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Stanley McHale is a single man rapidly approaching thirty who loves and dreams of the same things he did when he was seventeen. But the band was never formed, the novel never finished, and the ill-chosen career in stand-up comedy is giving him more headaches than headlines. With the self-imposed deadline of his thirtieth birthday to either make an international success of himself or go and work in Woolworths, why not pull yourself up ringside seats for the tragically inevitable descent into mania and psychosis by reading his increasingly inane, pedantic, desperate, harrowing and wretched daily diary. It'll make you feel a whole lot better about yourself.

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March 2006 Archives

Friday 31st March 2006

Posted by on March 31, 2006 4:39 PM

After two days of non activity on the book it was harder to get started again today, that momentum thing coming into play. Only two days off and it’s hard. But after typically making distractions for myself, doing lots of washing up and finding things to put in the washing machine, I finally sat down and made good progress. Only one chapter done, but it was long at 4,100 words and that’s enough for one day. It tired me out, anyway.

I tried working downstairs at first which is stupid because there’s more to distract me, but the mysteriously perpetual DIY of my neighbour ruined that I went upstairs. I don’t know what he’s up to, the drilling is continuous. It’s either drilling or hammering – continual construction work – and it’s gone on for months. Months I tell you.

It’s actually made it into the book. My fictional author, James Crisp, spent some time in prison and it was there he came up with Digital Time to help pass the days. The first person he taught it to was Alan who was serving time for attempted murder. The reason for the attempted murder was the sound of his neighbour continually drilling, day and night, just drilling drilling drilling, month after month. So eventually he cracks, storms next door to complain, kicks the door in, and sees his neighbour surrounded by hundreds of planks of wood, each with hundreds of holes in, and the room a sea of sawdust. He wasn’t even making anything. So Alan wrestles the drill off him and tried to drill a hole in the neighbour until another resident pulls him back and restrains him. So if, when, the book comes out, you’ll be able to read that bit and say to the person next to you on the train, “this bit of the book I’m reading was inspired by real events�. And they’ll look at you and make an impressed face.

I’m not going to attempt to murder my neighbour though and just for the record if anything does happen to him it’s nothing to do with me.

Thursday 30th March 2006

Posted by on March 30, 2006 12:57 AM

God reads this Blog. After he read my comments yesterday about there being no spring as yet he provided me, and lots of other people, with a beautiful afternoon in which to drive up to Middlesbrough with the first signs of green on the trees and some daffodils to boot. Well done You. Also, and I thought this bordered on showing off, he made the most brilliant rainbow I have ever seen in my life.

It was a rainbow like no other. Indeed, you could see where in ended, about two fields away. You saw where it met the Earth, and I’ve never seen that before. Unfortunately, that stretch of the A19 is no stopping and there’s no hard shoulder else I would definitely have stopped and gone to get the pot of gold that would have rightfully have been mine. I might have split it with the farmer had he turned up, or it was too heavy to carry all by myself, which probably been the case. Gold weights a great deal. It’s God’s own metal, which is why he puts it at the end of His rainbows and has called if after Him but with an extra ‘l’ in it so people don’t get mixed up.

I can’t get across to you how good this rainbow was, but maybe this will help. I decided, at 70mph, to take a photo of it using my mobile phone. In the rain. On a duel carriageway covered in cones for road works. It was the most dangerous thing I’ve ever done behind the wheel of a car. One of the most dangerous things ANYONE has ever done behind the wheel of a car, surely. Especially as I turned off my windscreen wipers to try and get a shot where they didn’t interrupt the view and then tried to half press the trigger to get the rainbow into focus, all without looking at the road. Utter madness. And the mistake I’d made there, the schoolboy error, is that you can’t focus a camera on light. Or air. I am quite incredibly stupid.

And what if a Policeman had seen me? I’d have been banned from driving for ever. I’ve heard of people getting banned for texting, as they should, but taking photos of a rainbow? Worse.

Wednesday 29th March 2006

Posted by on March 29, 2006 1:43 PM

As I mentioned yesterday, I overdid it in The Court last night and didn’t spring out of bed at 8am feeling like a ray of sunshine. I am a fool to myself.

So I got nothing done on the book today, and walked to my car mid-afternoon to drive to Nottingham annoyed with my idiot ways. Nothing’s more important to me at the moment than getting this book done and although I’m generally proud of my progress and general discipline, I do go out of my way to make it harder on myself sometimes. I’m like Graham Greene, he was a martini man and probably missed out loads of days writing because of it. Mind, he did write about thirty books so it can’t have had that much of a detrimental effect. That’s only about one a year though. Lazy. But in contrast, his books were brilliant and not about a nonsense theory.

The drive was pleasant enough though and I was enjoying the fact we’ve got longer evenings since the clocks went forward, but also rather mystified at the lack of spring. There is no sign of spring in any of the trees or hedgerows, and yet it most certainly is spring, our weather’s just been so bad as to force NATURE to think otherwise. Why is it still so cold?

Perhaps spring, the best time of year in for my money, has been cancelled by some evil wintry genius, a little bit like someone or something cancelling Christmas in children’s stories? Perhaps the plan is to keep us in perpetual winter and therefore crush our spirits before the invasion… That or it’s BA wanting to promote their sunny destinations using black magic. It’s one or t’other.

