hilarious! And to be fair, I still think it's pretty funny. When it didn't work I assumed the audience was wrong so I did it again the following night... nothing. Even after adding a reference to putting the pictures into a flip book, the audience wasn't having any of it. I know it's not a fantastic joke but, for a topical gag, it's not terrible. It's also the only thing I've written this week so I was putting all of my eggs into the one turtle-necked-basket.

That's the danger in topical gags, the desire to do it while it's topical means that my mind doesn't have time to realise that an audience won't like it. I'm not bagging on the audience for not liking my joke. They paid their money, they get to make up their own mind. Some of the funniest jokes I've ever heard have been said by comedians back-stage. Jokes that made a room full of comics cry with laughter but jokes that, all the comedians there unanimously agreed, an audience would never like.

But what will happen to all of the ideas I've had this week? I will probably forget most of them. Some of them probably weren't ever going to be funny anyway but there may have been one idea in the lot of them that, if i had thought of it on a slower ideas week, could have become a fantastic joke. I like to console myself by thinking that if it was a really good idea that I'll think of it again. But I probably won't. It's gone to die with my Steve Jobs joke.

It is a commonly held maxim that comedy is all about timing. People have always taken that to mean that the delivery of a joke has to be perfect to get the most out of it. While that's true, it's also true to say that writing comedy is all about timing the perfect moment to have the idea in the first place. Unfortunately you can't plan to have more or fewer ideas. Which leads me to conclude that writing comedy is more about good luck than I had ever thought.

Chicken or Egg

Sorry about taking so long since my last blog, I've been busy. My life has been substantially occupied by drinking and constructing Ikea furniture. Those aren't related events although, in my experience, constructing Ikea furniture often leads to a desire to drink. But that's not the point of this blog, normal blogging services shall begin now:

I think that being a comedian is much like any other job. Obviously the hours are different, there's a lot more traveling involved and most jobs don't have free booze but apart from that it's much the same. There is gossip, office politics and everyone thinks they should be paid more for what they do.

You also make friends at work. As a comedian you don't see the same people every day when you go to work but you do seem to have runs of gigging with many of the same people and that can be lovely. Some of the other comedians you gig with become your friends, some become very good friends, and some you don't like but have to work with anyway. That's the same with any job.

However I have noticed that a lot of the really really successful superstar comedians that I know seem to be really good friends with other really really successful superstar comedians. Even though I know and get on quite well with a lot of these people I wouldn't say that we're bestest friends. We're friends and colleagues but we're not close enough to share each others deepest darkest secrets and to be god-parent to their first born kind of friends.

That's not to say that I don't have some fantastic friends in the comedy world, I do. But, while my close comedian friends are very good comedians (some of them are blow-your-mind amazing comedians), none of them are releasing best selling DVD's or have their own TV show.

The other thing that I noticed this week, as I was assembling cheap Ikea furniture and drinking 2 for the price of 1 bottles of wine, was that I'm not a mainstream superstar comedian either. And it got me thinking, are we really good friends because we're not famous or are we all not famous because we're really good friends? It's a real chicken or egg situation.

They say you can choose your friends but you can't choose your family. While it's true you can't choose your family you can choose to ignore them. But equally you don't get a real choice as to who your friends are. Your friends find you, they are like minded people who put up with you. And if you have as abrasive a personality as I do you should be thankful for everyone person willing to deal with you and be your friend. I know I am.

Your friends like you for your personality and to say that you can choose your friends implies that you made a choice as to your personality. You don't choose your personality. You are who you are, and you should embrace all who want to be around you. I certainly do. My friends are fantastic people but they're not for everyone and I wouldn't have it any other way.

Similarly, in the comedy world, I don't think you choose what type of comedy you do. Sure you can choose to tone it down occasionally or choose how you're going to deliver it but you have to tell what you think is funny and that's engrained in your personality. My close comedian friends laugh at the same things I do, we seem to feel the same way about a lot of things and we like to hate the same things with competing passion. We are often very different comedians but we make great friends.

What I'm really wondering though is, are we holding each other back? I haven't made friends with them based on their comedy nor on what they could do for my career. If you need proof of that you only have to look at the superstar fame that I have attained in my career. But if my theory is correct, if one of them breaks into the big time them surely that will mean a DVD deal is just around the corner for me.

This is a call to my friends in the comedy world - hurry up and get famous!! My career needs a serious leg up. I didn't start doing comedy to get famous, I do comedy because I love doing stand up. There isn't a better feeling in this world than being on stage making a crowd laugh, but a little fame leads to more money and I'm sick of having to assemble my own flat-pack furniture.

To me success is being wealthy enough to purchase already-assembled-furniture. So my conclusion is that if my friends aren't going to be considerate enough to get famous and drag me up the comedy ladder with them, then the least they could do is to come over and help me assemble this fucking desk because I can't figure it out.

