One For The Splattman!

A friend I made through playing pool died a few weeks ago.

His nickname was Splattman because his second name was Platt and it rhymed and also because it’s a rule that all pool players must have nicknames. Hence the bizarre looks I sometimes get from work colleagues when I’m chatting to one of my Surrey pool-playing mates on the phone and I go off on tangents about Nosher, Noggsy, Spindle, The O, Strivdog, Petulance, Textbook, Bullet, Slippery or Shaggy.

The Splattman played for Berkshire and he was always a determined player on the table and he often beat more talented players because of his sheer will to win. His story of becoming a county A Team player was a triumph of will over ability in the best sense of the phrase, but win or lose he’d always have a pint and a chat and a joke.

One of my friends even gave him a new nickname at one tournament we were both playing in when he realised that with his big specs and his prominent nose he looked like me. When I told Splattman the rest of the boys thought he looked like me and he’d been christened ‘Brooksy’s dad’ by the Surrey contingent, he pondered for a moment before commenting that he didn’t realise his looks had gone so far downhill. Funny fucker…

Anyway… there was a big national tournament at the weekend and my former team made the semi-finals and in memory of the Splattman many of the people at the event were sporting little badges bearing a picture of a pint of Guinness, which was his favourite tipple, and the message ‘One for the Splattman’.

As I’m in semi-retirement I didn’t go to the event at the weekend but a friend furnished me with one of the badges last night and I belatedly had a couple of pints for you.

Rest in peace mate...

Ani Di Franco...

The little folk singer was back in the UK last night playing a small warm-up gig to kick off her European Tour.

After a break of nearly two years the tickets for this 300-people gig were snapped up when they went on release, and Di Franco didn't disappoint her eager fans with a 90-minute set of old classics (Napoleon, Gravel) to more recent stuff (78% Water and Studying Stones), as well as three new songs.

Hammell On Trial (a cross between the folk and political sensibilities of Billy Bragg and the acid tongue of Kenneth Williams) supported and he was pretty good too.

The real star for me, though, was Bush Hall, a classy and intimate little venue just around the corner for its more famous cousin of Shepherd's Bush Empire, where Di Franco will be playing in just over two weeks.

She was upbeat and more relaxed and much less contemplative that other gigs I've seen her perform over the last 10 years. Hammell rocked too, the venue was excellent, the Missus enjoyed it and so did I. And I got pissed on canned Guinness. Result!

Kenny...

It's a comedy moc-doc about a chunky thirtysomething Australian who works in the portable toilet business and maintains and cleans all manner of loos at various of festivals and other social bashes.

So it has poo jokes galore but it also has a very sharp, very funny and surprisingly touching script. It also has Shane Jacobson who is excellently under-stated as the forever put-upon toilet technician with a big heart and a great line in philosophy.

But all the small cast give top-drawer performances, from Eve Von Bibra as Kenny's air stewardess love interest and Ronald Jacobson as his ogre of a father.

Basically it's bloody funny and it tugs at the heart strings in unexpected ways. In fact, to quote the film itself, it's funnier than a 'bum filled with smarties'.

It should get an Oscar. Or something like that. It beats the arse off of any other comedy released so far this year...

Pure Gold....

The latest show at Soho is Pure Gold by Michael Bhim. It’s co-production between Talawa Theatre, Britain’s premiere black theatre company who celebrated their 21st birthday this year, and Soho.

It’s tells the story of Simon, a black bus driver who wants to give his girlfriend Marsha and son Anthony the good life, but can’t accept that the colour of his skin means he faces a life of continual prejudice whenever he tries to get his head above water. Having lost his job he needs cash quick so he turns to his dodgy cousin Paul and finds himself involved in the murky world of driving illegal immigrants into the country from France.

There’s a couple of subplots about Marsha wanting an education and curmudgeonly pensioner neighbour George demonstrating the true value of friendship, but the crux of the story is whether Simon will take Paul’s money and sell his soul or whether he’ll return the money and realise that wrong isn’t right whatever the motivation.

Clarence Smith’s performance as downtrodden everyman Simon holds the evening together and even when the script gets clunky he remains engaging. Mark Monero and Leonard Fenton are superb as dodgy rogue with a heart Paul and nosey neighbour with a heart George, Golda Rosheuvel is OK as Marsha (even though it’s not a particularly sympathetically written role) and 12-year-old Louis Ekoku is excellent as the son torn between his mum’s morality and his dad’s aspirations.

Sadly it’s not an extraordinary play in any way. It’s a kitchen-sink drama set on a London sink estate (a sort of kitchen-sink-sink drama if you like), and even though it’s pretty tightly written and much of the dialogue is sharp and brisk it’s not anything more than a superior episode of EastEnders made flesh. And that's a shame because there's much here to suggest Bhim can write something stronger.

Other Woman News...

The Other Woman is a very worried Other Woman...

Our martial arts teacher has told her she has to 'exercise her glutes' so she can sidekick with more power and somewhere along the line in the Other Woman's head of comedy reviews, shoes, snooker and handbags this got translated as 'Your arse is flabby and you really should do something about it...'

So consequently I spent several hours last night telling her how wonderful her arse is. To be fair she does have a very good arse and how anyone on the planet could accuse it of being in any way unshapely is totally beyond me. But she obviously can and it's getting her down...

In fact her arse worries are currently even over-riding what many saner people would see as her more pressing concern, namely that several religious nuts are out to get her after she did a TV review and made a gag about the Catholic church.

The latter prompted letters of complaint to her editor and has made her something of a celebrity in her office.

If any of these religious nuts do finally get hold of her, though, she could always disarm them by getting them involved in a conversation about her arse. If they made any disparaging remarks I'd back her to take the lot of them out.

And I don't mean to a restaurant...

Philistines...

See... Told you so... You clueless imbecile idiot fucks... What have you done?

Well if you're not keeping up with the story so far I'll tell you what you've done. If you thought the Cadbury's drumming gorilla advert was really funny you're to blame because I flicked on the TV a few nights ago to see a TV advert for the Best Of Phil Collins on CD.

And it wasn't some satellite channel that no bugger watches. Oh no... it was ITV1 that several million hapless fucks watch. Then I switch on XFM, usually a bastion of decent music, and even they're discussing how Phil Collins may be cool again.

Well let's clear a couple of things up:
i) He is not cool. Never has been. Never will be.
ii) He is not good. Never has been. Never will be.
iii) His music is middle-of-the-road shite that would even make fellow mediocrity Chris 'One Eyebrow' De Burgh wince.
iv) He was even shit by 1980s standards and pretty much everyone else was shit then too.

So don't buy his records. By buying his records you are vindicating a no-talent zone and subliminally convincing everyone else to aspire to mediocrity like it's a good thing. It's not, he's not.

So pretend you're on Grange Hill if anyone offers you a Collins record and just say no. The man in worse than Sting and Ross Kemp all rolled into one. And he wrote Another Day In Paradise which makes Lady In Red look like a Beethoven symphony.

Saint Joan...

George Bernard Shaw’s masterpiece about Joan of Arc is having a stunning revival at the National Theatre.

The play may be 80-odd years old but its key theme of religious zeal (in the shape the holy-voice-hearing dressmaker, turned warrior, turned scapegoat, turned eventual saint) versus the state (in the shape of England, the Catholic church and the rival French barons) is perhaps even more relevant now than when it was first written.