I was driving along the most natural route to Nottingham and was approaching Stoke on the A500. Something had been bugging me all the way down and it was only then, after it was too late, I realised what it was. Stoke! Ye Gads, no! The single most impassable place traffic-wise in the UK, and I’d fallen into it’s web again. It’s evil, potteries web. I checked the clock on the dashboard – 5pm! Good Lord! This was worse than I thought – rush-hour in the worse place for traffic in the UK. I was doomed.

As I thought this the row of stranded, burnt out and looted cars presented itself to me as I turned a bend. The traffic jam to end them all. And so for the next hour I didn’t go anywhere. The trouble with Stoke is that they’ve dug it all up under a project called the ‘Pathfinder Scheme’, which is ironically titled because it means you can’t find a path through Stoke. It’s one almighty mess. Has been for well over a year. Imagine if someone took apart the computer you are sat in front of now, removed every single part, then dismantled every single one of those parts to individual and microscopic bits of plastic, wire, and metal, and then threw the whole lot over a cliff and said “Put that back together and make it work better than ever. Using this pneumatic drill.� That’s what they’ve done to Stoke.

Tuesday 28th March 2006

Posted by on March 28, 2006 1:33 PM

The most productive day yet book-wise, with two chapters and another fiddly section done. It took me from 8.30am to 7pm, with only minimal breaks for pottering around the house rehearsing my Nobel prize for literature acceptance speech, looking out the window, staring at a wall, etc. I know most people have proper jobs and would love to be able to just sit about writing nonsense, but I did find it genuinely tiring. I ended the day with a warm feeling of satisfaction, knowing that I’d outdone my daily quota but also written some of my favourite stuff so far. The author, Dr James Crisp, is really beginning to loose the plot now and just talk about his ex-wife instead of staying ‘on message’ and teaching the mechanics of Digital Time, which makes it fun to write.

But that’s pretty much all I did all day save go out for a pint about 9pm and then some naughty martinis later as a sort of self-defeating reward, (because I write this on the 29th having had to have a martini-induced late start to the day) so I thought I’d reply to some of the feedback I’ve got through recently. I do like it when people leave comments. No-body ever does, and so when one appears it’s a treat.

Norbert’s written in as an ex-pat living in America. Firstly he does me the honour of calling this Blog ‘mildly amusing’ which I think we should really use on the Echo website to publicise it further. I can think of no higher or most accurate accolade. Anyway, his first point is about the backlog of entries on the site because he pedantically read them all after reading the first couple, which I admire, but do find slightly autistic and obsessive – no offence Norbert. He makes the autistic and correct point that if you click on one of the months you just get a list of all the entries in one long page, which isn’t ideal. I agree, and would ideally like to be able to click on a month and then see another menu appear of all the days within it so you can click straight to an entry. I’ve mentioned this to the lads at icLiverpool and will do again.

‘You refer to only having 6 readers and I fear you may be right because despite plugging Lizzie Nunnery sycophantically numerous times, her website has only had 180 odd hits’ says Norbert.

Monday 27th March 2006

Posted by on March 27, 2006 10:51 AM

Today was Michelle’s first day at her new job and I was up and about early preparing coffee and boiled eggs like a fussy Mother. I also did the school run.

She’s working over at the ex-Mersey TV studios in Childwall, an unremarkable and mysteriously desired suburb of Liverpool and I gladly offered to drive her in. Obviously I knew it would be rush hour, and obviously I knew this would slow things up, but the round trip took me an hour and a half. Childwall is about a YARD from where I live. It’s a stone’s throw. It’s honestly not more than… five miles? And it was raining heavily and perpetually which obviously means everyone forgets how to drive which makes matters worse. It’s a curious affliction for such a wet country, rain making everyone – bar me, natch – forget how to drive. But it’s a very real one. Yeah, so, 90 minutes. Not doing that again.

The studios are down a secluded lane and you’re greeted at the bottom by the curious sight of Grange Hill School, because the programme’s made there. It’s a very big building, does look exactly like a school, and I’m only sorry I don’t watch the re-launched kids’ show now because then the moment would have been beautifully surreal. But it was still strange arriving at a comprehensive school I remember well from my youth that I always thought was in the wastelands of outer East London. It would also have been great had a big sausage on a fork appeared in front of my eyes as I looked at the place. For readers outside the UK, you’ll have to believe me when I say that was the funniest thing anyone’s ever written.

Grange Hill was a programme set in a roughhouse comprehensive school that middle class parents got in a tizz about in the late eighties and early nineties. I can’t remember if mine did. Actually I believe they did. Did you, Mum? Well a lot of parents thought that it would be a bad idea for their grammar or private school educated brethren to witness poor children getting up to no good and dropping their H’s, and barred their children from watching it. It was actually quite normal to be banned from watching Grange Hill as a child if you were middle class, which is bizarre. It’s especially strange as the story lines in Grange Hill were never anything but moralistic and educational, because it was a children’s programme made for children. It dealt with drugs, pregnancy, things like that. Anyway it was strange to be doing a 3 point turn in my car next to the entrance to Britain’s most famous fictional school pre-Hogwarts and just to make the situation more memorable I took some heroin and shouted “Sod off, Mrs McClusky� at what might have been the staff room. It had plants in the window anyway.

