The Two Richards

Bacon and Dawkins

I think a lot of creative forces like me (yes I am because I'm writing a blog, stupid) hope that their dreams will provide a well of inspiration and ideas. It is hoped that as you sleep the mangled little wisps of thought that bubble up through the subconscious will form something substantial that can be harvested as the next great album or novel or hilarious blog. 99% of the time this doesn't happen. What does happen is you wake up at 3.46am in a bleary panic, trying to gently nurture and keep flickering the faint flame of your Eureka moment as you wait for your laptop to load up. You write it down as faithfully and articulately as you can and happily drift back to sleep, safe in the knowledge that all your worries and problems are over. Within the next six months you'll be laughing at Stephen Fry’s latest witticism at the BAFTA awards, too full of oysters and cocaine to think of a response but that doesn't matter because you've “made it”, and lets face it Stephen the armful of awards rather speak for themselves, don't they? Too bloody right they do Stephen!

Ooh yes brother you've eaten your fill of half baked ideas and the shitty, bitter chocolate of rejection over the years but now you've finally found Willy Wonka's golden ticket. It arrived in the post when you were half asleep, c/o your dreams and excellent imagination. This added quirk will probably make up the bulk of the liner notes of your number one album. Notes that you'll probably hand write for a charming personal touch. It will probably cover at least 15 minutes of the Mark Lawson interview. Be sure to thank the fabric softener you used on these old quilts when you talk to Esquire Magazine, because every factor that caused this perfect storm of ideas and genius must be acknowledged. You wonder to yourself if you'd reject the knighthood on ethical grounds. Of course the money won't change you but hopefully the legions of groupies and hangers on don't leave you jaded.

Then morning comes and you re-read your idea and it isn't quite how you remember it. It seems to be mostly verbs. Verbs and incorrectly used Spanish punctuation. It also seems to be the exact plot of Pirates of the Caribbean but with “Jack Sparrow” replaced with your name. Shit. Better phone your boss and take back that resignation text message. Your subconcious is a stupid, lying prick.

This is what happens 99% of the time. 1% of the time however, something else happens.

I spent the other night on a friend's sofa. Very comfortable it was too and thank you again for letting me stay. However I still had quite a disjointed night's sleep and some quite surreal dreams. Hearing about other peoples' dreams is utterly tedious so I wouldn't do this to you if it wasn't for the fact I had my Eureka moment. A perfect, fully formed idea for a TV show that is utterly ready to be pitched to a major network. Probably the BBC but I think HBO would probably give it more of an “edge”.

It is called The Two Richards (Bacon and Dawkins).

The basic premise involves the scientist Richard Dawkins and the presenter Richard Bacon as a double act who travel the world going on adventures, getting into scrapes and learning from each other.

Already, fucking brilliant.

There'll be laughs, there'll be tragedy and thrills and spills and more learning. Each episode will begin with our two heroes in a studio together (with an upmarket studio audience, made up mostly of young professionals). They'll do a bit of banter and introduce the premise of this week's “Bacon and The Dawkins”. In the dream the banter went word for word like this:

Bacon: Hello Richard.

Dawkins: Hello Richard.

Big audience laugh

Bacon: I say Dawkins, what would you say is your favourite thing in the entire Universe?
Dawkins: Well Bacon that's a very difficult thing to quantify given the numerous variables involved.

Bacon: Do you know what mine is?

Dawkins: No?

Bacon: IT'S BACON!

Massive audience laugh and lots of cheering as bits of bacon start falling from the ceiling and lights with the word “bacon” start flashing all over the stage

Dawkins: Oh, Richard!

Bacon: I love Bacon! I love it so much it's in my name! What even is a Dawkins?! I can't eat that!

At this point the dream got a bit hazy but I think the raw materials for the greatest television show this country has ever produced are very much there. It also serves as a much needed vehicle for two of this nation's most loved, if under used, personalities.

Now as I've said it's one of the dullest things hearing about dreams, let alone reading a blog dedicated to one of them and I'm grateful for everyone who visits this page and thank you for reading this far Mum. But sometimes when a miracle happens it becomes more selfish not to share it with the world. This is one of those situations.

Writing this blog whilst drunk and feeling a bit sad and then not posting would be similar to Alexander Fleming discovering penicillin and not sharing his life saving cure with the rest of the world because he's worried someone will go, “ooh it's a bit self indulgent this discovery.”

Imagine if we'd never had the light bulb because Thomas Edison was a bit worried that people would think it wasn't as good as his first invention about 50 Shades of Grey?

Or the man or woman who invents the cure for cancer keeps it under their hat because not enough people viewed or commented on her last cure?

This blog may have become the charting of a mental breakdown.