London Burns

I don’t think I could have written this blog on anything other than the events of the last few nights in London. There isn’t any point of trying to comment on the latest happenings of the London riots because it’s all changing so quickly that as soon as I’ve written something it’ll be old news. At the same time I don’t think it’s really my place to comment on what caused, what the media has called, the civil unrest. How very British – civil unrest. They’re burning and looting the shit out of London, there is very little civility on show.

After 10 years of living in London, I moved to Sydney at the start of this year. I didn’t move because I didn’t like living in London. I love London; it’s a fantastic place to live and one of the most amazing cities in the world. I moved because my wife and I had an opportunity to move and we felt like we needed a change. They say a change is as good as a holiday, I’ve never really bought into that so we had a long holiday as well. Better to be safe than sorry.

I am, by common definition, Australian. When I say, ‘by common definition’, I mean that I was born in Australia, I’m an Australian citizen and when asked to write it on a form I will say that my nationality is Australian. However, I moved to London straight after graduating university, when I was still 20 years old. So I was never really an adult in Australia. I became an adult in London and the majority of my working life was in London. The majority of the time I’ve been interested in politics and social issues was in London. I guess that, as an adult, I could be defined as a Londoner.

The reason I’m explaining all of this is because I want you to understand my connection to London. London helped define who I am and it’s that link that I feel to London that makes watching what’s happening so hard. I actually want to be there. Not to do anything about it, but to feel it. London is hurting and I feel like I’ve let it down by not being there to share it’s pain.

Let’s be honest, if I was there I would have reacted in the stiff-upper-lipped-British way – I would have tutted loudly and shaken my head in disbelief. But it’s not about doing anything, it’s not about helping (if you’ve read any of my previous blogs you’ll know that selflessness is not one of my overriding personality traits), it’s about being a part of it.

When you go to a funeral you’re not going to help the person who’s dead. Sure you’ll convince yourself that you’re going to help the other mourners come to terms with their grief. But in reality you’re going to help yourself deal with the emotions that you’re feeling that you can’t quite understand. By seeing others who feel the same as you it validates what you’re feeling. It makes it okay to not understand but to just feel.

That’s what I’m going through now. London is in crisis and for as long as I’ve been of an age to care I’ve lived in London. With the exception of my wife, the people I know here in Sydney don’t feel the same and I can’t talk about what I’m feeling because I don’t know what I’m feeling. All I know is that they don’t feel the same and they should. If I was in London I wouldn’t have to know what I was feeling, all I would have to do would to be surrounded by Londoners to know they were feeling the same.

With my funeral metaphor I’m not saying that London is dead. London is stronger than anything that a bunch of children can hurl, burn or steal. It’s stronger than them because London isn’t the buildings, as beautiful as they are. It’s the people. The people of London have dealt with a lot over the years. They don’t feel the need to talk about it and they don’t. They just deal with it and move on. London will get on with the next day because that’s what London does. But they move on together and right now I’m feeling a little lost because I’m not moving on with them.

To those who read my blogs regularly, I’m sorry that I didn’t write a funny light-hearted blog on something else. I just wasn’t in the mood. I’ll get back to the funny writing tomorrow. By then I will have moved on too.

Here, Read This

The title of this blog “Here, Read This” is not just a cunning advertising ploy on my part to grab the attention of passing internet traffic… although if it did I’m glad you’re here. “Here, read this” is what my friend said to me last week when he gave me a book to read. It is one of his favourite books and a book that I am now obligated to read.

It’s a theme of my blogs that I have to clarify my point and make sure you know that I’m not a complete dick, so allow me to acknowledge the following points:

• Loaning me a book was a very nice thing to do. He thought about me, about my tastes and felt that I would really enjoy reading this book
• This is his book, his property, so to hand it over to me and to trust me with its well being was also a nice thing to do

So can we agree that I’m not oblivious to the realities of friendship and that I am aware of the positives that are glaringly obvious from this exchange? I felt it was necessary to include the above disclaimer because the statement that follows kind of makes me sound like a bit of a dick.

My friend gave me a book to read. What an arsehole!!

Now I’m under pressure to read the book. I don’t deal well with pressure. I’m a ridiculously slow reader. Even if I gave it my all, the absolute earliest I would have this book read by is Easter next year?

I’ve been reading Don Quixote for the last 14 months and that’s not an exaggeration for comic effect. Obviously I haven’t been reading it constantly for all of that time. I’m about 3 quarters of the way through it and I have half read another book in that time. I also stopped reading it completely for 5 months when I went travelling through China, Vietnam and across Australia. My point is I don’t have a lot of focus when I read.

It’s not that I don’t enjoy reading, I do. Reading is fantastic. I absolutely adore the English language. I am a professional wordsmith (that is, without a doubt, the wankiest way I’ve ever described myself). I’m a comedian and I make a living from my ability to turn a phrase. It’s an ability I have because of the fantastic literature that I have read. However, I have the attention span of…

When I lived in London I would take the tube everywhere, and I always had my book in my bag, so whenever I sat down on the tube I would pull out my book and read. It was a fantastic way to enjoy a book and to pass the time of an otherwise dull journey. The only downside is that I got out of the habit of reading at home. I got out of the habit of making time to read a book. Now I walk everywhere in Sydney. So I don’t have an opportunity to read on trains or buses and I haven’t had the discipline to make any other time to read.