Sunday 26th March 2006

Posted by on March 26, 2006 1:34 AM

I have a surprise lodger. That’s normally what people say if a mouse appears in their kitchen or they feel like there might be a ghost haunting the place, but in this instance my guest is neither vermin or spectral, she is an actual alive human being called Michelle. The same Michelle who’s birthday I attended in Manchester last Monday – I know you like to keep abreast.

She’s works in that new fangled medium the youth call ‘Television’ and contracted to a programme being made at Campus Manor studios here in The ‘Pool called The Outsiders. It’s an ITV drama and sounds pretty good - a little like The Avengers. So she’ll be looking for somewhere to rent in Liverpool and until she does I've offered my roof.

So today I got nothing done on the book for the second day running (I’m going to BLAST it on Monday – two chapters or cut off a finger) because I was tidying and hoovering the place. I now sleep on a bed in my office and have done for ages so she can have my old room, the Master Suite if you will, and I removed all disgusting male things from it today that might offend her delicate girl sensibilities, emptied a wardrobe and a few drawers, and removed all my stuff from the bathroom. She’s getting a sweet deal – I’m clearly the most hospitable person in the world. Or in my block. On just on my floor perhaps. Okay, out of me and my neighbour I’m the most hospitable.

I wonder how this will change the way I live my life? I’ve never really homed with anyone before. The last time I did was in the old fashioned year 2000 and again it was Michelle who lodged for a few weeks. Maybe it was months. But I’ve had a six year break from co-inhabiting and to be honest it will make a welcome change. Not if it was anyone, I must point out. Not if it was Rose West. Or Jonathan King. But if it’s a friend, who Michelle certainly is, then it’s going to beneficial I think. I’m going to try and get up at the same time in the mornings as her, about seven, and stick with that. I’ll get bloody loads done. I’ll be Stanley ‘two chapters’ McHale to one and all. I can do and get fresh milk and a paper every morning from The Spar. It’s going to be a new beginning.

“What you’ve done there, Stan, is confuse a bright new start with the daily drudge that almost every other person in the world has to endure and loathe. It’s only your ridiculously distorted view of what constitutes hard work that makes this probably non-existent and doomed change appealing.�

That might well be, but I’m still looking forward to it. This is the truth – as soon as this book’s finished I’m starting another, because I don’t like the thought of having nothing to get on with. It will be the novel I talked about ages ago called The Best Idea Of The Year. It’s already plotted out. I’ll spend two months on that, and in the process cover some more literary bases. I’m perhaps becoming obsessive about writing. But that’s better than avoiding it, surely?

Saturday 25th March 2006

Posted by on March 25, 2006 12:24 AM

I made it a law unto myself a long while ago to never venture into town on a Saturday and I was reminded of why today. It’s not a pretty sight. There’s too many people buying stuff they don’t need and arguing with people they don’t like. If they were only sensible they’d all be self employed and do their shopping on a Tuesday afternoon like any self respecting dandy.

I happened to bump into K on Church Street and we decided to go and find somewhere to get a coffee but it was impossible. We looked through four or five places but each of them looked more like a punishment than a pleasure. Do people get enjoyment out of becoming a member of this throng every week? Do some people consider it part of their social calendar? They should get out less.

To add to the malady, it was the Liverpool derby today and so the pubs were full to bursting (and the streets outside with people trying to see a TV through the window) with fans watching Liverpool beat Everton 3-1. That made for a slightly charged atmosphere to add to the sheer numbers of people looking at clothes they wont wear and toys they wont play with. Eurgh!

I’m not very tolerant of this sort of thing.

I was in town to meet a bloke who’d got in contact with me with some spare Morrissey tickets for the upcoming tour. I’d sent him a cheque a little while back, he now had the tickets, and although he lives in Chester he was in town for the match so it was a good day to meet up and exchange the merchandise over a pint in Doctor Duncan’s. He’s a very pleasant chap called Andrew and it’s nice meeting fellow Morrissey nerds because you offload and swap all your nerdy information. You can discuss things that would be acceptable to talk about when you’re 17, but approaching 30?

I spoke to A on the telephone walking into town and told her where I was going and why. She found it amusing that a supposedly mature person was going to more than one gig on their favourite artists' tour. She correctly pointed out it’s the behaviour of an obsessive teenager. She is also a Morrissey fan but she is going to no gigs on this tour. She has a responcible job in TV and has seemingly left all that behind her. But not me! I am still a juvenile and idealistic fan, thrilling to the fact I am now off to four of his gigs in a very short space of time next month. Like a big idiot. I don’t care.

Friday 24th March 2006

Posted by on March 24, 2006 12:57 PM

The watch situation is spiralling out of control. I’ve managed to stop the audible alarms, but I cannot stop the vibrating ones, and despite being in a different room (a different FLOOR) to the watch this morning it managed to wake me up. It was on a table downstairs and had started vibrating, sending low, rumbling pulses around my home, and eventually getting into my head enough for it to wake me. This is almost worse than an audible alarm because you’re involuntarily listening to a kind of physical frequency instead of a beep and that’s harder to block out.