The Low Level Joy of Comedy Podcasts

The Low Level Joy of Comedy Podcasts 

Doing the washing up is dull. This, I think, most of us can agree on. Doing the washing up is dull. Tidying the lounge is dull. Travelling on a National Express coach is dull. Falling asleep is dull. Walking from your bedroom to the toilet is dull. Life is an overgrown jungle of low hanging vines of utter tedium and boredom that we must wearily hack through with whatever entertainment we can grab before finally arriving at the blessed jungle clearing of death...

Which is why I like comedy podcasts.

I am more or less incapable of doing any task on my own without plugging my ears and brain into an ipod and literally hearing voices in my head. Pretty much always the voices of better, more successful comedians. I started in 2008 and they've been a staple of lunch breaks and solo drinking and gently weeping sessions ever since. The problem is that comedy podcasts seem to be running out of steam. Most of my favourites are either finished or on indefinite hiatus. To be clear, what I mean by “comedy podcasts” is independently run audio content released for free online, I am not including podcasts that are just the highlights from a radio show top and tailed by the presenters and then lazily slung onto itunes for people too asleep or disinterested to tune into the live show. I probably should include these as a lot of them are really good and also make up 90% of the audio podcast chart, but I don't consider these to be “in the spirit” of the podcasts that I love.

It is probably reasonable to say that professional stand up comedians are quite self indulgent people, which is fair enough since being self indulgent is literally their job. Podcasts are therefore the perfect medium for comedians as they offer the opportunity to release content that is absolutely uncensored and unmolested by commissioners and editors. Apart from libel and copywriter infringement anything goes. If the result turns out to be offensive or rambling then the podcast won't get many subscribers and will fail.

The best example of this is probably Richard Herring's fantastic As it Occurs to Me (AIOTM, AIOTM) which was a stand up and sketch show recorded in front of an audience and put online for free. This format negates the need to pitch to the BBC or a production company who would cut the bits too offensive or obscurely referential for the radio. The result is a brilliantly rude and hilarious long running sketch show that would never work in any other medium. Like a lot of good comedy the real gold comes in the later episodes when the audience have a huge set of shared cultural references from earlier episodes.

Podcasts will only really appeal to a particular kind of comedy nerd. The world of stand up comedy in particular is very polished and refined at the moment. This is obviously apparent in stuff like the Comedy Roadshow and Mock the Week but the trickle down effect means a lot of open spots are very aware of being slick and having a career plan. Podcasts are a brilliant antithesis to this, anarchic and rambling and often inaccessible to new listeners. Part of the charm of improvised podcasts is that some of it will be rubbish, there is a perverse joy in finding a hilarious skit having listened to 20 minutes of material that doesn't quite work.

But they seem to be petering out, which is perhaps to be expected. Podcasts are after all free and, aside from the occasional live edition, generate no income for the “writers and performers”. It is an unusual situation to regularly receive a free episode of something with no threat of cancellation, and for the longer running podcasts there seems to eventually come a sense “well, what now?”

 Obviously they are done for love but if there is a “point” to comedy podcasts then it's to generate interest and add to an audience. The best thing about the medium is that anyone can do it and if the result is any good then it will attract listeners. However there must come a point when a podcast has built up a fanbase all it is going to and perhaps then there has to be a time to stop.

So with that in mind here are my top 10 favourite podcasts, hopefully the many, many, many readers of this incredibly successful and popular Blog will all download an episode and the ones that have stopped will be so taken aback by the Earth shattering groundswell in listenership they'll start podcasting again and once more help drum the tedious silence out of my life.

1) The Trap Sodcast/Event Horizon Crescent

2) Collings and Herrin

3) Peacock and Gamble

4) Utter Shambles

5) As it Occurs to Me

6) The Perfect Ten

7) Precious Little

8) Richard Herring's Edinburgh Fringe/Leicester Square Theatre Podcast

9) The Ricky Gervais Podcast

10) Do the Right Thing

Fifty Shades of Boring Satire

Fifty Shades of Boring Satire

Whatever You Think of Fifty Shades of Grey, Fifty Shames of Earl Grey is Worse

Much like 9/11 or the death of Princess Diana I still remember where I was when I was first made aware of Fifty Shames of Earl Grey. I was at the book shop where I work, checking through the newest delivery of stock, looking for appropriate titles to put in the “Dark Erotic Vampires Fucking One Another” display when I came across it. With cover and art work mischievously similar to E.L James' oeuvre there it was; Fifty Shames of Earl Grey, by Fanny Merkin.

Fifty Shames of Earl Grey. Fifty Shames of Earl Grey. Fifty SHAMES of EARL Grey.