I do read a lot though, I read loads of blogs and articles. I read them when I should be working on the computer, I can also read them on my phone while I’m waiting to meet a friend. They’re convenient and it means I take in a lot of different points of view on a lot of different subjects. But a book is a commitment that I am out of the habit of making. A while ago I realised this and recently I started reading when I go to bed. Just for 15 minutes a night but it’s amazing how quickly I’ve started to look forward to it. Telling my friend about this that inspired the loaning of the stupid book in the first place. Me and my big mouth, always getting me into trouble.

So now I’m faced with a dilemma. Do I finish the other books first or do I drop them and read my friends’ book first? If I finish the other books first it may be some time before he gets his book back, but if I don’t continue with the books I have on the go I may never finish them.

I haven’t even started to examine the pressure that I’m under to like this book. This is what always bugs me about when someone lends me a book. Eventually I’ve got to give it back and when I give it back he’ll ask me what I thought of it. When he gave me the book he told me that it’s one of his favourite books, that he loves it and that I’m guaranteed to think it’s amazing. I would hope you would think I would like a book if you lend it to me: for me a book is at least a 6 month commitment so I can’t waste time with books that you aren’t certain I’ll like. But don’t make a big thing about it because that just puts the burden on me to love it as much as you do. I can’t guarantee I’m going to ‘love it’. I’ll do my best, promise.

This is one of my longer blogs and I could have spent this time reading that stupid book. But I didn’t, I wrote this blog so you could read it instead of reading a book yourself. You’re welcome and I hope you enjoyed it. Books are great but blogs and articles are so much more convenient. If you suggest to a friend that they should read a blog, it’s easy to read and you don’t have to physically give them the blog. You don’t hold it over them and put them under immense pressure to finish it in a reasonable time. There is no guilt-trip to love it just as much as you. It’s just a blog, email them the link and see if they enjoy it. If they do, they can read the next one. If they don’t, they haven’t wasted the best part of a year reading something that sucks.

This wasn’t just a subtle hint for you to tell your friends about my blog. But if you want to, I’m not going to stop you. Tell the people you like about it. If you don’t like someone, loan them a really long book. Then, a week later, ask them if they’ve finished it yet.

I Bought Some Weights

I was caught in an ethical dilemma. It’s been a long time since I’ve been to a gym and I was kind of missing it. However I wrote a blog about not going to the gym and I made a valid point that not going to the gym was actually good for my comedy career. But you should never discount just how narcissistic I am. On the other hand once I’ve made a decision I stick with it.

My stubbornness to stick by a decision long after I can remember any valid reason for making it is a trait that has some history. A good example occurred a little while ago when a friend asked me why I hate another comedian. Hate is a strong but appropriate word and I hate this man. He is Lex Luther to my lycra body suit with a cape. Yet, when asked why I hated him I couldn’t for the life of me remember the reason. I have hated him for so long now that it’s second nature. All I know is that I must have had a good reason when I started hating him so I continue to hate him almost out of loyalty to my previous decision. I’m the same with my refusal to own a wheelie suitcase. I know they make perfect sense and they’re so much easier but I simply refuse to own one, I’ve always refused to own one and I’ll be carrying my luggage on my shoulder until the day I die.

My point is that joining a gym was out of the question. Even if I hadn’t written a blog on why I won’t go to a gym, I also found out that gyms cost a lot of money in Australia and I’m one for avoiding spending money at every opportunity. But like I so perfectly said before, you should never discount just how narcissistic I am. So I decided to compromise and I bought a set of weights. 2 dumbbell bars, a long bar and 50kg of weights. They came as a set and they cost about 2 months gym membership. So I figured it saves me money in the long run and it saves me the time of going to and from the gym, time I can then use writing. There is no downside… almost.

I bought them from a sports store about five minutes away from my flat. Five minutes is officially not a journey that you are allowed to take a car to, even I know that, so I walked. I paid for the weight set, the nice boy who works in the shop helped me carry them down the stairs at the front of the shop. This is when I quickly realised that I was in trouble: I now had to walk home with 50kg of weights and a 183cm bar. This is the first purchase I’ve ever made that I should have spent several months training for.

The weight set came in a case that had wheels on the bottom of it. It was kind of like a wheelie suitcase, which I hate, but far enough away from the design of a wheelie suitcase for me to be able to use the wheels and keep my principles. There was no way I was going to get it home without the wheels so I had to suck it up and use the wheels anyway.

The case was much shorter than would have been ideal so I had to lean awkwardly to the side to drag it along the footpath, up and down the curb, across the road and then up a hill. All the time holding this almost 2 metre metal bar aloft, like a beacon alerting all around me to my poorly conceived purchase.