What am I going to do with this thing? I could bury it in a pile of cushions but the fact is I bought it to get some practical use from it – I want to wear it, not post it to Australia so as to never hear it’s infuriating rumbles or sounds ever again. But it would be vibrating in the hold of the plane and maybe those vibrations would spread to the body of the plane, increase, and cause it to break apart mid flight. It would be a bomb of sorts. Or maybe if it did get to Australia the vibrations would somehow enter the Earth’s core and still get back to me. This watch might bring about the end of the World.

Perhaps I’m being overdramatic. But it’s the most annoying thing I’ve ever been witness to. I could turn Pop Idol off. I can’t turn this watch off. It knows no mercy.

It actually woke me from a strange and interesting dream so I dislike it even more for that. I’ve been having quite a few curious dream recently. In this one I was at a school reunion, and all of my peers from school were there. What was odd about it wasn’t just that there were people there I’d long forgotten and somehow remembered whilst asleep, but that they had all aged accurately. They didn’t look like the 16 year old versions of themselves, they looked like the 29 year old versions of themselves. What would be really strange is if I ever met any of them in the next few months and they looked exactly like they did in my dream. That would be odd, huh?

“Yes it WOULD be odd, Stan. But it hasn’t happened, has it? So it’s not odd in the least.�

Imagine if I had managed to visualise people I used to know many years ago as they are now though. They looked pretty believable. They didn’t just look like 16 year olds in sensible clothes, minus a skateboard. They had genuinely aged.

“Again, that would only be strange if you HAD somehow done that. But you’ve not.�

Thursday 23rd March 2006

Posted by on March 23, 2006 12:54 AM

My watch for the deaf has started malfunctioning. This is the one that I bought because despite it being ugly has a special countdown timer which causes it to vibrate when the timer gets to zero, very handy for supplely timing stand-up sets without the audience knowing, you see. Lots of comedians wear them.

Anyway it’s started continually beeping and vibrating at seemingly random points throughout the hour and I don’t know why. There are functions on it whereby you can set repeat alarms so that deaf people can remember lots of stuff, according to the instructions. I don’t know why deaf people have more to remember than able-eared folk. The instructions actually say that you can set alarms, and I quote, “to remind you to take medication�. What sort of medication do deaf people need? A pill shaped like a big, brass ear trumpet? You don’t need extra mediation if you’re deaf and that’s a fact. Perhaps it’s for the old and deaf. No! Being deaf doesn’t effect your memory – it makes no sense.

And the way this watch is continually going off…. No-body takes that much medication. This watch is now vibrating and beeping about ten times an hour. Who’s it designed for? Stephen Hawking’s lab monkey? There is not enough medication in the world to satisfy this watches constant demands. You’d be like David Gest if you took that much medication.

So this watch is driving me berserk now. I’ve tried everything. I’ve reset every alarm, and still it beeps continually and then vibrates. I have to keep wearing it or have it in the immediate vicinity because if I don’t it starts going off in another room and won’t stop until I go and find it and press a series of buttons in a complicated code that’s similar to launching a nuclear weapon from inside a special high-tech mountain.

I don’t know what to do. I need the watch for my work but I can’t continue having it on my wrist or around me because I will go insane. I could buy a new one whilst putting this one inside a block of concrete and dropping it down a mine but I don’t want to have to do that.

God, it’s just gone off again. This is nuts.

Wednesday 22nd March 2006

Posted by on March 22, 2006 2:09 PM

I was up early and managed to write two whole chapters of the book by 5pm, a total of about 5,000 words. I am clearly the best at writing books in the world. No, if I was to do that amount of writing every day then an entire book could be written in a couple of weeks. Which makes me wonder – why haven’t I just done that then? Instead of farting about and making up excuses and then not doing any work on the book for about three months at one desperate stage. I am an idiot. I’ve discovered that all I need to work productively is a bit of momentum, and if that momentum goes (i.e. I miss just ONE day of writing) then it all falls apart again.

When this book is finished (looking at mid-April at my current rate of progress and providing I write six chapters a week) there is a sequel to it, and indeed a third one too – all in a similar vein (fake self-help books written by a deranged Californian guru), and so I would try and have the 2nd one all planned out and then attacked in a mammoth two week, booze free, frenzy. That would be incredible if it worked. I might go a bit mental trying to write a book in a fortnight, but then the author’s supposed to be slightly mad and so that might help things along nicely. Help with the prose.

That’s clearly the way forward, especially if I’m ever lucky enough to make lots of money from my nonsensical outpourings. One book a year, and just two weeks spent behind a computer screen. The rest of the time can be spent on my own island in the South Pacific made of special sand that you can eat and special lakes that are made of the most fabulous Tiki cocktails known to man. It would be the greatest place on Earth, and I would only have to spend two weeks writing one pointless book a year to earn it. Mwah-ha-ha-ha! That’s a plan…

Long way to go though. Let’s get this first one finished and then find a publisher, hey? And then convince the publisher to print about twenty million copies. And then somehow sell them all. Even though the book is, as I’ve explained, absolute nonsense.