Because in a modern age of Muslim suicide bombers and aggressive right-wing Christianity in the White House it begs the question: how does society react to religious fervour when it threatens to undermine the law – even when that religious fervour is devout?

The play itself is simple enough. A dressmaker named Joan hears messages from God and wins over the French barons, the church and the Dauphin in order to drive the English out of France. But when the French people begin to love her rather than the state and its apparatuses she becomes a problem and is eventually betrayed by those who once supported her and sold to the British, where she is burnt as a heretic.

Anne Marie Duff is superb in the title role. The Missus always rated Duff in Shameless (and pretty much everything else she’s been in) while I preferred her Shameless co-star Maxine Peake. But after seeing Duff live I think the Missus is right and Duff is the next Helen Mirren while Peake is probably a more talented version of the next Babs Windsor.

Paterson Joseph and Paul Ready are also good as the treacherous Bishop of Beauvois and the Dauphin but nobody puts a foot wrong. In fact it’s a testament to the entire ensemble that they manage, with some help from a spartan set and haunting music, to fill every inch of the huge Olivier stage.

It is three hours long but the time flew by. It’s one of those shows that makes you believe in the power of theatre again and makes you realise why the National is still a vital cultural institution. Go see…

Gorilla advert…

Somebody was extolling the hilarity of the Cadbury’s gorilla advert yesterday and I had to stop them.

I didn’t stop them because I had anything I actually wanted to say to them. I just wanted them to stop talking. Fortunately they did. Because if they didn’t I would quite possibly have ripped their heads off and shat in the gaping, blood-seeping hole that was their neck just to really ram the message home that it is NOT FUNNY!

It’s a soul-less corporate approximation of something ad-hoc and raw dreamt up by some Armani-suited advertising fuck who thinks he’s hit the marketing equivalent of the g-spot.

Even worse, every time that piece of shit is played on TV it generates royalty money for Phil Collins, that irksome, stage-school, smug, talent-free, Tory-supporting wankwipe who already has more cash than he’ll ever need. It also runs the danger that the balding, least-talented member of Genesis may contemplate a comeback if he actually believes he is hip again.

So the next time somebody tells you this advert is cool shoot them. At least two or three times to make sure they can never rise again – or procreate any future idiot oxygen thief children to rob the planet of its much-needed resources. The revolution starts here…

Other Woman News...

The Other Woman invited me and the Missus to a School Disco a while ago...

For the uninitiated these are nightclub events where adults dress in school uniform and dance to hits from the Eighties and get pissed. The Missus was none too keen to don school uniform and even though I was up for it I felt it politic to decline.

I forgot all about this until last week when the Other Woman told me of her plans for the weekend and reminded me of her impending uniform-based fun with Saucy Sirvan (one of our mutual hapkido friends), her sister and a Toxic Slut.

Weekend over and the Other Woman and Sirvan sent me a link to pictures of their night out.

So, there I was, flicking through about 50 of these shots when a work colleague came up behind me to discuss something... while on-screen was a picture of the Other Woman and three lovelies cavorting around dressed as schoolgirls.

He looked at me, looked at the pic and smiled.
'It's OK. She's a friend...' I said by way of explanation.
'Yeah...'
'No. Really...'
'And I suppose you were "really" writing a play about Victorian prostitutes too?'

I remember back and the last time he approached me like this I was researching Meat, my play about Victorian prostitution, on the web and discussing it with him.

So I try a different tack...
'You know something. Hands up. I am busted. You're right... I love porn. Women-dressed-as-schoolgirl porn particularly. Can't get enough...'

He looks at me conspiratorially.
'It's OK. Me too...'

He walks away. I have a new friend in the office pervert...

Elling...

He’s a bright bloke that John Simm… He does cult films like Human Traffic and 24-Hour Party People, acclaimed TV dramas like State Of Play and Life On Mars, and he’s so cool he even pops up in Dr Who as the Master.

He has a knack of picking the right projects at the right time. And the Missus fancies him too. In fact if he was any sharper he’d cut himself. The multi-talented little Manc shit...

So what of his latest foray on the London stage?

Well for a start it’s an unusual project so he gets points for that. It’s an adaptation of a Norwegian absurdist comedy, which was a novel, a stage play then a film. The English stage version is adapted by Simon Bent, whose own plays include Goldhawk Road and Wasted, and it was first shown at the Bush Theatre before transferring to Trafalgar Studios where it’s currently running.

Simm plays the title character, an uptight mummy’s boy with a compulsive mental disorder who is let out of his asylum to try and adapt back to ‘normal’ life in Oslo. Back in ‘normal’ society he shares a flat with his former room-mate at the asylum and it’s basically their story of finding a life beyond the walls of their former institution.

There’s a love story of sorts, several odd-couple comedy turns and a plot about Elling becoming a poet who hides his work in sauerkraut boxes in supermarkets. There’s also the obvious gag about ‘normal’ people sometimes being more nutty that the people who are incarcerated.

Simm proves he’s a capable stage actor with a gift for comedy, his wide-eyed odd-couple partner is affectionately played by Adrian Bower (the desperate-for-a-shag games teacher in Teachers), and Ingrid Lacey, Keir Charles and Jonathan Cecil are all good value too.

But with the likes of Simm and Bent onboard you could be forgiven for expecting better. Sadly it’s not the sum of its hippest parts and you also have to wonder if it would have got half the glowing publicity it’s received without Simms’ involvement.

Having said that it’s still an enjoyable enough evening and if you fancy a laugh with its heart in the right place it’s worth a look.

New Words...

The Missus is away on a business trip so my mind is wandering and today I've invented a new word...

The word is 'flonked' and it is made up of 'plonked' and 'flopped' and it describes the action of a man (usually drunk) in a pub or a nightclub taking out his penis to try and impress his friends or potential partners.

It is a verb and it should be used in the following manner:
'Did you see the look of horror on that girl's face when Rentboy flonked his Toby on the bar?'

I should probably get a proper hobby or something...

Nigella Express...

It may come as no surprise to anyone who's ever spent any time in my company, but I have very little shame. I'll quite happily admit to all manner of breath-taking stupidity and sexual shenanigans from my drunken (and even my sober) years...

In fact two of my favourite 'self-as-idiot' stories involve one spectacularly unimpressive sexual performance and one gruesome sexual injury. But even my worst in-bed behaviour has never been anywhere near as flagrantly pornographic or erotic as Nigella Lawson in front of a TV camera.

Take Nigella Express on BBC2 for example…

In last night's episode the curvaceous one winked, smiled and fluttered her eyelashes through some recipes… for some people… she was probably friends with… at some point in her life...

To be quite honest I wasn't paying much attention to the cooking. But that’s because I am a man and as such I was instantly seduced by her lilting, suggestive tones and the soft-focus lighting as she did her thing in the kitchen. It was like an episode of the Red Shoe Diaries (soft-porn series narrated by David Duchovny while talking to a dog) populated by food fetishists.

Because the sad truth is Nigella Express and pretty much every other one of her cookery shows is all about a posh bird getting flirty and making everything sound just a little bit suggestive and even slightly dirty. And it's got to the point where even she's so bored of the joke now that she’s become a parody of herself.