In hindsight, a suit was not the most appropriate attire to attempt this journey in. It was a warmish night and here’s a workout tip for you – a leather jacket doesn’t ‘breathe’ when you start to sweat. But I got it home anyway. I made it into the apartment building, up the lift and into the flat. I then had to pull all of the weights out of the case and carry them in several more manageable journeys up the stairs to the bedroom. All except for one particularly stubborn 1.25kg weight that I had to literally crowbar out of the case. I am ashamed to say that I only resorted to using the crowbar after I broke a nail trying to pry it out (clearly I’m not ashamed enough to avoid mentioning it here).

As far as using the weights goes, I fully intend to. Just not yet. After that workout my whole body aches and I hurt my back dragging them home. If only I hadn’t written a blog about not going to see a physiotherapist.

NOTW

What have I taken from this News of the World scandal? Everyone has an opinion on it and the bandwagon is pretty full of people who are disgusted by it. Maybe I have a little bandwagon-fatigue on this story but I’m not quite as outraged as everyone else seems to be this week. That may be because, in my opinion, this has been a huge story for years now. Thanks to everyone for finally agreeing with me.

The fact that NOTW hacked the phones of people has been on record for a long time. Two people have served and completed prison sentences already. But no one seemed to care about this story when it was ‘only’ the royals, the famous and the politicians getting their phones hacked.

Why is that? Why has it only been since the families of victims of crimes had their phones hacked has it become such an issue? For example, John Prescott, the former Deputy Prime Minister of the United Kingdom and Member of Parliament is reported to have been a victim of the NOTW. If a foreign government had been found to have hacked the Deputy Prime Minister’s phone (or even just highly suspected of it) this would be considered a serious act of espionage. Is it because we see him on the television that we don’t consider him to be an actual person?

That’s my conclusion from watching the storm of opinion on this. When the NOTW was hacking the phones of celebrities it didn’t matter because the general public doesn’t consider them to be real people. It was only when victims families, or ‘real people’, had their phones hacked that this became something that the general public cared about. I’m disgusted by the suggestion that the NOTW hacked the voice mail of families of 9/11 fire fighters and of child murder victims. But let’s not lose sight of all of the other victims in this story.

Another example, Gordon Brown may have had his phone hacked, so what, he was just the Chancellor of the Exchequer and the man who was guiding a G8 economy. He went on to be Prime Minister of Britain, was the phone hacking going on while he was in charge of a country? Should charges of treason start being talked about? The audacity to hack an elected leaders phone makes all of us victims and when our basic democracy is at stake, I’m paying attention.

I was appalled that the police refused to tell people who may have had their phones hacked and disgusted beyond belief that they refused to investigate this criminal activity. Their reasons, as far as I’ve heard, for not investigating it are a joke. It concerns me that the Met police considered it to be unworthy of their time. In today’s world, information is worth more than gold and the police force needs to take the theft of it seriously. But I was appalled and disgusted years ago!!!

Why don’t we consider people who are on the TV to be ‘real people’? This really concerns me. I may not like all of Hugh Grant’s films (although I have to declare a fondness for Notting Hill) but he’s a real person. He has the right to privacy too. The media has conditioned us to treat celebrities as commodities. Doing so makes it easier for us to justify trawling through their intimate details in the gossip section of the paper. Let’s be honest, we all read them and then deny doing so. Sure celebrities use the media to their advantage too and maybe there is a little schadenfruede in them being the victim of a beast that they feed but the fact remains, NOTW was a beast that everyone encouraged.

The celebrities wanted to be in the paper so that they could sell their products and then complain about how they’re always in the paper. Are all celebrities good people? Probably not, but since I haven’t met them all I’m not going to pass judgement.

Be honest, you wanted to know what (or who) that football player was doing when he wasn’t playing football and you only wanted to know so you could berate him for not being a role model. We love to watch people fail and the higher up the perceived food chain they are the more enjoyable it is watching their fall. But that doesn’t make us good people.

But when we realised that the NOTW was also trawling through the intimate details of the victims of some of the worst crimes of our lifetimes we couldn’t deal with that. We haven’t been conditioned to treat them as a commodity. We treated them as human beings, with real feelings, who were victimised by a news organization simply for being victims. We, as a society, reacted in the right way and demanded justice. My gripe isn’t with the publics’ reaction to these revelations, but with the publics’ failure to react in a similar way when it was Sienna Miller’s phone messages.

People only bought the NOTW because it was full of juicy gossip that no other paper had. Now you get to be angry with them because they did naughty things to get the information that you wanted. If people hadn’t encouraged the NOTW then maybe this wouldn’t have happened. Or maybe we could have stopped them a long time ago by being outraged when it was ‘only’ the famous people who were the victims

Physiotherapy

Physiotherapy is a valid practice. There, so don’t sue me; I don’t want to get into the whole Simon Singh lawsuit territory. So for the record I’m not saying that physiotherapy is hogwash or lacking in any scientific merit… I will say that for me, currently, I just can’t see the point of going to see a physiotherapist.