One step at a time.

Tuesday 21st March 2006

Posted by on March 21, 2006 9:44 PM

Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear. It looks like I might have to get my affairs in order and say goodbye to my friends and loved ones before the end of June because there are no concrete guarantees I’ll live to see July. I’ve not been diagnosed with anything fatal, but I might as well have been. For June the 23rd to 25th sees the 3rd Annual Modern Drunkard convention take place in Las Vegas.

It looks like I’m set for a return to the event that I filmed last year for my documentary Things To Do In Denver When You’re Drunk. There’s no stopping the inevitability of this. No way out and no excuses.

It would in theory be perfectly possible for me not to go, but the event is organised by Modern Drunkard Magazine, and I am now friends with those responcible for the publication. To not show my face would be very poor form. AND, it now looks like I’ll be doing some stand-up at the event, therefore meaning I have a professional responsibility to be there. IT'S ALL FOR MY CAREER, DAD. Dash it all – it looks like the madness is going to happen all over again.

I’ve probably not mentioned the Modern Drunkard as much as I should since starting this Blog. It’s a beautiful, funny and revolutionary magazine that comes out of Denver, Colorado. It stands up for the recreational drinker in a world that's becomming more and more wary, judgemental and prohibitionist. It's the brave last stand against the killjoys.

I was made aware of it about this time last year when my American friend Jennifer informed me not just of it’s existence, but the fact they were hosting a convention advertised as ‘The best three days you’ll never remember’. I was intrigued, travelled out to Atlanta to meet up with Jen and then together we headed for Denver. It was full-bore insanity all the way and I had just about the best weekend of my life. Longer term readers will know that I revisited last November and upped the ante by getting through an abundance of beautiful cocktails at a bar called Tiki Boyd’s, a week long endurance test that got reported in the latest issue of the magazine. Which is good going.

And so now I’m faced with June… Hell, it’s hardly a Herculean task. Get on a plane. Get drunk. Get back on the plane. But it never seems to run quite a smoothly as that. Nothing does when you don’t know which direction is up and which is down. And then there’s the added joy of doing stand-up to perhaps the drunkest collection of international boozeheads to have ever congregated in one place. How can I turn this down? I owe this to myself. And the book will be completely done. The stand-up work's going fine. This will be my summer holiday. But unlike Cliff, I'm going where the bars shine brightly. To hell with the sea.

Monday 20th March 2006

Posted by on March 20, 2006 6:05 PM

I was driving down the motorway this evening when I spotted a Police car up ahead, driving in the same direction. Other motorists had spotted it too, and all were now driving at exactly 70 mph, because that’s the speed you drive at when you see a Police car.

It’s not the speed you normally travel down the motorway at. Normally you travel at 80, 90, even 100 mph if it’s clear. But we’re very cowardly when we spot a Police car and adhere to the speed limit like school children suddenly behaving themselves when the lookout says “Teacher’s coming!�.

So when a Police car drives down the motorway, at 70 mph unless there’s an emergency so as to set the correct example to others, every other car around them is also doing a top speed of 70. Do the Police therefore think that everyone in the country drives at that speed? They can’t ever see anyone but crooks go about it. They must think we’re the law abiding drivers in the world.

They must realise we’re only slowing for them, surely? Well they must because when they’re off duty and in their own civilian cars they probably drive at more than 70 mph down the motorway like everybody else, and have cars overtaking them. So it must be quite annoying for a Police driver after a while, knowing that everyone around him are putting on a bit of an act and driving at an atypically slow and sensible speed. If I was a Police driver I’d be screaming “It’s okay! Do 80! I don’t mind. Stop holding yourselves back and being such suck-ups. Go!�

If you passed a Police car doing 90, what do you think the chances are of getting told to pull over? Pretty slim. If you were to be outlandish enough to scream past at over 100, I think they’d be pretty duty bound to turn on their siren, but 90? What about 85? Surely they’re not going to bother. Because it’s all work, isn’t it? They don’t want to have to book someone for speeding. They want to stay in their nice warm cars talking about football and whatnot.

I propose an experiment by which we all take to the motorway in a convoy until we spot a Police car. Then one of us should pass it at 75 mph, the next at 80 mph, and the next at 85, etc, to see what the cut-off limit is. I’d say 90. Then we all chip in to pay the fine so it won’t really leave anyone out of pocket to any great degree. Yes, that’s a very good experiment. It will depend a lot on what sort of a day the traffic officer’s having, and of course their general personality, so it might be worth doing it a number of times on different routes, and then coming up with an average speed at which we got pulled over. When that average speed is calculated, we will know what the safe limit is to travel on the motorway in the presence of the law.

Sunday 19th March 2006

Posted by on March 19, 2006 1:44 AM

A fortuitous day in many ways. I played around with some new stuff for the book at lunchtime, adding a new section but mainly playing unnecessarily with fonts and whatnot. This is exactly the same as tidying my sock drawer. Fonts are not important in the first draft of a book. Never have been, never will be. This means I’ve still managed to create a way of delaying and stalling when sat in front of my computer (and not recleaning the kitchen) which doesn’t even involve the internet. I’m a delaying maverick.