It was like a punch to the gut, a perception shattering blow to the brain. I just started laughing, right there in the stock room like some bloody mad man! My mind had been blown and my preconceptions shattered into tiny idiot pieces on the floor. I had missed the Ben Elton, Alexei Sayle satire boom of the mid 1980s on account of being an unborn sperm at the time. And this was punishing, visceral satire very much in the same vein. Brutal take no quarter literary assassination. Comedy with a brain. Comedy with a heart and balls. And spunk. Comedy with big spunky balls. In a way it was the end of innocence, a rite of passage. I had become a man. As I flicked through the opening pages I was suddenly struck by a thought, “Jesus Christ. I wouldn't want to be E.L James right about now...she can't recover from a calculated barb like this. She is finished...”

Now, unless you've been living under a massive leather dildo that shields you from news for the past few months you'll be aware of literary sensation Fifty Shades of Grey which is a very cleverly marketed bit of erotica aimed at women. It is poorly written and essentially presents itself as the TV soap that everyone is talking about. But with more fisting. It's a bit like the show Lost in that there is very little substance to it but it is compulsive viewing and a staple of water cooler conversation. But with more fisting.

Whilst it isn't true that with every literary action there is an equally strong reaction, there has been a pretty decent kick back against Fifty Shades of Grey, but does there need to be? One of the main critiques of the book is that is that E.L James hasn't produced “real” literature, it's just badly written titillation. She knows.

When people buy the book, they're just buying rubbish. They know.

It is similar to the reaction of “Oh you don't watch the X Factor do you? That music isn't as good as The White Album!” They know. We know. Everyone knows. The point of Fifty Shades of Grey isn't to add to canon of great British Literature, it's to serve as escapist fantasy to unimaginative women.

So whilst there is a point to Fifty Shades of Grey, what is the point of Fifty Shames of Earl Grey? It's one of those books that has “Christmas present for someone you don't know”

written all over it and is sure to be a staple of Charity shop bookcases for years to come. It is set in the same vein as a book that came out a few years ago called something like “Pride and Prejudice...and only bloody zombies as well! You weren't expecting THAT were you?!” Or the achingly unfunny “Twishite, New Moan”. Books that are carefully displayed by the counter at HMV, so if someone is feeling a little bit tired and sad they might think “oh that's quite funny,” buy it, get it home and never read it. 

Or start reading it, get 8 pages in and think “Oh. It's just the one joke: Imagine if there were zombies in Pride and Prejudice? Well then. Be a bit weird wouldn't it!...Pfffft, well there's 124 pages more of this...um...Mr Darcy would like brains if he were a zombie wouldn't he? That'd be...that'd be not in keeping with what he's like in the original text. Pfft...look do you still have the receipt for this or not?

If Fifty Shades of Grey was cynically marketed (which it was) then it is nothing compared to cash in parody books. If, as some seem to genuinely claim, novels such as Fifty Shades are killing literature, then Fifty Shames is bursting into the funeral wearing a party hat saying “zany parody!” on it and fucking the corpse for cheap laughs while grieving relatives throw coins in delight. And you might think that it's not the same thing at all. But it is.

Also for the record there is also a parody title called “Game of Groans” but that is simply not good enough to require criticism.  

Tedious Clown, The Eponymous First Blog.

Hello! This is my Blog. I decided to start a Blog and this is it. I thought of doing a Blog about a month ago but couldn't even think of a name for it so that's a good omen isn't it?

I initially thought of “Screaming Vacuum” as a title as I imagine that will be what I end up doing, venting spleen pointlessly into a void, ignored by all. However this is arguably too po faced as an opening gambit and if there is one thing I am not then it is proud of how constantly po faced I am.

My friend, DJ and Liverpudlian Jamie “No Wave” Finn suggested Kurt Vomit Guts as the title, which I loved and was the favourite for a long time. However I then remembered it is a fairly tortuous pun. It also struck me that having a blog may prove useful in looking for a job and I didn't want the following conversation to happen.

Ian McBigshot-Publisher: So is there anything else that sets you apart from the rest of these chaff pricks?

Me: Well I have a blog that proves I am ace at writing and that.

Ian McBigshot-Publisher: Och, Aye really? (Ian is Scottish) What's it called.

Me: Kurt Vomit Guts

Ian Mcbigshot-Publisher: Well get out then obviously.

Because the problem with Kurtvomitguts is that if you haven't heard of Kurt Vonnegut it just sounds like I love the name Kurt and think the idea of having human sick in your stomach is clever and amusing. Although to be fair if you haven't heard of Kurt Vonnegut I don't really want to work for you or for you to read my Blog. I should have just called it that really. Shit.

In the end I settled on Tedious Clown as it is nice and self deprecating and lays out of my game plan to be dull and sporadically amusing. I imagine if ol' Ian McBigshot heard this title he would be bloody impressed and give me the job there and then. Especially if the job title was “Assistant Consultant for Being Brilliant at Naming Blogs.”

I may well change the name of this Blog if the feedback is overwhelmingly negative. Or if there is any feedback at all. Is it possible to change a Blog's name after it's been set up? I hope so.

A real post will come soon.

Let's be friends yeah?

Gareth