Yesterday I went for a jog before work. I didn’t go for any grand purpose; I simply thought it would be a good way to start the day. I just downloaded a heap of teach-yourself-French podcasts and since they’re about 20 minutes long I thought it would be nice to go for a 20 minute run and listen to one of them. Anyway, on my run I seem to have pulled my calf muscle. Not badly but it’s a bit sore and I’ve got a slight limp because of it.

Someone I work with suggested that I should go to ‘the physio’. When I asked why, he said that they would give it a good massage and with a bit of rest it’d be better again in a week. Thing is that I’m sure it’ll be fine in a week if I just rest it, no need for the physio. Sure, it would probably heal slightly faster if I went to the physio, but really, what’s the point?

I’m not a professional athlete. I’m a comedian. I walk 5 feet from the back-stage to the microphone and then I pretty much stand still for 20 minutes. Physio’s cost money and being nimble is simply not a necessity for me. Sure I can’t go running for a week, but running is actually quite hard and sitting on the sofa listening to my podcasts is much much easier.

Here in Australia being sporty and active is seen almost as an obligation. Given that Australia is now the second most obese country on the planet it’s obviously not a binding obligation. But, by the people who aren’t clinically chubbified, doing sport is something you’ve got to do and do regularly. Hence physiotherapy has blossomed in Australia.

I was speaking with a physio from Belgium a few months ago (we were having a chat while drinking beer in a completely non-physio way) and she said that physiotherapists in Australia are the highest paid in the world. That’s not a verified fact and I was quite drunk at the time, but the way physiotherapists are talked about in conversation amongst the sporty people I know you’d think they were deities in some unholy Nike religion.

Everyone ‘has’ a physio and people are always willing to recommend a good physio to those heathens, such as myself, who don’t ‘have’ a physio of their own. It’s like Scientology and Amway rolled into one – for every loser you sucker in you get to move up the pyramid to an injury free paradise.

Well Australia, I’m not joining your cult. I hurt my leg and I’m fine with it. Sure I won’t be able to go for a run for a week and I’ll just have to deal with that. I’m going to take the money I would have spent on physiotherapy and I’m going to go to my church – the pub.

Moving

Over the past year we have moved a lot. We sold our place in London and moved to the other side of London. Then we sent all of our belongings to the other side of the world and travelled through China for 3 months. Then we landed in Perth, put our stuff in a car and drove to the other side of Australia. That was all stressful. But I don’t remember any of it being as annoying as last weekend when we moved 3 blocks across Sydney.

When we moved across London we hired 2 Polish men with a truck, and some very questionable personal hygiene habits, to move our belongings. When we moved across the world we just put our stuff in boxes and someone came to pick it up. When we moved last weekend we did it all ourselves. I have never wanted 2 Polish men with questionable hygiene habits more than I did last weekend.

I say that we did it ourselves; my cousin helped. He was a lifesaver because there was no way we could have done it without him. Helping you move is the type of thing that you can only ask family to help with. A good friend will help you bury a body but when you need to move house they’re nowhere to be seen.

We really needed my cousin’s help too. Before you read the next sentence I want to make it clear how much I love my wife, she is amazing and I’m a better person because of her. But she is marginally stronger than an 11-year-old schoolgirl, which isn’t overly helpful when it comes to moving a fridge. So I needed my cousin’s help with the big things.

When you’re looking around the place you’re moving out of it all seems so simple. A couple of car trips and it’ll be done. You convince yourself that since you got it all in there it’ll be easy to get it all out. What you forget is that you got it all in there over the course of several months or years and you bought a new item of furniture to fill a need on average about once a month. But when you’re moving out you have to move it all in a weekend and that’s a whole new level of stupid.

We got it done and it’s all in. We hired a van for the big things and my cousin worked his butt off to help us. He’s not drinking alcohol for the month of July so I couldn’t even take him for a beer to say thank you. Instead I bought him a box of chocolates which is the type of gift you give to someone when you realise you only ever buy people booze these days and you’ve forgotten what the other acceptable forms of gifts are.

For those of you who are going to be moving house in the near future I have some words of advice for you – pay someone else to do it for you!! I know you think you can do it yourself and question if it’s worth the extra money to pay people to do it for you… it is, trust me.

If you ignore the above advice and still want to do it yourself then, in no particular order, here is a list of helpful tips for moving house:

• Bend from the knees – if you hurt yourself on the first trip you’ll have to hire someone else anyway.
• Buy furniture with wheels – it’s probably a bit late for this now that you’ve already decided to move but our fridge is missing a wheel and believe me when I say that I really missed that wheel.
• Try to avoid an argument with your partner early in the day – you will eventually have an argument but if you have it early then the rest of the day is awkward.
• Be realistic in your assessment of how much you can carry – it may take an extra trip and it may hurt your ego but if you drop the television because you were trying to balance it on the sofa you’ll regret it more than a little bruising of the ego.
• If your partner asks you to pose while you’re holding the washing machine so they can take a photo of you then you are allowed to start the inevitable argument early – recording moments with a camera is never a welcome distraction when you’re trying to lift something twice as heavy as you can possibly manage.
• Move embarrassing items before your relative comes around to help you – sure you may like to wear the superman outfit during sex but even the most gullible relation will eventually become suspicious when they find it in the draw with the wrist restraints.

