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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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August 2006 Archives

Thursday 31st August 2006

Posted by on August 31, 2006 1:26 PM

I made a pot of tea purposefully in preparation to sit down and watch Lovejoy today, such is my sick fascination with my new favourite programme, yet when after the great opening titles ended, I was appalled and sickened to see it was an episode I’ve already seen, only a couple of days ago on the same channel. What are ITV3 trying to pull? Here I am, praising them to the hilt on Tuesday (whilst, admittedly, calling the ITV group as a whole as cancerous, despicable and unwatchable) and now look how they repay me.

What’s distressing is that I still sat and watched it, my enjoyment only tempered slightly by knowing exactly what would happen. What is this new illness I have? This Lovejoy fever? Was it ever shown in America? Are you aware of it there?

What’s annoying about ITV3 showing the same episode of Lovejoy within two days is that there were 38 episodes of Lovejoy made, as well as two Christmas specials. Surely they could go a whole month without showing the same episode twice? It seems there is no depths to which this channel will sink, and therefore all I can do is declare war on them until they start showing Lovejoy in proper rotation (i.e. all the way through series one from start to finish, then all the way through series two, then three, four, five and six, then the Christmas specials, then start again) and stop making a mockery of the greatest detective/rouge antiques dealer based show ever made in the late eighties and early nineties.

It’s not as if Lovejoy’s memory hasn’t been dragged through the mud enough with the rise (and thankfully now fall) of Lovejoy copycat David Dickinson, who has clearly modelled himself as a kind of spiv version of Ian McShane’s character in real life. Dickinson became famous for a daytime TV show called Bargain Hunt, where two teams have a budget to look around a boot fair and buy three objects each before taking them to auction and seeing if they can make a profit. This profit could be anything up to £3, but they normally lost the lot because they bought tat and the antiques community knew it. Now, Lovejoy was always after a bargain, the scamp, but he would never have been reduced to scouring boot sales and certainly would never agree to host a rubbish if strangely addictive daytime TV show. Not Lovejoy’s style.

Wednesday 30th August 2006

Posted by on August 30, 2006 1:17 PM

Thanks to Sam for writing and saying how the six of you who read Pathetic Lot will give a boost to figures when The Idea launches and for pointing out that ‘from little acorns…’ etc. Thanks Sam, and I will be relying on your support. He also points out that it’s unfair not to share The Idea here, and I agree, but like I said the other day, it’s not that I’m being silly and secretive, or appearing to sound mysterious, it’s just that we want to have everything sorted first. I’ve written some documents on it already and I see no harm in posting those up here in the near future so you can enviously read about my new partnership and company, hopefully giving us some feedback.

My Mum also thinks it’s very unfair that my Dad knows all about it and she doesn’t. Yes, like I did that on purpose. So for my Mum, and you curious and doubting lot, I’ll tell you something else. It’s a website (currently we’re meeting the designer and next week the coder) called Global Hangover. The website address will be globalhangover.com. It’s two sites in one really, but the first allows you to track and monitor your work and social life, your expenditure, and general aspects such as your general happiness or work satisfaction. More specific things can include cigarettes smoked and hours slept, it’s up to you. This information is easily entered each day and is automated and computed by the site to allow you to analyse it in daily, monthly, or yearly graphs. Nothing too radical so far.

But as a community site, like Myspace but better, you can be invited by other members, or invite your friends, to share your social habits, and these statistics, in a way that superimposes one person’s graph on top of your own. You can also become friends simply by your location, profession, where you like to go out, or even your habits.

Even more fun is the ability, using a quite ingenious graphical arrangement, to compare information from country to country, or nationally one town to another. Who drunk more on average last night, Liverpool or Manchester? You can see that in a second. Who’s happier in their jobs, New Zealanders or Japanese? Again, that will take a second. Needless to say, the more worldwide members we get, the more accurate it will be.