Fortunately I am on hand to sort the matter out. So here’s the plan…

I suggest she ditches the cooking altogether and just makes porn. Or failing that she sticks to the cooking but does one episode where she's banged every which way that is humanly possible while she's cooking. Then she'll have got it out of her system, the TV producers responsible for her shows will have seen what they've been after all along and the viewing public can watch her make food instead of being titillated by a bored posh bird making food sound suggestive because they’ve seen all their fantasies acted out in full technicolour anyway.

Sadly if she doesn't do either of the above it won't be long before she's so bored that any suggestion of coquettishness goes out of the window and she'll be delivering scripts exactly like the one below:

NIGELLA (Bored and monotonal):
‘When I’m feeling ravenous and I want something really satisfying I long for my husband’s special sausage. It’s big and it’s meaty and it’s something I feast on whenever I can. God how it fills me up. But my husband’s big, meaty sausage doesn’t come looking good enough to eat straight away. Oh no… First I have to work it between my fingers to make sure it’s the right size and shape. I also have special equipment to make sure it’s hot and steamy, then to finish it off I cover it in my special juices before gorging on it. I particularly love the way the juices dribble down my chin when I’ve got too much in my mouth and it’s nearly hitting the back of my throat…’

This will happen. You’ve been warned…

Ani Di Franco...

Hurray! The little folk singer is back touring the UK this year after a lengthy lay-off because of medical reasons and because she's also recently become a mum to daughter Petah.

But thankfully she's now back gigging in Europe and and as well as doing a big gig at Shepherd's Bush Empire she's also doing a much more intimate show to kick off her European Tour at the Bush Hall.

So me and the Missus are off to both. The Missus is not massively keen as she always gets dragged along to see Ani and we've experienced both brilliant and mediocre gigs, but I'm uncommonly excited about this as Di Franco is one of the few artists I've really stuck with through her ever-evolving style and ever-widening political gaze.

She's also released a new album called Canon which is out in October. Part retrospective and part greatest hits, it also has re-imaginings of five of her favourite songs. One of these, Both Hands, is featured on her MySpace page.

Happy listening!

Present Tense...

The Missus celebrated her birthday yesterday and I splashed out big-style on presents.

But the thing that impressed and fascinated her most was not the very expensive theatre tickets, or the limited addition Tintin book, or the CDs by an old punk band she once loved. Oh no...

It was a wooden pop-up toy of Gilbert and George that I bought her as a joke for £12. It's the equivalent of buying a child an expensive Xmas gift only to see them discard the gift then play for hours in the empty box.

I may never understand women...

Venus As A Boy…

I went to Soho Theatre last night to see their latest show Venus As A Boy, a touring production by the studio of the NTS (National Theatre of Scotland).

I’ve seen a few shows by the NTS at Soho and I’d really liked their work so I had high hopes for this too. Based on a novel by Luke Sutherland and adapted by actor Tam Dean Burn, it tells the ‘true’ story of a young boy from Orkney and his bizarre and at times moving journey of sexual awakening from his home island via Glasgow and finally London, where he ends trapped as a transsexual prostitute until his death.

In many ways it’s a bit of a bizarre piece. It was introduced as a monument-cum-epitaph to its ‘real-life’ central character and it was also a piece of theatre that touched on the borders of performance art. But was it any good?

Well yes and no. It was essentially a one-man show with Tam Dean Burn playing the lead role of the boy-turned prostitute, nicknamed Cupid, and about 10 other characters too and his performance was quite compelling. It was obviously a project he’d crafted with much love and his compassion for all the roles he played really shone through.

Author Sutherland was also on stage to provide accompanying music and this was quite haunting and really added to the atmosphere and the intimacy of the evening. The staging was quite Spartan and the use of props and costumes was inventive too.

But the story had a few too many plot holes (a fleeing Cupid’s pimp magically turning up in Orkney to bring him back to London), a few too many bizarre coincidences (a raped skinhead managing to again find his attacker Cupid in the whole of London within eight hours of their first meeting) and some unconvincing emotional switches (Cupid betraying the transsexual prostitute he loves in a fit of jealousy).

Perhaps these issues are better explained in the book but even as a piece of gritty magical realism they stretched the credibility of the tale a bit too much. That said it’s an interesting and at times compelling piece and the performance of Tam Dean Burn was worth the admission price alone.

It’s a play that certainly deserves to find its audience in London. I just don’t think I was it, even though it’s more creative and heartfelt than most of the schlock currently on stages in the capital.

MP Watch...

Q. How many MPs does it take to reply to a letter from one of their constituents?
A. Fucking millions if the name of that MP happens to be Dawn Butler from Brent.

I wrote to Dawn as she's my local MP to ask her about her position on EDM 595 (Serious Fraud Office Investigation into the Al Yamamah Military Contract) five months ago. I got no reply so another letter then an email followed. And still no reply.

So I contacted CAAT (Campaign Against the Arms Trade) to ask if any other of their supporters in Brent had contacted her on this issue without success.

And apparently I'm not the only one. CAAT have records of two other supporters contacting Dawn Butler and her not bothering to reply or even acknowledge their letters either.

If it was a chance to get her face on the front page of the local newspaper I bet she couldn't reach the postbox quick enough. It's no wonder people think all politicians are worthless, untrustworthy, uncaring fucks when they can't even be bothered with the simple courtesy of answering a letter.

You'd almost think they don't care about the issue of big-business corruption in the country they are part of governing... D'oh! There's the answer!

Bill Hicks…

I’ve just finished reading a book entitled Love All The People… which was given to me by the Other Woman last year.

As I’m now cycling into work I am bereft of Tube time to read so I’m devouring less literature than usual, but I got round to reading this last week and I’m glad I did.

The book is a compendium of comedy routines, interviews, lyrics, articles and letters by Bill Hicks and it offers a fascinating and entertaining route into the world of one of the US’s most influential comedians.

Hicks had been a stand-up comedian since his early teens but in a very successful gigging career of 15 years he never got the big TV breaks in the US. This was essentially because American TV executives considered his material, which included routines on the hypocrisy of far-right Christian zealots, corrupt US politicians, the pro-life lobby and the evils of a corporate-led and consumer-driven society, too risky for Middle America.

But as Hicks pointed out when one of his guest spot routines was infamously pulled from the David Letterman Show for this very reason, he’d played shows in Middle and every other part of America for 15 years so he knew they understood jokes there too.

Hicks did, however, find instant fame and acceptance in the UK where he could deliver his material and his views uncut on TV – and unmeddled with by the raft of TV executives who caused him so much trouble on the Letterman show.

Sadly the show he was working on with Channel 4 never saw the light of day as Hicks died in February 1994 at the age of 32 from cancer – and, to paraphrase a famous Hicks joke, we have proof that injustice exists in the world when John Lennon, Martin Luther King and Bill Hicks are dead and Coldplay, George Bush and Ben Elton are still going strong.

Hicks may have been something of an outlaw comedian with a dark side in his time, but his book is a life-affirming, thought-provoking and entertaining read.

When in Rome IV…

Today we visited the Church of Saint Peter and the Vatican and in a churlish display of anti-religious fervour that would impress most moody 14-year-olds I sported my Sisters of Mercy T-shirt with the pentagram.