Next time you’re thinking of moving you should make a list of all of the reasons for moving. Take your time composing this list and make it as exhaustive as possible. Then think very carefully about how heavy all of your stuff is and I bet you’ll conclude that staying put is probably the best option after all.

I’ll tell you more about our new place in the coming weeks…

Moving Home

We’re moving next week and I’m nervous. Yesterday my wife and I are signed a 12 month lease for a flat that she hasn’t seen. I’ve seen it before; it’s a great flat that has everything we were looking for in a flat, but my wife couldn’t go and see it when it was open for inspection. I made it, by myself, to the 15-minute window that it was open for. I told her about it and showed her some pictures I took on my mobile phone. So she has decided to take my word on it and trust me.

It’s the ‘trust me’ part that’s making me nervous. I’m not sure I trust me to make the right decision on where we should live for the next year. Why the hell is she trusting me? It’s not that I’ve made bad choices in the past. Sure we previously lived in a flat below a mad man and that was primarily my fault but apart from that one time and the flat that we moved to because I liked it (even though it didn’t have central heating and was in London in the winter) I think I’ve made good choices. Sure those 2 flats do account for roughly 6 of the 8 years we’ve been together but let’s not get bogged down with statistics.

So yesterday we signed the lease. I had a few sleepless nights wondering if I noticed everything that I was supposed to notice when I walked around the flat during the inspection but now I’m fine. She’s going to trust me and I’m just going to have to deal with the consequences if I’m wrong. They say that you only regret the things you don’t do. That’s bullshit; it’s entirely possible to regret the shitty flat that you’re stuck in because you signed a 12 month lease without checking with your wife first.

What you have to understand is that I saw it at the end of a very stressful day. I had seen 7 other flats in the 3 hours before I saw this place. She had seen them with me but for the last flat she went to one and I went to the other because they were open at the same time. I know it sounds like I’m making excuses for something that might be okay, but I don’t have a history of making decisions by myself. I don’t like to do it. I am the guy who looks at every shirt in the shop and then still asks the shop assistant to decide for me.

Decisions stress me out. Especially decisions that affect someone else. And even more so when that someone else is my wife. She isn’t someone who holds a grudge but you’d have to be a saint to live somewhere you hated for a year and not mention it at least once. Let’s hope I’m right.

Earlier I said that there was only a 15-minute window to see the flat. That’s how it is in Sydney. The estate agent will open a property for 15 minutes and everyone who wants to see the place has to all walk through together and step around each other to see it. It’s awful. Maybe I’ve grossly underestimated the value of a real estate agent’s time but surely they can spare a little longer than 15 minutes. Sure there are exceptions but if I was to tell you that an estate agent could only open the property for 15 minutes because they were doing volunteer work for orphans you’d be rightfully surprised.

For the record, that orphan line above probably took the longest amount of time to write out of all of the sentences I’ve written since starting to write a blog. It’s amazing how even the most mundane task still seems out of reach of an estate agent. I wanted the statement to be far fetched so I went with ‘volunteer work for orphans’ but if I’m being honest, ‘not stealing from a blind man’ still seems like a fairly noble task for an estate agent.

On a closing note: sorry I haven’t been writing this blog as regularly as I was before. It’s this whole moving thing, plus I’ve been a bit sick, plus I’m a lazy lazy man. I’ll be back to my weekly blog writing from now on…

Work Life Balance

Someone needs to figure this out because I just can’t see how it works. Everything that you want to do in Sydney costs a disproportionate amount of money. So in order to do anything you’ve got to have a job and preferably a well-paid job. But in order to keep this well-paid job you have to work so many hours that you don’t have the time to actually do the things you want to do.

I’m pretty lucky, I’ve got a relatively good job that pays okaynand I’m also fortunate enough to make a little extra money from stand up. This should enable me to have a pretty awesome time in Sydney. But it doesn’t actually work that way. Because, like so many others, I’m always so busy or tired from work that I don’t get to do the things I’d like to.

Toady I’m tired because I did get to do something I wanted to. Yesterday I went indoor rock climbing. Which is something that I haven’t done for about 18 months. However I maintain that I wouldn’t feel so physically wrecked from it if I had had more time to go rock climbing for the last 18 months.

This blog isn’t meant to be a complaint. By knowing what’s going on in the rest of the world I’m feeling really lucky to have a job. I’m currently enjoying stand up and the creative process more than I think I ever have before. So I am having a good time, I’m just not getting out very often.

So what happens when we’re stuck at work and can’t get out to do the fun things we’d rather be doing? Quite simply, we spend money on shit we shouldn’t feel we need. We have a long train commute to work so we spend a fortune on an iPad to entertain us while we sit on the train. We have to drive to work every day so we spend way more money on a car because we feel you should have a nice car since we spend so much time in it. Rushing into work for a meeting so you don’t have the time to make your lunch in the morning, no problem, you make good money so you’ll just buy your lunch every day.

