cock and balls story

Well, that five days of summer we finally had in September has properly fucked off now hasn't it.

I'm sitting here in my office - a converted garage which looks out into the garden - the dog, Ruby, is sitting under a tree and staring maniacally into the branches because she thinks there might be a squirrel up there and she doesn't want to miss the opportunity to howl like a lunatic and throw herself at the fence if it appears.

I joined Weight Watchers last night. I felt good that I'd joined, so I got drunk to celebrate. Well, you get free beer tokens when gigging at the Iguana, it would have been a waste otherwise.

Interesting Iguana Bar fact: a few months ago scouse comic Brendan Riley was headlining the night when a punter stood on a table and started waving his testicles at the stage. Eye witnesses say they were enormous. Anyway, he was thrown out. Quite carefully I imagine. Whereupon - that's a great word isn't it - he decided to continue the show outside the large glass window by standing on a bin. And there he stayed, with his pants around his ankles and his bits swinging entertainingly until the police came and arrested him and gave him an £80 fine.

I've only ever known one person to wave their testicles in public and that was Simon Dean at the Sunday Sport Christmas party in 199... something. It was at Tatton Park, in a giant marquee made to look like the deck of a ship and a hundred tables. The MC announced the occupants of every table who cheered to hear their names as he read them out. Well, most of us cheered. When he announced us Simon Dean jumped on the table and waved his cock and balls at the rather shocked primary school teachers and solicitors firms sitting either side of us. Which was nice.

I got an email from Davina at BBC Comedy North yesterday. She likes an an online idea I sent, a very simple series of self-contained two minute sketches based on a character I've created called Steve Bishop. It's getting sent to the 'online exec' who will give a yes or a no. My money is on 'no'.

Things to do today...
Scallywagga sketches
Make weight watchers vegetable curry
prepare some questions for chat with HB tomorrow.

Monday Monday

Yawn, crawled out of bed at 10am after David Isaac texted me telling me to get up as we have a meeting with Matt from Channel K about a sketch show we're working on.

So I got showered and dressed, optimistically put on shorts and a t-shirt. Silly move. Spent a few minutes with Maggie - who slept through again last night - and pottered off into town to meet David and Matt both at a lovely little coffee shop in the Northern Quarter, called Drip.

It's a nice place run by two women who I used to live next door to, the coffee is lush but the sandwiches... The sandwiches seem to have been made by someone who has no concept, whatsoever, of the the size and mechanics of the human mouth.

They're cut from thick Ciabatta sliced at acute angles which are then toasted to ensure the edges become razor sharp, making it impossible to bite into one without losing a lip.

We've got a brief to write a few things for the end of the week.

Last night I watched Eternal Sunshine of The Spotless Mind - which I thought was excellent, if a little bit annoying.

I also watched one of The Last Word Monologues which Hugo Blick wrote for BBC1 recently. It was a big help actually. The one I watched last night was 29 minutes long, it was Bob Hoskins playing a hitman waiting for a victim. I worked it out that there were five different stories threaded throughout the monologue. I'd be interested to know if he plans each of these seperately, you know... six minutes a story... or if... I dunno. I'd have to plan them all seperately.

I think I'm starting to understand monologues now. I'm still interested to hear how he structures them. I'm calling him on Wednesday now at 9.30am.

Tonight I'm gigging at the Iguana Bar in Chorlton. It's an odd gig, it's run for years, God knows how, it's never a easy. I suppose it's testament to the love the punters and management have for Des Sharples the MC, and booker . Last time I was there someone threatened to batter me because I did a joke about ginger hair. The threat of physical violence can always add a certain frisson to a comedy show.

I think I've worked out what I need to do to my monologue. Shall I rewrite it or work on stuff for tonight??? I know I'll have a game of Call of Duty 4 and decide.

Get In!!!

Just got back from the rugby club gig, it was actually pretty bloody lovely. It really shouldn't have worked - the PA was non-existent, we were using a mike routed through the CD player or something so that it came out of odd little round speakers suspended in the false ceiling; the lighting was ... well they just turned them off really, and the stage... well, it was a table upon which they'd placed a stool and a lectern. Don't ask.

But against all odds, it was really nice.

Just got back home to find an email from Hugo Blick saying to call him about the monologues.. Brilliant. I will. Monday.

Alan Partridge is alive and well

And working at BBC West Midlands apparently.

This is a fantastic clip:
Les Ross and Hardeep Singh Kholi

the sound of one voice talking

I don't know why, but I thought writing a monologue was going to be easy.

I've been writing a monologue for the last couple of weeks. It's for an idea I want to pitch to Radio 4, and it's really been doing my head in, because now I've got into it, It's probably the most difficult bit of writing I've done.