But today wasn’t bookmarked as a book day and so it’s not officially a waste of time. The extra bits I did add are a kind of bonus. The main thing today was to drive down to Nottingham and do a show at Nottingham Trent University. I was wary of missing Super Fulham’s crucial but obviously futile match with Champions-elect Chelsea and so decided I’d listen to it on Radio Five Live on the drive down instead of sitting in a pub and watching them rattle goal after goal past us. I know we’re officially Super, but if Liverpool could put five past us on Wednesday, how many would Chelsea score?

I arrived in Nottingham, parked up, and turned the radio off. We were 1-0 up at half time. This was unlikely, but I didn’t get over excited. I knew we’d loose, and I mentally bet on 3 goals to 1.

The gig tonight is was with K and I walked to Nottingham’s train station where we’d agreed to meet. I don’t know why I continue to call him ‘K’ on this site. I think I thought it sounded rather like the style a diarist might use, especially one who’s day to day life with celebrity types would benefit from discretion, but it doesn’t really. It just looks messy. I suppose there’s no harm in continuing to call him ‘K’. I could call him ‘Keith’, because that’s his name, but I think ‘K’ will do for now. Anyway, I said that it was quite important that we didn’t catch up on gossip but watch the second half of the game on TV and so settled in a pub next door to the station and saw out the agonising next 51 minutes, including stoppage time, of football in which Fulham were valiant, brave, but under the cosh for most of it. Chelsea scored to make it 1-1, but then a remarkable conversation between the referee and the linesman (surrounded by Fulham players furiously protesting) resulted in the ‘goal’ being disallowed and the 1-0 score line remaining.

And that, somehow, is how it stayed. Fulham beat Chelsea for the first time since the 60’s and I was delighted. Sometimes it’s nice to be reminded how super Super Fulham can be. And that is VERY super.

A pitch invasion by the fans at the end only highlighted the relevance of the result. I was beaming.

We went for something to eat before driving out to the University campus, which was five miles out of town. The venue the gig was supposedly in was deserted, not a single customer in the huge space, and the manager seemed embarrassed and said the show might not go ahead. We headed upstairs to the office to wait.

Saturday 18th March 2006

Posted by on March 18, 2006 11:58 AM

I was interested to see the hundred thousand-odd people who turned out in Belgrade for Slobodan Milosevic’s burial. What was he to his friends? Slob or Slobber? Anyhow there were about 100,000 of them apparently, all genuinely upset, and it does show that there are always two sides to anything. We see him as a war criminal, standing trial for genocide, whilst many others see him as a hero. And the others aren’t deluded. They’re not just misinformed or stupid, they think that for a reason.

I don’t know what reason, though. It seems clear to me that he was guilty, because no-one else really could be, but I do sometimes wonder if it’s just that we here in ze Vest only get our news from Western news agencies and we do pretty much trust them implicitly. People here go "well, actually, I don’t get my news from any of Rupert Murdoch’s babies" but so what? You’re getting it from the BBC then. Or from The Independent newspaper. You’re not getting it from Serbia.

Our bias and scepticism of Eastern news agencies as obvious propaganda (for some reason) mean that we wouldn’t consider press reports by Eastern sources to be anything other than disinformation. We think the only way to get accurate news is to cleverly scan the range of Western news sources and come to our own conclusions. But I think that’s just like looking upon a line-up of Premiership footballers and trying to find the tasteful one. The only way to find out what the hell happened in Serbia would be to go there and ask people.

But I mention this because I do wonder what was said at his funeral, if indeed he was a mass murderer and tyrant, which I think he was. They always gloss people’s lives up at funerals. They never really give an honest account of that life, or the fact that some people were such atheists (like me) or such bastards that they shouldn’t really be getting a religious service anyway. A malicious conman will be described with a smile at his funeral by the vicar as “a bit of a wheeler-dealer� at which the congregation with laugh and nod their heads as if to say “yeah… he certainly was, bless him. Especially when he broke my leg and killed my dog because I owed him thirty pounds. Dear me… What a character old Dave was.�

Friday 17th March 2006

Posted by on March 17, 2006 1:14 AM

I did a gig tonight in a place called Winsford, which is in Cheshire. It seems all my shows are in Cheshire at the moment. I am the only comic in history doing a tour of Cheshire. All other counties and stupid. I only like doing gigs in Cheshire.

That’s not true but it’s a strange coincidence. I get work through my agent (being too lazy to get it myself) and it just so happens all the gigs have been in Cheshire lately. Perhaps my agent, in her wisdom, has decided that whilst I’m not good enough to become nationally or internationally famous, I am good enough to be really famous in one county. I will be the King of Cheshire, and soon I’ll be able to command gigantic audiences in cities like Chester and… just Chester.

The place I performed in tonight was called De Bees Music Hall and its strange name was a topic of on-stage conversation with the audience. I think it sounds Dutch. I made some joke about someone called Deborah owning the venue and being annoyed when she got all the promotional stuff back at the printers and saying ‘No! It’s DEBBIE’S, not De Bees. You idiots.’ But I don’t think that’s what happened.