Tuesday 29th August 2006

Posted by on August 29, 2006 12:52 AM

ITV is, as those of you living in the UK will appreciate, a national treasure of a TV channel which long ago became cancerous, despicable and – vitally – unwatchable. It’s manifesto in the 1960’s was impeccable, basically creating new and ground breaking quality television for the masses. Apologies again for UK readers, but I must explain how this came to be.

The most predominant force in UK broadcasting, then and now, is the BBC. And time was that they had the only two channels on the air. There were no add-on options, no clever hijacking of other networks illegally, it was a choice of two channels, neither of which were 24 hour, and they were BBC1 and, later, BBC2.

ITV, which stands for Independent Television, was the first commercial channel. It started as several regional channels in the late 50’s which gradually came under the one banner. It was the first channel in the UK to be paid for by advertising, thus being utterly unique to these shores at the time. The BBC is paid for by the public, as a kind of tax. If you own a TV, you have to fund the BBC. We accept this with an astonishing lack of resistance. So ITV came along, as the third channel (therefore often still referred to, even in the 400 channel modern age, as ‘three’) and did, for quite a long while, freshen things up. It took on all the exciting talent. Incredible as it might seem now, it also took the greater risks.

Coronation Street, a soap opera which is still its flagship show, was – before most of us were even alive – truly remarkable. The BBC wouldn’t have dared. Set in a working class suburb of industrial Manchester, it was the grittiest, funniest and arguably best thing on the box. Nowadays, ITV is in dire distress because of the crap it churns out, and Coronation Street is arguably the only thing it’s got going for it. It’s still the nation’s favourite programme. The often annoying television and restaurant critic A.A. Gill glibly pointed out recently in The Sunday Times that ITV should simply call themselves The Coronation Street Channel and they’d do far better. He’s probably almost right.

Monday 28th August 2006

Posted by on August 28, 2006 10:34 AM

It’s a well known fact that locksmiths are rip off merchants at the best of times, but try getting one out on a bank holiday. I could have waited for tomorrow I suppose and asked to stay with a friend tonight, but I really wanted to be back in my flat and unpacked, showered, etc, and so today it was.

We agreed a fee for the call out charge and labour (roughly the national debt of Chad) but was told that if I needed a new lock that would cost more. Happily, he took a look at the locks and seemed to think that a new lock wouldn’t be necessary and so he set to work.

Sarah was with me and I made a bet with her on the quiet that he could get into the flat in under three minutes. I even started a timer on my watch. That’s what locksmiths do – they charge you the Earth and then only have to look at the door for it to swing open. You could give them a bank vault and they’d be through it like the white gloved hand of God in seconds. It’s their art.

At least that’s how most locksmiths operate. This one was slightly different. At the ten minute mark he was still trying to slide bits of card into the frame to deal with the Yale lock, and was having no luck with the bolted one half way down the door. This is when the drill came out. Then the pliers. It occurred to me, after about twenty minutes, that this lock was now buggered beyond repair.

“So, that lock’s ruined now. Will I need a new one?�

“Oh you’ll need a new lock now, yeah.�

I must look like some dappy blond woman or something because workmen always walk all over me with extra charges. I was annoyed that he’d started ruining my lock, thus bumping the price up fifty quid, without consulting me. And even now he wasn’t making any progress, using a screwdriver and a hammer to smash at it from various angles. A neighbour came out to see what was going on.

Sunday 27th August 2006

Posted by on August 27, 2006 9:21 AM

Trained back from Gloucester to London. I was thinking about a route back via Birmingham to Liverpool but it being a Sunday (and as we’ve established before, trains are religious and so run differently on a Sunday) it all looked like too much hassle and so Gloucester-London, London-Liverpool looked the simpler option.