Why do people need a massive TV? So they can have that cinema experience at home. Why do people want the cinema experience at home? Because they’re so tired when they come home from work that they don’t want to then go out again to go to the cinema. But if they worked less they wouldn’t be able to afford the over-priced cinema ticket anyway, they’d just sit at home with a small TV.

I’m not sure what the answer is. Maybe we don’t need all of these things. Maybe we should work less and enjoy the company of our friends and family more. Make sacrifices in our careers and devote some time to us. Would we really be any worse off?

I write this blog sitting in a room alone in between editing a sitcom script and working on some stand up that I didn’t have time to write out this week because I was so busy with work. I’m typing on my laptop while simultaneously charging my iPhone and eReader whilst also listening to music on my iPod through noise cancelling headphones. I don’t have all (or any) of the answers and I’m a great big hypocrite. It’s something to think about anyway.

A Proposal of Modesty

In 1729 Jonathan Swift wrote, what is to this day, one of my favourite pieces of satire – A Modest Proposal. In it he describes a solution for preventing the children of poor people in Ireland from being a burden to their parents or country. This was not a proposal that Swift ever thought would be taken literally and, although it has been held up by great minds as one of the best examples of satirical writing, his suggestion was never put in to practice. As his suggestion was to eat the 1 year old children of poor people this is probably for the best.

This blog is not, nor will it ever be held up to be, one of the greatest examples of satirical writing. I also doubt that my suggestion will ever be put in to practice by those who stand to benefit the most from it. However, like Swift, I have a solution to a problem and I feel a need to tell the world – or at the very least the handful of people who read my blog.

Currently in the UK there is a lot of debate over the superinjunctions that wealthy people are taking out to protect their dirty little secrets. These superinjunctions, which the courts impose, not only prevent the party from discussing the event, they also prevent the party from even talking about the existence of the superinjunction. To quote a joke my wife told me: the first rule of superinjunction club is, you don’t talk about superinjunction club.

I said that these are only being taken out by wealthy people, this is not entirely true. Superinjunctions are also being taken out by wealthy corporations. We simply don’t know how many superinjunctions are in place in the UK because by their very nature they are secret. The problem is the wealthy part. Each superinjunction is a costly process and thus excludes the poor. This, in my mind, has developed a two-tiered privacy law in which the wealthy have access to legal tools that the majority of people don’t.

I don’t think the press should be excluded from discussing anything however if a multinational mining company can have a superinjunction excluding discussion of their polluting and environmental destruction then I see no reason why a dodgy landlord shouldn’t be able to get a superinjunction to prevent discussion about their unwillingness to fix the boiler.

If everyone has the same right to the legal protection of their privacy then let’s start seeing the legal-aid funded superinjunction hearings… maybe they have already happened and we just can’t talk about it. A world where anyone could take out a superinjunction to prevent discussion about anything that would cause people to think less about them would be a strange and unworkable world.

With the exception of a few multinational corporations these superinjunctions are mostly being taken out by celebrities (primarily, it seems, footballers) who don’t want details of their affairs becoming public knowledge. So here is my modest proposal – stop doing things that will make us think less of you.

Companies should stop exploiting cheap labour markets, stop polluting, stop being dicks. And celebrities, here’s a crazy idea, if you’re married – STOP FUCKING OTHER PEOPLE!!!

I can’t stand reading about the footballer that didn’t want a kiss and tell story about his affair because he’s married and it would be awful for his wife and children. Well you shouldn’t have had the affair in the first place. You know that football fans like to shout from the stands, but their tendency to do that doesn’t entitle you to extra legal protection when you cheat on your wife.

Personally I don’t think it’s anyone’s business and I couldn’t care less but since you hold yourself out as a morally superior family man then you have no right to hide behind a superinjunction to prevent people from finding out that you’re actually a bit of an asshole.

I’m a stand up comedian and I know that when I go to work the audience judge me. Not with the same scrutiny as a tabloid paper, granted. Still, I hold myself up for that judgment and I take it into account when I decide what topics I’m going to talk about and even when deciding what I’m going to wear on stage. My personal life is my own business and of limited interest to anyone who reads a newspaper but I don’t do things that I’m not willing to own up to and then deal with the consequences. There are obviously things I’ve done in my life that I would prefer you not know about, but since I’ve never had sex with someone who had a gossip columnist on speed dial you will probably never find out about them.

I don’t know what it would be like to live with the level of scrutiny that celebrities face at the hands of the British tabloid media. I will contest that there are a lot of footballers that are happily married with children and they don’t have the same need for superinjunctions. They, of course, didn’t cheat on their wives. They didn’t destroy a small African village. They didn’t do anything morally objectionable and as such the media doesn’t bother them in the slightest.

So I conclude my suggestion of modesty with the idea that the law is there to protect you from unjust harm. It shouldn’t be there to protect you from the harm that you willingly brought upon yourself.