Anyway I mention the venue because they seem to specialise in putting on cover bands. I’ve never been to see a cover band, I don’t think, but they do interest me. I like the idea that a group of people like a certain band so much that they form their own band just to perform their songs. But the best thing about them is the names…

There was one advertised on a poster in De Beers that made me chuckle. They were a Crowded House cover band from Liverpool, called… Crowded Scouse. I was laughing about this great/rubbish name with another comic on the bill called Craig Deeley said there’s a Jon Bon Jovi cover band in Newcastle called Jon Bon Geordie. That’s amazing!

I want to go and see Crowded Scouse. I’m not really a fan of Crowded House, and only know one song, the one that goes ‘Everywhere you go, always take the weather with you, everywhere you go-o-o, always take the weather.’ The trouble with Crowded Scouse singing that is that the weather in Liverpool is often quite cold and miserable, unlike in New Zealand where the original band come from, and so taking it with you everywhere you went might annoy people. Especially if Crowded Scouse did a tour of the Mediterranean , or Africa, then audiences would loathe them for bringing all the wet and windy weather with them. Unless there was a drought. Then Crowded Scouse might come in very handy.

Thursday 16th March 2006

Posted by on March 16, 2006 12:23 AM

Writing a book has all sorts of unforeseen advantages, aside from the more obvious ones like being able to continually bore people by saying you’re writing one. One of them is that you get so much done around the house whilst making up excuses not to sit down and get on with it. I’ve tidied every single room, I’ve sorted out my sock drawer, I’ve cleaned the kitchen so often you could manufacture microchips in there now. (The sort that go in a computer and must be made in an entirely dust free environment, not the poor quality chips you make in a microwave and must be made in a filthy or drunken environment).

If you’ve got a load of things that need doing and have been put off for ages, simply try writing a book. The fear and apprehension that comes with needing to type the first sentence of a new chapter will inspire you to do loads of other constructive things with your time. If I didn’t live in a fifth floor rented flat I’d probably have built a conservatory or something by now. Out of matchsticks. Anything to avoid sitting down at the computer and getting on with it.

Which is odd because I do really enjoy the process when I get going. It makes me laugh out loud, which is a positive sign when writing a supposedly funny book, and the feeling of satisfaction when completing a chapter is immense and genuinely exciting. So why the continued delays? Especially as I now have my cool New York literary agent friend champing at the bit to have a look at it?

I wonder if there’s some sort of special motivational course you can go on to achieve extra focus and drive? It’s what I need. Actually, I don’t need focus and drive, I have that, and I am getting a chapter a day done which is good going, but I do need to attend a course that specifically teaches me not to dilly dally about the place correcting all the cutlery in the drawer before I can think about getting started. I don’t care less about the cutlery, I don’t have OCD or anything, just that it’s a good distraction.

The internet is the ultimate distraction of all. And of course it’s in exactly the same place as my computer which I use for writing the book. It’s the final distraction when everything else had been autisticly straightened or cleaned. The internet is distracting by it’s very nature. It’s a thing that contains EVERYTHING. And it’s remarkably easy to get distracted by EVERYTHING. I think obsessive comic Dave Gorman did a routine on that. It’s true. How can you not be distracted by something that holds the answers to everything. And features naked women. It’s almost as if the internet has been invented just to distract us from doing something worthwhile.

Wednesday 15th March 2006

Posted by on March 15, 2006 10:42 AM

I was annoyed to wake up at about eleven and not eight, the hour the alarm on my mobile phone was set for. It turns out the phone was set to vibrate. What sort of alarm is that? Surely the phone’s designers must have thought to themselves that lots of people considerately have their phone on vibrate all day so as not to pollute the air with constant ring tones, but these same people will not have the senses of a spider and therefore not be able to notice the tiny vibrations caused by a silently ringing phone when they are peacefully asleep.

The only advantage of a vibrating alarm is for the deaf, but as we established in yesterday’s entry they could purchase the VibraLite 3 wristwatch and wear that in bed. OR, if having to buy a special watch seems a little discriminatory against those who are hard of hearing, they should design the phone so it both vibrates AND makes an audible alarm, thus serving everybody properly.

I don’t even think a mobile phone would be a suitable vibrating alarm for the hard of hearing. You’d need to keep it very close to your person, presumably in the top pocket of your pyjamas, and unfortunately it’s no longer 1973 and most people no longer wear P.J’s.

So how do deaf people set an alarm? It would have to have a very heavy vibrating feature, akin to a minor earth tremor. What I’d do is set up some sort of Wallace And Grommit style contraption out of levers and rope that was attached to my alarm clock, was triggered when the big hand clicked onto the hour, set off an intricate series of cogs and pullies before tipping a bucket of iced water over my face from the ceiling. ‘I think I’ll call it my deaf-o-waker-upper, Lad.’

So the result of this unwanted lie-in was that I got less done on the book today than I wanted. About two thousand words, half my daily quota. It will have to be a long day tomorrow to make up. I’m pleased at how this annoyed me though. I’m pleased that I was disappointed at the missed morning’s work. It’s promising.