As we arrived at the church the Pope was giving an audience and this was quite bizarre because he’d namecheck a church or charity then a section of the crowd would cheer, then he’d go on and namecheck somebody else and another section of the crowd would cheer. It was a rock concert with no music or charisma.

The Vatican Museum, however, was quite impressive with loads of Egyptian and Roman artefacts but as soon as this section was over we went into piety overdrive. Gallery after gallery of scenes of Christ’s suffering and penance in various forms from painting to sculpture to tapestry… I felt quite assaulted by the relentless imagery and how it was designed to pummel me into a submission of faith.

It was about this point that I wanted to let rip with a tirade on the evils of a religion designed to keep the poor in their place and educate them to accept injustices in this lifetime for the promise of something better in the next, and how anyone who was dumb enough to believe should simply wake up – or better still leave the planet and give the rest of the gene pool a fighting chance of survival…

Then I realised I was being a tad zealous myself. I just have to accept that I have no religious fervour of any description after dabbling with it as a 13-year-old – but I do believe in acceptance and forgiveness and tolerance. I also try to live and let live and I genuinely strive to love all the people (even politicians, irresponsible journalists, religious zealots, evil media barons and Ross Kemp) all of the time.

But sometimes it’s really difficult…

PS. A fellow Goth did spot my T-shirt and commented to his girlfriend ‘That’s beautiful that is…’ God bless you my friend.

PPS. See the irony of the above comment? See... It’s sometimes hard to adjust…

When In Rome III...

Today we have explored the Forum (Ancient Roman ruins), the Palantine (Ancient Roman ruins on top of a hill) and the Colosseum (Ancient Roman ruins in the shape of an arena).

It was stupidly hot and although it was pretty awe-inspiring I felt thoroughly over-loaded on Roman ruins. The Missus and the Boy were also not impressed by my new comedy joke. This went something along the lines of me saying ‘It’ll be good when it’s finished…’ whenever we passed a partially ruined or partially recovered monument.

By 4pm this gag was wearing a little thin and both were threatening violence if I ever repeated the joke again. So I tried to defend myself:
‘I’m just demonstrating how to crack a joke then give it additional shelf-life…’

The Boy looks at me despairingly.
‘You’re actually demonstrating how to crack a joke then run it into the ground before stabbing and shooting it to death to ensure it has actually died.’

The Missus raised her eyebrows as if to agree with him. I may need to rethink my routine from here on in…

When in Rome II…

We are in Rome, which is perhaps not the best place in the world to voice my long-held opinion that Catholicism is one of the evils pervading the world.

I am explaining this theory to the Boy who has a look of utter bewilderment on his face as all his did was ask what I thought of a church we’d just passed. Fortunately I am close to the end of my sermon on Catholicism:

‘…the bottom line on any religion for me is that it should be a positive force for humanity and Catholicism spreads its belief system in already impoverished countries, converts the local populace then tells them they can’t use contraception to protect themselves against the already established threat of Aids. So in many South American and African countries where Catholics have gone to spread the word you have impoverished local communities where Aids is widespread and health workers can’t teach contraception because it’s against the religion. So not only is the disease spreading but the population is growing and large numbers of those newborn are born infected.’

The Boy ponders my sermon on the roof terrace of our hotel then chips in with:
‘I may convert to Judasim.’

The Missus is now intrigued – and a little worried. She is deeply cynical about any organised religion.
‘Why?’

The Boy replies.
‘They may sacrifice pork and their foreskin but they do get really good holidays…’

We concede he has a point. The Boy is perhaps a comedy genius…

When in Rome I…

‘When in Rome do as the Romans…’ is of course the accepted wisdom when visiting the Italian capital.

However when I single-handedly tried to form a quasi-facist imperial state based on military might invading other countries and assimilating their cultures people just looked at me in a funny way. So I turned tourist instead and joined the Missus and the Boy walking around the place discovering ancient monuments.

And it’s very pretty and it’s quite funny walking around a street corner to discover another 2000-year-old lump of temple. But there’s a lot of tat too.

Take the Pantheon, a stunning Roman temple that was then turned into a church. Architecturally and visually it’s a stunning piece of work… then you get outside and there’s a man dressed as a Fisher-Price version of Mark Antony and a fat woman dressed as Cleopatra who try to grab you and convince you to have your picture taken with them.

I spotted this odd couple and pointed them out to the Boy.
‘That’s the fattest Cleopatra I’ve ever seen…’
‘Yeah. And she’s not even bothered to try and look Egyptian either….’
‘He’s got a plastic sword too.’
‘And she’s got blonde hair. I’m sure Cleopatra didn’t have blonde hair…’

Myself and the Boy are also playing Nun Watch. It’s the same rules as Goth Watch but it’s seeing who can spot the most bizarre-looking Nun. The Boy is so far winning this because he spotted somebody who looked like Gillian McKeith.

More from Rome later…

Apple Mac News...

'Say that again. S-l-o-w-l-y... How fucking much??!!!'

Exams News...

The Boy’s GCSE results are in and he's done pretty damn well.

Four As, four Bs and a couple of Cs. This officially now makes him the cleverest person in the house if O Levels and GCSEs are the educational barometer. Needless to say, myself and the Missus are absolutely chuffed for him.

My bank account, however, is less happy as I promised him a new Apple Mac if he did well. I really should learn not to offer incentives if I've been in the pub drinking.

But it's well deserved. Just hope they're not too expensive...

News From Oz...

The Starr-Gows, our Australian chums, have been in touch and sent us pictures of their spanking new home in the suburbs of Sydney.

I downloaded these pictures to my desktop but I was also watching a DVD of EastEnders, which I'd paused as I was doing this, so as I went to click on the first picture a face shot of Keith Miller (pictured) popped up.

'Dave's let himself go...' I thought until I realised my mistake.

The Missus is right. I am an idiot...

Mitchell Madness...

Peggy Mitchell in EastEnders is an utter idiot.

Her squawking, busybody, bigoted, pseudo-cockney, midget ways have annoyed me on EE for many a year now. But above all that it’s the fact that the character is such a bloody idiot that really gets my goat.

The bigoted old witch gave Mark Fowler hell over his HIV status, she had no idea her sons were continually up to no good, she picks totally unreliable men to get jiggy with (the dodgy gangster George Palmer, Frank Butcher with his twinkling eyes and roving hands and Harry Slater with his history of raping his young niece) and she emotionally suffocates anyone in her family to such an extent that most of them can’t wait to get away from her.

But her latest bout of stupidity saw her hand control of her business and the keys to her house to two relatives she didn’t even recognise before she sodded off on holiday to see one or other of her absent children. So she’s patently an idiot. Well that or the EE scriptwriters could think of no better way to get the repellent Mitchell matriarch out of the way so it could properly introduce its newest arrivals in Roxy and Ronnie Mitchell.

Roxy and Ronnie are Mitchells through and through. They’d only been in the Vic for five minutes before they were sticking up for their ‘fam’ly’ and serving pints behind the bar while Peggy suffered another crisis, this time over Phil’s aborted wedding to Stella. Half a dozen episodes later and Peggy had left the country and they were running the Mitchell empire and starting a new feud with Ian Beale.