This suitcase. It’s like a punishment. It’s as if I’ve been damned to carry it for ever, like having to continually push a boulder up an endless staircase in Hell. It is like that. It is. And it’s interesting to think, when the London Underground was first opened, there must have been a conversation along the lines of “It’s a good idea this, having trains run under the streets, but one thing – do you think anyone will ever want to use the service with luggage? Because it’s all stairs… That might be tricky.�

“No. No-one will want to use the Underground, or Tube as it will probably be called in the future, with any luggage. The thought is absurd. Why would anyone want to travel across London with a bag?�

“Well some might at some point. And it looks like we’ve built stations like Paddington and Euston Square without any escalators or anything like that. Only a series of quite narrow steps which would be exhausting to carry theoretical baggage up.�

“True, but as I say, no-one will ever use this service with baggage, ever.�

“I’m not sure though. I think in the future, when people travel around the country more than they do now, and we have airports that…�

“Air what?�

“Airports. We’ll probably be able to fly in machines and these will land at ports. Airports.�

“Have you been on the gin?�

Saturday 26th August 2006

Posted by on August 26, 2006 2:43 PM

I didn’t feel at all well this morning and sat in a café having a trendy yoghurt drink and some fruit. The last thing I wanted to do was travel all the way down to the West Country for a gig, but I didn’t really have much choice. I’m ever so lucky, most people have to struggle into work for 9am and all that faced me was a long train journey though the countryside to the market town of Gloucester before standing on a stage talking nonsense for half an hour. There are harder jobs. But being a comedian makes even the most determined soul lazy and idle, we’re too spoilt by our cushy hours, and I really would have done anything to get out of this given the opportunity. I’d had too much to drink with Monica and Mark last night (the martinis made an appearance again, curse them to the fire lashed pit of hell) and having stayed in a hotel you need to be up and on your feet earlier than I would have liked and then out on the street with your bag.

There was no point in hanging around London. This trip has become an epic and really did want to just get home to Liverpool, sort some keys out, and make a cup of tea. But Gloucester it was, and so I set out from Paddington and tried to make the best of the pleasant scenery. I tell you somewhere I’ve never been; Stroud. But it looks lovely from a train window. Hopefully one day I’ll be successful enough to do a show in Stroud. Only the best comics do. You might think that the M.E.N. Arena in Manchester is maybe the performing pinnacle for an entertainer, but no. It’s Stroud.

Even some really famous comedians like Lee Evans still haven’t managed to do a show in Stroud. They approach the theatre but they get laughed at, and not in a good way, in an evil ‘who do you think you are?’ way. Apparently Jerry Seinfeld wanted to play Stroud and even offered to cancel his entire residency in Las Vegas if given the opportunity but a local Stroud woman, Mrs A. Frosbourne, wrote to the local Stroud paper and said ‘If Mr Seinfeld, with his poor quality observations and delivery, thinks he can just waltz into Stroud and have people pay good money to come and see him, he’s got another thing coming. Just because he once had a moderately successful sitcom, which I loathed, it doesn’t mean he can just act like the King of Stroud and play a theatre that, I might remind him, hold more than 500 people. He can bugger off back to wherever he comes from, and then some. We only want the best in Stroud. Sincerely. Mrs A. Frosbourne.’

Friday 25th August 2006

Posted by on August 25, 2006 8:00 PM

I woke up this morning in a farm house next to Bewl Reservoir in Kent that belongs to my Mum’s boyfriend Peter. I’m unused to waking up in the countryside these days and there was something oddly unfamiliar but quite enjoyable about shuffling out into the garden with Mum to let the chickens out of their coop.

She drove me back to her house, the one I grew up in. There have been lots of changes since I was last here which always seems strange. There are no reasons why changes shouldn’t be made without your knowing but it feels odd to walk around a place you spent every day in for years and see it altered. It’s all for the best though, the old place is looking great, but you have a sentimentality towards anywhere you grew up, and change is unexpected. Even if your family don’t live in a house anymore, if you happen to drive past somewhere you used to live it seems strange to see a different car in the driveway, alternative curtains hanging in the window, and alterations to the front garden. You feel like banging on the door.