Tuesday 14th March 2006

Posted by on March 14, 2006 3:49 PM

Post! Glorious post! And not just any old post today, I’ll mark you, it was a package! In a brown box, very much like Postman Pat used to deliver. Although mine sadly lacked a bit of rough twine or string finished in a bow on top, as every Postman Pat parcel had without exception.

It was from a company that have a website selling stuff to deaf people. And by that, I mean products specifically for use by the hard of hearing, I don’t mean products that sound really rubbish unless you’re a deaf person who couldn’t quite make out the details. Like ‘Solid, bold, candlesticks’ which are just quite sturdy and inexpensive candlesticks but the deaf person thought were ‘solid gold candlesticks’ and spent £3,000 on. No, it’s not that. It’s useful products for the deaf.

I am not deaf, but none the less have bought a watch from them. It’s not even a very attractive watch, but it’s the only watch in the land that has a countdown facility on it which makes the watch vibrate when it reaches zero. Most watches with countdown facilities will simply bleep when it reaches zero, but of course this is no good for a deaf person, they need it to vibrate. And so do I. Because I am a stand-up comedian.

The more thoughtful of you will see why this is useful automatically but for those not as blessed I shall explain. You normally have to perform to a strict time limit when doing stand-up in clubs, and to get this right you need a way of keeping time, but it’s distracting for both you and the audience if you keep checking your watch. So you need a discreet signal. Some clubs have a light at the back of the room which comes on a couple of minutes before your allotted time is up so that you know to wrap things up, but not many establishments have gone to this elaborate expense and so it’s down to the comic to keep track. This watch will do that for me. If required to do half an hour, I’ll set my timer to count down from 28 minutes or so and leave the stage exactly on 30, inspiring awe and wonder in the promoter at how I’ve managed to somehow judge it without looking at my watch.

Monday 13th March 2006

Posted by on March 13, 2006 10:05 AM

I spent the day in Manchester doing my best not going to catch the train home. It’s a frustrating experience, getting a train from Manc Land to Scouse Land (official Roman names), because although Manchester is a big rail terminus, the trains to Liverpool are through trains that come in from other parts of the country and leave from a special part of Piccadilly Station, called platforms 13 and 14, detached from the main building. There is so much traffic on these two tracks that your train will never turn up when advertised because they are held in a queue, and this is made worse by the accurate arrival time never being settled upon.

So if you’re waiting for the 14.16 service, it will be on a screen with the expected arrival time of, say, 14.19 next to it. Then the expected arrival time will change to 14.21. Then 14.25. Then 14.31. Then 14.38. Then 14.42, until it’s almost time for the next scheduled service to arrive so they’ll cancel the original one (it vanishes from the screen which makes your fear for the lives of those souls already on it – as if it’s been hit by some futuristic gamma-ray – but in fact has been diverted into the main terminus) and then the process of waiting for the next one begins. It’s a hugely frustrating experience.

You can catch the same service from the next station, a few hundred meters down this hectic stretch of Victorian railway, which is called Manchester Oxford Road. This is worse because the facilities are, if anything, humbler, and when the train does eventually show it’s sorry face it’s normally full to bursting with all the people that have been sat around for hours at Piccadilly.

If only we had more a more relaxed attitude towards rail passenger safety, like in India, and allowed people to travel on the roof of the train or hang off the sides then this would be some sort of blessing, because surely travelling on the roof is brilliant fun, but unfortunately the killjoys in charge have deemed this highly inappropriate and lethal behaviour and so it’s forbidden.

Sunday 12th March 2006

Posted by on March 12, 2006 8:37 AM

Loads of snow. It started at 2am last night and has been falling as a blizzard since then. Proper, good, swirling arcs of snow in the wind and it’s settled a treat.

Snow is the only meteorological phenomena we still get excited about in this country as opposed to our normal weather default setting of moaning. Snow and rainbows. No-one ever complains about ‘more bloody rainbows’. I suppose some people will moan about snow, if they’ve had weeks of it, but seeing as it’s rarer and rarer in these glorious artificially warm times, I think people still look upon the first real snow of the year with excitement and wonder.

You never get someone standing by a window and saying “Darling! Darling, come and look at this! Look out there. Look at that lovely wind.�

It’s only with snow. And rainbows.

I remember at school, when I was about eight, whenever there was snow you’d get someone saying “It’s God’s dandruff! Look! It’s God shaking his hair and all the dandruff’s coming out! Watch out, I’m going to throw some of God’s dandruff at you!�

And the children would say “No Sir. That’s not quite true. Snow is actually precipitation falling from clouds in the form of ice crystals when atmospheric conditions are cold enough but with enough moisture in the air.�

And Mr Presnell would say “No it’s not. It’s God’s dandruff! That’s why it’s white!�

And we’d wearily explain “No, it’s white because sunlight is white. And most natural substances absorb some sunlight and so despite the snowflake being made up of reflective crystals that reflect most of that light away, it still absorbs enough to take on a white appearance.�

And Mr Presnell would say “I’ve got a load of God’s dandruff here, watch out, I’m going to throw it in your face!�

And we’d say “Are you sure you’re qualified to teach geography in this school? Only you don’t seem to have