The sisters themselves look like they could be good fun. Roxy is the flighty, slightly bubble-brained romantic with a good heart, a wicked smile and a nice line in low-cut tops. She’s played by Rita Simons and early signs indicate the character could have some potential and that the girl herself can also act. She’s also easier on the eye than Charlie Slater which always helps.

The older sister is Ronnie. She’s the slightly tougher and more sensible one. You can tell this because Rita wears clothes that wouldn’t look out of place on a 16-year-old girl eager to get served alcohol in a nightclub and Ronnie wears more sober clothes that make her look like a bank clerk on dress-down Friday. Ronnie is also played by Sam Janus, she of Game On fame with the scowling face like a slapped arse.

As a long-term fan of EE it will be interesting to see if the girls work out. The show obviously thinks it’s onto a winner judging by the amount of on-screen teasers and billboard posters proclaiming their arrival. And they’re certainly getting lots of screen time at the moment so it seems the powers-that-be at EE have big plans for them.

Let’s hope neither is the new love interest for Keith Miller, eh?

King Of The Goths: Part III

The Boy is agog at my new T-shirt and can’t stop laughing at my claim to be King of the Goths.
‘You’re not a Goth.’
‘Yes I am.’
‘Prove it.’
‘I like the music.’
‘You also like Country and Western. That’s hardly Goth is it?’
‘I like Gothic literature.’
‘But you like other literature too. Bukowski is hardly a Goth!’

I feel I losing the argument to a 16-year-old who is out-logicing me. I reach for my ace card…
‘I’m going to start wearing make-up!’
‘What make-up?’
‘Mascara…’
‘Mascara?’
'Goth Mascara!'

The Missus interjects.
‘He means eyeliner.’

I jump in hoping my mistake has not been spotted.
‘Yes. What she said…’

The Boy laughs.
‘You shouldn’t have told him and let him wear mascara. You’d have had lovely lashes…’
‘I’m King of the Goths. You can’t ridicule me!’

The Missus interjects again.
‘With mascara you’d actually look more Emo. You could be the King of the Emos…’
‘Or the King of the Emus more like. You gangly freak…’ adds the Boy.

I am speechless. The King of the Goths is getting humiliated in his own kingdom. I leave in a regal manner ignoring their taunts…

All Played Out?

I will not winning the Verity Bargate Award this year after a rejection letter landed on the doormat this morning.

Rejection is never a good thing and I was convinced I was in with a real chance of getting somewhere in this competition. But it's not happening. Of course it doesn't mean that's it for the play Meat as I still have faith in both the premise and the script, and in the grand scheme of things Soho is not the only theatre in the UK that accepts new work.

But it's annoying to be stopped in your tracks, especially when it's a piece of work you really believe in.

So what happened? By my reckoning it's either:
i) The play is rubbish and I am deluded.
ii) They thought the play was rubbish.
iii) It wasn't what they were looking for.
iv) It was too off-kilter.
v) It was not off-kilter enough.
vi) The play is good but there were just better plays submitted.
vii) The play is good and they have entirely missed this fact.
viii) It was read by a vindictive former lover who took great delight in wrecking my hopes to repay some old wrong I did her.

Sadly I know it wasn't the latter so it could well be any of the others. But at times like this it's important to have self-belief and I know it is a good, strong and substantial play.

So I'll spend the next month going over it again to tighten it up and prove they are wrong and ensure it will be a major success.

That'll learn 'em...

OWWLOW News…

The OWWLOW (Other Woman Who Loves Other Women) is in Edinburgh to see her actress-writer sister in a show.

It’s obviously quite an arty family because the OWWLOW works at a major London theatre and her actress-writer sister is something of a comedy star in the making. Like the OWWLOW she’s also quite foxy but that’s another story…

Before she went to Jockland, however, the OWWLOW was overcoming bad news. Due to the recent outbreak of Foot And Mouth, the theatrical actor goat called Bruce who was appearing in one of her shows was no longer allowed on stage as his appearance apparently posed a serious risk so he was forced to pack up his theatrical goat suitcase and head back home.

I feel quite sorry for Bruce because this was obviously a big role at a big theatre and I would imagine good parts for theatrical goats don’t come along too often. So to have it cut short by circumstances beyond his control was very sad.

So if in the coming weeks you read of a depressed goat who ended it all in a stupor of fags, drink and booze then remember it wasn’t his fault. Blame the Government!

PS. The OWWLOW has been doing some research on all things Goth and she informs me that one King of the Goths killed his wife by having her tied to a horse and dragged around at high speeds until she was dead. It would probably keep the Missus quite for a while…

King Of The Goths: Part II…

The Missus poisoned me at the weekend so the King of the Goths was laid up feeling non-too well.

The offending foodstuff was a fish en croute and it resulted in something rather unpleasant happening to both our digestive systems. So I clung onto my Sisters T-shirt like some sort of security blanket as I tried to snooze off my pain – and I noticed the T-shirt smelt familiar.

It was a sort of vanilla aroma and the same smell also lingered around my one experience with a dead body. I mentioned this to the Missus and now the T-shirt has been washed the smell still clings to it. This intrigued me. Was my T-shirt possessed of some magical powers that made it retain a certain smell?

I discussed this with the Missus who suggested it would disappear in time.
‘But what if the T-shirt has some sort of magical smell? What if it really is the robe of the King of the Goths?’
‘Don’t be such an idiot…’
‘Maybe the King of the Goths has his own smell and this is it?’
‘Following the fish this weekend I’ve smelt the King of the Goths and it’s not a magical smell. I can assure you…’

King Of The Goths: Part I...

From Sixth Form onwards I always liked the Sisters of Mercy but, truth be told, I was a rubbish goth – too happy, too optimistic and nowhere near brooding enough.

I rediscovered all my old Sisters of Mercy tapes a few years ago and in a gush of nostalgia I immediately went out and bought all the albums on crisp, shiny, new CD. Consequently the Sisters have featured on my various iPod playlists for some time now and I succumbed last week and ordered a Sisters t-shirt too.

I had an original Sisters T-shirt in the 1980s but gave it away to an older girl I fancied at college. She used it to sleep in but she never gave me the same privilege as my T-shirt. I should have asked for it back but such a request seemed churlish and petty – especially as soon afterwards I learnt she was also shagging one of my favourite lecturers. Bitch...

Anyway, my replacement Sisters T-shirt arrived early on Saturday morning so I signed for the parcel, tried on the T-shirt and headed back upstairs to the snoozing Missus.
‘Look. I’m King of the Goths!’
‘You’re not wearing any trousers…’
‘The King of the Goths sets trends and doesn’t follow them!’

The Missus sighed and turned back over to go to sleep. Later that afternoon we go to grab a coffee and the Missus asks me what I want.
‘A strawberry and cream frappuchino with cream on top.’

The Missus looks at me, lowers her eyes to my Sisters T-shirt then looks at the women serving us.
‘A strawberry and cream frappuchino for the King of the Goths please…’

I am a fraud.

Other Woman News...

The Other Woman is in Edinburgh in her professional capacity as a comedy critic.

Much as she loves this annual working beano she is also fully aware that it comes at a price – and that price is spending a week recovering from seven days of late-night drinking, a bad diet and a distinct lack of sleep as she continues to 'network'.

But she never learns. She sent me a text message on day one of her stay and it read: 'Arrived 12 hours ago and still going. White wine and chips for dinner...'