Don't Blame Us

I recently read a comment piece in a newspaper that discussed several cases where comedians have been attacked in the media or even sued for what they’ve said on stage. The jokes discussed were quite obviously jokes and the article praises the outcomes of the court cases in concluding that. This is a topic that I’ve read about almost as often as I’ve heard offensive jokes told on stage. It was a pretty stock standard article that didn’t particularly progress my thinking on the subject but like so many before it, it concluded with the standard and ominous prediction of the end of comedy.

Some people think that it’s the media blowing every joke out of all proportion and that the media gives these isolated people a voice that amplifies the disapproval. I actually think there is some validity in that claim but I don’t think it’s as much a cause as it is a symptom. I’ve read arguments that said that because political correctness is running wild comedians are running out of topics to talk about and in protest they’re becoming more offensive. Firstly, there are still a lot of things to make jokes about, fear not. And secondly, I think that’s rubbish because in my experience comedians aren’t organised enough to all turn up to a picnic together, let alone collectively attack carefully selected targets.

Some comedians try to push boundaries and do it in a brilliant and clever way that should be, and often is, appreciated by the masses. Other comedians have neither ability nor intellect, they merely want to get a reaction and in their tiny minds shock is as good as a laugh so they use a sledgehammer to offend. Thing is, a few people will be offended equally by both styles and we’re just going to have to let them be. To quote some guy who has been quoted by a lot of other people, “haters are gonna hate.” More alarmingly though, the majority of people will laugh equally at both styles and won’t see the difference.

So far we have the media and political correctness being to blame. As a comedian, let me suggest another hypothesis. It’s the audiences’ fault. But how? Audiences aren’t telling the comedians what to say, they’re the ones being offended by those hateful jokes. But the audience is telling the comedian what to say. This may come as a shock to the majority of the couch dwellers but comedians don’t just tell jokes to the TV audience. They go out and gig in some of the most inhospitable pub gigs throughout the world. They watch as their carefully crafted subtle word plays are ignored and heckled. Then they sit there and watch the ‘old-school’ comedian with jokes older than God storm a gig that didn’t laugh all that much at their stuff. Comedians are people too and when this happens on a nightly basis it has a tendency to dent their confidence.

After a while the comedian will have 2 types of jokes. They still have some clever witticisms that pepper their set, the jokes that remind them they’re better than the gig they are forced to play. Then they have the cruder, ruder, bare-knuckle jokes that the morons living in some random country town expect and demand. The ironic wife-beating joke is misinterpreted nightly as a good old-fashioned wife-beating joke. After a while even the comedian forgets to tell the pullback and reveal they originally wrote that shows they’re not a wife beater after all.

There are jokes that I hear that I find grotesquely offensive. I’m rarely offended by the statement/joke but, if I am, I’m often infinitely more offended by an audience’s decision to laugh at it. I recently heard a relatively new male comedian address the topic of women fighting on the front line. He proposed a fictional scenario where he was in a situation of certain death with a solitary female soldier. She asked him what was going to happen and he told her that he was going to rape her because if he’s got to die anyway he’d prefer to get his end away first.

I have obviously paraphrased this man’s comical poetry but as offensive as the piece was, the audience loved it and they applauded the man brave enough to say what they had all been thinking. I couldn’t believe it. How could they validate this man’s material in that way? I wouldn’t say that the audience was overflowing with mensa members but surely common decency would preclude them from laughing at that? Apparently I was in the minority that night.

Whether or not I found this comedian funny is beside the point. The audience did, they loved him and they loved that particular joke the most. And if audiences continue to love that joke with any level of consistency he’ll write more jokes like this. Then he’ll start playing bigger venues and he’ll continue to write more jokes like this. New comedians will try to emulate his success and they will mould themselves around his example. Then TV executives will come and see him perform to this enormous fan base of adoring followers and he’ll end up on TV. Sure he’ll tone it down a little, because it’s TV, but the producer won’t want to risk stifling his creative genius and will allow him some artistic freedom to deliver what his fans want. Now he’s doing a joke on TV that the media will gladly write more comment pieces about. You’ll then have to write a strongly worded letter to the TV station for allowing this to happen and insisting that this show be axed.

Ladies and gentlemen, you’re perfectly entitled to be offended by that joke you saw on TV. Good for you for having the courage to speak out against it. But the answer isn’t to try to ban comedy. The solution is the fix the cause of the problem. Go and watch comedy in the small clubs. Go and pack out little gigs with likeminded educated audiences. When the comedian with the clever jokes comes on, and they’re out there, then show them the appreciation and encouragement they deserve. When the ‘old-school’ comedian comes and tells you the homophobic joke just stare at him, heckle him do whatever you like but don’t laugh. Make him realise that those jokes aren’t going to cut it and he will either change his ways or quit comedy (either way is fine by me).

If your political party isn’t going in the direction you want it you don’t get to have a meeting with the Prime Minister. You get involved at the grass roots and you push for change with the next generation. Comedy needs you to do the same. If you want the next generation of TV stars to be the TV comedians you want then you need to get involved now.