I just kept hitting a dead end. I knew where the story was supposed to go, and I knew the other people who were involved in the story, who played an active role in the story, but I just wasn't able to write the story.

Via Micheal Jacob I sent an email to Hugo Blick, creator of Marion and Geoff and who has just done a season of Monologues on BBC1 recently asking him for any advice - he hasn't replied yet. Micheal came up with the suggestion that, as an exercise, I should write the story from the point of view of one of the other characters. Which I did and it helped me realise where I was going wrong.

Where I was going wrong was that I hadn't planned it properly. I was under the impression that a monlogue was one person talking in their own inimitable way about 'stuff' and touching upon elements of the story until finally you get to a conclusion or a denouemont. Silly pillock.

It's not. Because 'stuff' isn't really that interesting. What that would be, would be a 'rant.' A monologue has to be a story, and a bloody good story. It needs plotting as carefully as any narrative does. Even though you never hear from the characters mentioned throughout the story, you need to know every single one of them well enough that you would be able to write the whole thing from their point of view if needed. And it doesn't just need a beginning a middle and an end, it needs drama, it needs cliffhangers, it needs suspense and teases, it needs every little trick you can muster of to keep the reader reading or the listener listening, because the sound of just one voice talking can be a bit of a bore otherwise.

A massive help has been Alan Bennett's Talking Heads, series which I would recommend to anyone who, like me, is trying to write these bloody things for the first time. If you can suggest any others, please do. I'll be more than happy to check them out.

Anyway, I've now got my script to about 15 minutes, and I've done a second draft which I was happy with this afternoon, but I've just read it again and decided it's absolutely terrible. So I'm going to hide it in a drawer for a few days and see what happens.

I'm going to write some sketches because the Scallywagga series 2 deadline is pressing and I also want to send some stuff to School of Comedy (C4) and Wrong Door (BBC3), which thoroughly deserves a second series.

Tonight I'm gigging at a rugby club. It's going to be horrible, I can feel it. Not only is there nowhere to plug my guitar in but I'm following two really, really strong acts: John Scott and Anvil Springstein. I may very well die on my hole.

Take the money and run

Last night I went to do a stand-up gig in St Helens. But it wasn't any normal gig, oh no. this was a gig born of madness. It was a 'high-concept' comedy gig, the result of a feverish mind, a marketing exec and a need to fleece a local council of as much money as possible.

This was drink-up-stand-up. Part orf St Helens Comedy Festival... yes St Helens Comedy Festival. Who knew!!!

The idea is that during the course of a night a band of happy punters travel from pub to pub through the streets of St Helens - a town which boats a French restaurant called 'Le Frog' - and in each bar a comedian entertains them while they have a drink.

I was the first comedian in the first bar, a place called Zoo on Westfield Street, a long room where the audience were better lit than the stage and the only thought going through my head was whether or not the noise of my feet sticking and unsticking to the floor as I paced about was actually louder than the PA system.

Dan Nightingale was MCing. Bless him. At least I could take the money and run after performing 20 minutes to a mixture of tittering and staring. He had to lead the happy throng between bars like an hilarious Pied Piper cracking jokes through a megaphone as they went.

Still, at least it wasn't Bus-Stop-Stand-Up where they put punters on a bus and comedians perform a show for them as they drive around town. Yes, they honestly do this at St Helen's Comedy Festival.

Here's some more ideas for the marketing geniuses to consider.

Pit Stop Stand Up - Performed at the side of a race track. As many gags as you can squeeze into the 10 seconds it takes an F1 driver to have their tyres changed.

Lap-Dance-Stand-up - comedian gyrates erotically around a pole whilst pointing out the hilarious differences between dogs and cats.

Pick-Up-Stand-Up - comedians lighten the load for stressed out stranded motorists by sitting in the back of the rescue truck and cracking gags all the way home.

Wash-Up-Stand-up - comedians take the place of toilet attendants (Bog Goblins) and entertain visitors as well as passing them towels and spraying them with bootlegged cologne.

Get-Down-Stand-Up - disco classes but with an hilarious twist.

A new way to waste some time...

Hello, my name is John and I write and perform comedy. I've been doing stand-up for nearly seven years and not long ago I left my full-time job to concentrate on writing narrative comedy for TV and radio.

That means I've got to use stand-up to pay the bills. I have a house, a wife on maternity leave, a baby daughter, a dog and two cars. I'd better start being really funny.

That does not mean this is going to be a funny blog.

In fact I don't know what this blog is going to be. My original idea was that it could follow my fledgling comedy writers career, as I attempt to make something resembling a decent wage from it and maybe giving a bit of insight into the business from a new writers point of view.

What it will probably become wil be:
1. neglected
2. a new way to waste time when I should be working
3. very moany
4. tragic
5. desperate
6. all of the above.

we'll see.