Even funnier is the fact that she returns to London to move into her new flat with her fella, so instead of intimate romance in their new home he's going to have to put up with her being grumpy and tired and farting as she recovers from her week of work-meets-fun.

He's a lucky fella...

Prime Meat...

The Boy is growing up fast.

In fact he's been growing up fast for the past three or four years and he's now grown up so fast that he's finally decided on his adult 'look' and has enacted a Stalinist purge on anything in his wardrobe that does not fit in with this.

Consequently I am now the proud owner of a new pair of combats that he was going to recycle until the Missus spotted them and realised they'd fit me.

The plus side of us now wearing the same size clothes is that I can get hand-me-ups from him. I even offered to repay the compliment by telling him he could borrow any of my clothes but he just sneered and said 'As if...' and went back to his bedroom laughing.

The down side, though, is that we now wear the same size jeans so to stop our clobber getting confused the Missus has actually written my name inside my jeans. Like I am at school. The Boy is growing up yet I feel like I am four.

But sometimes I feel much older and this weekend was a case in point.

Myself, the Boy and the Missus were walking down Old Compton Street and the Missus pointed out the rainbow flag and started to explain what it meant but the Boy said 'I know. It's a gay flag. It's a gay street.'

The Missus asked him how he knew and he explained I told him when we out and about last year. Then he added that today he'd also spotted the amount of men who were checking him out and it had reminded him, before reassuringly telling me that: 'But you're OK. You have nothing to worry about. You're past your best. It's me that's the prime meat here...'

Matthew Bourne’s The Car Man…

He’s a clever bloke that Matthew Bourne because his fancy dance ways and beautiful choreography won over the Missus many years ago.

Consequently I have now become a regular patron of his shows and I think he’s pretty good, although I am hardly the most knowledgeable dance fan in the world.

But myself and my girl have now seen Matthew Bourne’s Edward Scissorhands and Matthew Bourne’s Swan Lake, and we are going to see Matthew Bourne’s Nutcracker at Xmas.

Of course it’s purely a marketing device but using his name as a precursor to every single one of this shows seems a bit silly and in the quite bits of the show last night my mind started wandering… I imagined the Bourne household has stickers all over the place that read Matthew Bourne’s toilet, Matthew Bourne’s pencil and Matthew Bourne’s nasal hair trimmer.

But I digress… Matthew Bourne’s The Car Man nicks the music and the seedy setting of Bizet’s Carmen and steals the plot from The Postman Always Rings Twice then throws a bit of bisexuality into it. So we have a seedy rundown town where a stranger arrives, shags the local businessman’s wife then knobs the young boy loved by the woman’s sister. The stranger ends up killing the hubby but pins the blame on the young boy. The young boy is jailed, escapes jail and returns to town to wreak revenge. The end.

It’s pretty gritty stuff and very raunchy too and the dancing was beautiful and very sexy. I could well get into this dance lark. In fact I suggested myself and the Missus learn to dance on the way home and she just stared, a look of horror and pity in her eyes. I think that was a ‘No'.

Probably for the best...

Other Woman News…

The Other Woman is going to Edinburgh in her capacity as a professional comedy critic so we hooked up after training last night for a few pints and a bit of a chinwag.

I also needed some advice on my latest fixation so I sought her counsel.
‘I’ve got a bit of a problem…’
‘Are you talking to the cat again and expecting a reply?’
‘Well it’s not actually a problem. It’s more of a confession really…’
‘Go on…’
‘I really like Kate Nash.’
‘I see…’
‘I think her single, Foundations, is great and I’ve found the video for it on the web and I watch it repeatedly at work…’
‘Go on…’
‘I also think she’s cute.’

The Other Woman looks at me. There is pity in her eyes. I continue…
‘It all started out when I bought the Lily Allen CD last year…’

At the mention of Lily Allen the Other Woman makes a sound a little like a leopard before it pounces on a gazelle and tears it to shreds…

‘…and I thought it was great and she was cool and now I’m really into this summery pop feel-good music. And I think Lily Allen's great and Kate Nash is pretty fabulous too and I’ve been onto the latter’s Myspace page and had a nosey around. She’s from Harrow you know…’

The Other Woman sighs.
‘It’s OK to like to rubbish music. Me and my sister saw the Scissor Sisters last week…’
‘I recently downloaded tracks by Wham!’
‘Jesus. You’ve out-camped me!’
‘I shagged Elton John too.’
‘Did you?’
‘No. I made that bit up.’
‘But thinking she’s “cute” is just pain wrong.’
‘I know…’
‘You’re 38 and she’s 18. You see where I’m going with this?’
‘You think I’m Chris Langham?’
‘Well…’

We terminate the conversation. We buy more drinks...

Fashion Advice…

The Missus is in crisis. We’re late up and she has several work meetings then we’re going out tonight and she can’t figure out what to wear.

Even worse it is her birthday soon and I was toying with the idea of buying her a dress so I’ve spent some considerable time trawling the internet to find the dress I want for her. Consequently I now consider myself a fashion expert so I try to lend a hand by pointing out various things in her wardrobe…

‘How about that?’
‘Too casual…’
‘That?’
‘That’s a winter coat…’
‘Try the thing next to it on then.’
‘That’s a pair of jeans…’
‘How about that? The colours are really good.’
‘The material is really thick and today is supposed to be the hottest day of the year…’
‘How about…’
‘Just stop trying to help me. Please…’

I head downstairs. My mobile phone has been charging through the night. I check to see if it’s OK and notice the date. I head back upstairs. The Missus is now dressed and heading downstairs. I stop her.

‘What do you want now?’
I pinch her arm then gently hit it while reciting: ‘Pinch, punch, first of the month. No returns.’

I wait for the smile to crack across her face. Instead she just stares. Like she's just seen a rogue horse do a shit. Across our new bed. When it has the new duvet covers on it.
‘You really aren’t helping yourself, are you?’

I could be in trouble...

On Reading Tony Harrison...

Tony Harrison is a Leeds poet and translator-cum-playwright who's now one of the older generation of scribes.

He hit the tabloid headlines in the late 1980s when his poem V, which begins when he visits the graveyard where his parents are buried and finds it has been vandalised by a gang of racist skinheads, was broadcast on C4 – and it brought a storm of protests because it featured many of the four-letter words and terms of racial abuse that were daubed on the tombstones. The fact it’s a truly moving and raw and vibrant piece of work seemed to be neither here or there to those who complained.

At college I remember reading V and thinking it was a fantastically relevant piece of work and subsequently getting quite annoyed with poets whose work was more dated and less contemporary. I also liked his other work because much of it deals with ideas of cultural displacement and it addresses his own guilt about leaving his Yorkshire home to find a new life and success far away both in terms of geography and in terms of culture. It made sense then on a personal level and it and it still does now.

I've been rereading Harrison’s poetry recently because I've got a new play brewing and I wanted to remind myself of that initial excitement on reading V and some 20 years after first coming across it still doesn't disappoint. It’s one of those visceral works that gets the gut before it gets the brain and just carries you along.

It’s good research, a bit like finding an old friend again and realising there are still connections there despite the passage of time.

The new play is called Stock, as in London stock bricks or stock as in breeding stock. It’s about heritage and culture and I’ll have a fuller rundown of it later this week but I got the idea after seeing our local cemetery wall collapsed earlier this year.

Ideas come from the oddest places…

The Simpsons Movie...

I was on a press beano about six years ago and I interviewed Simpsons creator Matt Groening.

And I was blown away. He was utterly unassuming, thoroughly charming and incredibly polite – and he didn’t seem at all bored that I was probably asking him the same questions he’d been answering for the previous several hours.

Even better when I ran into him a corridor later on he quite happily drew me a picture of Bart Simpson and signed it to the Boy without a second’s hesitation. To this day he remains No.1 on my list of people-I-have-interviewed-who-impressed-the-hell-out-of-me-by-actually-being-really-great-in-a-not-at-all-arrogant-way.

So as a major fan of him and the series I had high hopes of the Simpsons Movie and I’m pleased to report that in an age of over-promoted shite it’s good to see this big-screen version is still smart, still funny and still delivers the goods.

The plot concerns a prophesy, an ecological catastrophe and a plan to destroy Springfield and I could go on for ages about my favourite bits.

But that would be dull. It just works. Go see it. You’ll laugh. A lot. And you’ll probably leave the cinema singing ‘Spider-pig, Spider-pig…’

PS. Die Hard 4.0 is pretty good fun too.

Goth News…

My latest Goth spot occurred earlier this week when I was cycling through Hyde Park and coming towards me were two Goths. But they weren’t normal Goths. Oh, no…

For a start they were very chubby Goths. Now I have nothing against the corpulent (usually because I can’t physically get near enough to the fat fuckers), but to me the whole Goth vibe suggests something of the brooding, the melancholic, even the slightly acetic…

Nowhere in the Goth manual does it recommend rosey-cheeked chubbiness or suggest stuffing your face with cake – because this smacks of enjoyment, happiness, health and even downright pleasure. But this was not their worst sin. Oh, no… much worse was to follow… because they were roller-blading!

Fat, roller-blading, rosey-cheeked, well-fed Goths. It was all I could do to stay upright on my bike and not fall off, reduced to a gibbering wreck as the Yummy Mummies I have to negotiate in Hyde Park dragged their kids away from the strange cycling man who was swearing and crying.

So I’ve decided I am going to take the plunge and buy a camera-phone so I can document and shame these scum – and any others – who are quite frankly letting the side down.

This means war. You have been warned…

Health Tips…

Quack-fraud-TV-diet 'doctor' Gillian McKeith says dried fruit is good news for a healthy bowel.

But the empirical evidence of my stomach would suggest that this is clearly not the case, especially if you eat half a bag of dried apricots then expect to enjoy normal motions.

It's one to watch out for – although not literally as it's not a pleasant sight.

Not that I looked...

Baghdad Wedding…

Life is full of surprises – and not all of them good.

Take one of my ex-girlfriends who, when we were still together, I spotted reading a book called Women Who Love Too Much. I thought she was reading this book because she was worried she’d fallen headlong into the emotional maelstrom that was our passionate relationship and she wanted advice on how to pull back. But it turned out she was shagging someone else so the book must obviously been a ‘how-to’ guide rather than a self-help book. My mistake. Bitch…

Also take my mate Shaggy who, when I was two chapters from the end of reading The Sacred Art Of Stealing by Christopher Brookmyre, took the book and stole it. Git…

But good surprises can happen, too, and Baghdad Wedding was one of those.

Myself and the Missus had journeyed to see this three weeks ago when it opened at Soho Theatre, but one of the cast pulled out so that night’s show was cancelled. So this weekend we ventured out to see its final Soho performance and it was stunning, one of the best shows I’ve ever seen.

The play focuses on a Iraqi writer whose wedding becomes a bloodbath when a US chopper bombs the wedding party. The bride dies and the writer is assumed dead so his friends carry on with their lives without him, until the writer returns (after a spell as the kidnap victim of a bunch of Iraqi terrorists then as the prisoner of the US Army as a suspected terrorist).

It’s an overtly political play but rather than get bogged down in the quagmire that is wartorn Iraq, the play sticks to a simple story of the writer and his relationship with his close friend and the women that both of them at various times are involved with. And because the personal relationships are so strongly written and well acted, it makes the political elements much more poignant.

It’s a beautifully crafted play and Hassan Abdulrazzak has a wonderful and poetic grasp of language and can switch from snappy comedy dialogue to truly brutal descriptive monologues at will. Lisa Goldman’s direction allows the play to move at pace without losing any of its emotion and the three lead cast members, Matt Rawle as writer Salim, Nitzan Sharron as his friend Marwan and Sirine Saba as Luma, the woman they both love, are excellent. Silas Carson as their friend Kathum was also good but there isn't a weak performance in the entire show.

An important and timely piece of work by a very gifted writer.

Number Of The Week…

It’s 137 as this is the amount of days I’ve gone without a response to my initial letter to my local MP Dawn Butler about the cancellation of the Serious Fraud Office Investigation into the Al Yamamah Military Contract.

I also emailed her a month ago and have again emailed her today. So hopefully this will generate a response.

Personally I think it’s disgraceful that my local MP can’t be arsed to write back. I bet if it was an invitation to get her mug on the front page of the local rag she’d be putting pen to paper like a bloody shot.

The text of the original letter, which she has now had three times, is below:

**********************************

Dear Dawn

I’m one of your constituents and I’m just dropping you a line to ask about your position on EDM 595 (Serious Fraud Office Investigation into the Al Yamamah Military Contract).

As you probably know, this EDM was tabled by a cross-party group of MPs who thought the Government’s decision to halt the due legal process of an SFO investigation into large-scale corruption involving BAE Systems was pretty deplorable. 


So I’m just writing to ask if this EDM is something you’ll be supporting or whether you won’t be supporting it because you genuinely think the Government’s decision was morally and legally justifiable?

Many thanks for your time.

Peter And Dan Snow: 20th Century Battlefields…

It’s quiz time and today’s question is: Military historians – are they…
i) A respected and vital academic profession?
ii) Strange men who enjoy fiddling with little die-cast soldiers and recreating battles in their library-cum-play-room?
iii) A bunch of would-be gun-toting lunatics who are only separated from crimes of mass carnage by the thin veneer of social constraint they had beaten into them at some minor public school or other?

It’s a tricky question. I’ve always lumped them in the second and third categories rather than the first and viewed them as a sort of upper-class version of Dungeons And Dragons freaks. But with money. And decadent sex lives. In fact sex lives so decadent that they are now bored with any manner of carnal enjoyment and only find solace and understanding in the little tin men they so lovingly paint. Well that and felching…

But after watching a couple of episodes of Peter And Dan Snow: 20th Century Battlefields I am starting to revise my opinion on military historians. Because it’s actually quite an interesting area when it’s packaged as slickly as this…

The basic premise is that Peter and Dan take a battle or a smallish war or conflict and dissect it in chronological order, briefly examining the background stories then looking in more depth at how the key battles were won and lost.

This week’s programme concentrated on the Falklands War and gave a potted summary of how the hostilities began and how the British Army eventually overcame larger numbers with better equipment, clever planning and a large slice of luck.

It’s well researched, well scripted and not massively reliant on hi-tech CGI nonsense. The father-and-son team presenting it are obviously having a whale of a time, too, journeying all over the shop to try the battle terrain themselves and also getting to grips with some of the hardware used.

But the factor that really drives this show is the utter passion of the Snows. I’ve always loved Peter and him and his swingometer have single-handedly kept me entertained through coverage of General Elections past when the Tories were winning and I was very depressed.

But son Dan is new to me and he’s a bit of a revelation. He has all the academic background after getting a first-class honours degree in history at Balliol College, but he also has that utterly mad enthusiasm that fuels his father. He’s not an unpleasant bloke to look at either so I reckon he could soon be getting more TV work now the Beeb’s realised history can be sexy if you dress it up a bit.

It’s a smart, informative and entertaining series and I like it so much I may even dig out their previous series called Battlefield Britain. In short it’s the sort of show that probably only the BBC would ever make.

And if it keep potential nutjobs with an unhealthy fascination with warfare and guns occupied and stops them roaming the streets then all the better…

The Curse Of Shaggy…

One of my pool-playing chums is nicknamed Shaggy and in days of yore we had many drunken and thoroughly enjoyable evenings that turned into nights that turned into early mornings out on the lash.

We’ve recently had a discussion of sorts and he happened to mention that his karaoke tune of choice would be Wham Rap by Wham! And now I can’t get the bloody tune out of my head.

I even sat down to write a scene on my new play this morning and all I had going through my head was:

‘Hey everybody take a look at me
I’ve got street credibility
I don’t have a job
But I have a god time
With the boys I meet “down the line…”’

This, of course, is quite ironic as I have never had 'street credibility' and I do have a job but it’s still bloody torture. It is better than having Last Christmas or anything by Take That on mental loop, though. Well, apart from I Want You Back.

That's great, that is…

Garden Of Delights...

Our garden is finished and it's pretty bloody fabulous.

Consquently I am currently in a plant-buying frenzy and have recently added two black bamboos to the three bamboo plants already in there. I love bamboo. It makes a great swishing sound in the breeze. It's a damn shame I'm allergic to it. But I now also have a banana plant which is rather brilliant too and I'm not allergic to that.

I can see how people really get into this gardening lark and as I have now discovered www.crocus.com I can spend shedloads of cash just sitting at my desk. See. There goes another £30...

I may have to monitor my latest fascination or it may well bankrupt us. Victorian pornography was probably a safer interest...

Charity Case…

I can be many things: an egotistical fruitcake with no fashion sense, a foul-mouthed drunk with no decorum or tact and, very occasionally, a depressed and bad-tempered grump.

I am not, however, a bad man. Honestly. But I feel like one at the moment. Let me explain…

The Missus’ father does a yearly bike ride, the rather craply named London Bikeathon no less, for Leukaemia Research because he had a good friend who died from the disease. And as I’m now a fully fledged cyclist he invited me along to keep him company this year.

I told him I wouldn’t do the whole fundraising bit but I’d pay whatever it cost to sign up and just do the ride. So I paid my £20 and registered and the Bikeathon pack came through the post – then my father-in-law had a little accident (a broken wrist rather than not making it to the toilet) so he’s now no longer doing it. And as I was only going to keep him company I’m not doing it either.

But among the sponsorship forms and other stuff was a Bikeathon t-shirt and a discount voucher for Evans Cycles. Now I quite like the t-shirt as it’s a bright green colour and is highly visible to wear on the roads and I’m certainly going to use the Evans voucher. With my father-in-law also no longer taking part I’m now going over to his for a big feed – so the way I see it I’m up on the deal as I’ve got a new cycling t-shirt, a discount voucher and the prospect of free food and wine for an afternoon.

Even funnier I wore the t-shirt to cycle into hapkido this morning and somebody in the gym started telling me how it was a great charity to support. So I lied and pretended I was still doing the ride. The bloke even patted me on the back.

I am a charity fraud. I may have to donate some money to ease my conscience…

Thought For The Day...

I am preparing tea. The Boy is in the kitchen and I suddenly realise he is talking to me...

'Sorry, love, I wasn't listening.'
'Why?'
'I lost myself. My mind was on other things...'
'What were you thinking?'

I could lie. No. Better tell the truth.

'I was actually wondering if the ghosts of fish only haunt the sea...'

The Boy looks at me. Contempt is not a strong enough word.

'You really are...'
'I know. I'm an idiot...'

We'll Meat Again...

My play, Meat, is finished and entered for the Verity Bargate Award, the biggest prize for new playwrights in the UK.

I cycled to Soho Theatre on Friday to drop it off after tightening it up over the past week and a half, and I’m pleased with how it’s turned out. There are bits that could have been tightened up even more but overall it works so I have few complaints.

The story is set in 1885 London and follows a male dwarf prostitute and a servant girl. Both become involved with ‘respectable’ people and pay a heavy price for trusting the wrong folk. It’s really about how people lose their humanity when sex becomes a commodity, but it also hints at how the mechanisms that allow this trade to happen are signs of a much bigger problem. The spread of venereal disease in the play is a metaphor for a wider canker permeating society.

It’s got sex, disease, rape, mutilation and murder and it stemmed from a simple idea of a love story between a dwarf whore and a respectable woman, the Norfolk prostitute killings and a love of Jacobean revenge tragedy.

Here’s a speech from the script. It comes from a politician infected with syphilis:

‘Our wealth and our position in the world is built on horrible atrocities, Nathaniel. We decimate large swathes of humanity every day so don’t expect the architects of that atrocity to be overly concerned by a few women who sell their arses for gin. Leave it to the reform workers or the Salvation Army… They care and they’re better at it… It is a stark reality of the modern world.’

It’s either going to bomb big-style and not get past the first round or grab somebody’s attention and have a fighting chance of really getting noticed.

Financial Planning…

Myself and the Missus are in the kitchen waiting for the Boy to descend from his bedroom so we can eat tea. We are chatting and she asks me about my play, which has to be finished this Friday.

‘How’s the play coming along?’
‘Great. Today I got into my research and found original Victorian pornography.’
‘And that’s research?’
‘Yes.’
‘In what world is that research?’
‘There was huge trade in erotic prints and pictures as well as prostitution so I wanted to see if I could find any to see what it was like. It’s background research…’
‘Where did you find it?’
‘On the internet. There was quite an arty website and the pictures were divided into two categories. In the artistic category were prints of nude women and young men…’
‘And in the other?’
‘That was called the vulgar category and some of it was quite graphic. But there was one great shot of a half-naked Victorian gent being pleasured by two women and the look on his face was one of such wonderful ennui, just like he was utterly bored with all this decadent sex. And he had a wonderful droopy moustache and he kept his top hat on too…’
‘Who kept his top hat on?’

The Boy has sneaked into the kitchen without us noticing. Has he heard all our discussion? I change the subject and we sit down to eat and get onto the subject of money. I am convinced he owes me £20 and tell him so.

‘I gave you £20 to go out on Wednesday then I’m sure I gave you another £20 for train fares on Friday.’
The Boy sighs.
‘You did give me £20 on Wednesday and Friday but I gave you £20 back on Friday because mum also left me the money for the train fares.’
‘Are you sure because I can’t find it.’
‘Yes.’
‘Well I’ve lost £20 then. I don’t know where it’s gone.’

The Boy smiles.
‘You’ve maybe spent it looking at Victorian porn.’