I think people have a special connection to their old bedrooms. Some don’t feel these should ever be changed, and in some cases that goes for the parents as well as the previous inhabitant, now moved out and working in the city. My old room is still a bedroom but I imagine it’s a relief to guests that it no longer resembles my old room much. I went through that teenage thing of sticking everything to the wall. Couldn’t put enough stuff on your wall as a teenager could you? I AM AN INDIVIDUAL it screamed. Teenagers are all idiots.

Thursday 24th August 2006

Posted by on August 24, 2006 4:34 PM

I’ve stayed with Aria and Wade for a week now and so thought I should thank them for their hospitality with a present. I also needed to find something for my granddad’s birthday party tonight and so headed up to Heal’s on Tottenham Court Road. I love department stores, always have. I like to indulge in wealthy fantasies, and what I could buy if I were rich. For a man, I’ve always been a very content window shopper.

If, say, I want a new computer (I don’t know why I use this nerdy example but there is a nerd in me and it’s time I recognised it) but can’t afford one, I take pleasure from going to the computer department and imagining what I might buy when my boat comes in. It’s odd, because I should really find this frustrating and annoying, but I don’t. I think it’s the optimist in me, strongly believing that there are bright times, not just financially but in department stores it’s financial, around the corner. I like looking at office equipment and imagining a ficticious office all kitted out. For someone who’s actively avoided an office job his whole life, it’s a curious and illogical pleasure, but maybe because I’ve never had an office job it’s another example of me being delusional about the reality of an office, all the while enjoying the fantasy of one without the practicalities of being tied to the lifestyle. I am a prat. No comparisons here, needless to say, but apparently the erratic and compulsive James Dean liked nothing more than sitting behind a big desk taking calls, being the boss. For about five minutes before he’d go off and do something else.

Home furnishings have never held much appeal, I don’t like that section much. I’m not a home builder. Sofas and carpets don’t hold much sway. I like the kitchen department, with it’s kettles, toasters and fancy knife sets for some reason. And obviously I like the gadgets bit. The TV department, home electronics in general, has something of an appeal. I’d like a big tele. And I like looking at the radios.

Wednesday 23rd August 2006

Posted by on August 23, 2006 1:57 PM

It was foolish of me, predictably, to set this arrogant stance of not going into any detail about The Idea because now it’s going to consume my life and until I can talk about it properly here I’ll have nothing else to say. I’ve made a rod for my back a little now. And I feel like I’m letting you down a bit, seeing as you’ve read so much rubbish over the last year, that it seems like a betrayal of trust to not mention it but it’s not because I have some stupid fear someone will steal the idea (it will take so much time and some money to do it that I don’t think most hard working people like yourselves would bother) it’s just that if you’ve read this site even casually for any length of time you’ll know I’m bad at seeing projects through to their fruition, aside from The Power Of 10 which nobody likes, and so the idea is I have something solid to show off before gushing about how great it is. This is the plan.

What I’d like though is to completely divulge it, and ask for your advise and help as soon as we have some elements designed so you can assist in it’s development. Only there’s wont be any solid product for a few weeks (until it gets programmed in it’s infant form) and so I fear spilling the beans and then it not happening, in which instant you’d all think far the less of me. That is the reason, but rest assured I’m REALLY going to need your feedback and ideas as soon as it gets going so I’ll not be secretive for long.

Some people are in on it. For instance, I met my Dad today because he was in London and I explained it to him over a martini in The Dukes. Dad works for a water utility company, which is a completely different sphere to creating internet mega-businesses, but he’s clever and open minded, as well as being a very good business man and he latched on to it immediately, completely understood what we will be trying to achieve, and really loved it. He can see the financial and cultural potential and sat with a pad of paper explaining how we go about the initial steps. Wade came down to join us and the buzz continues.

It’s great getting advise off your relatives, especially your parents. I never ask them for advice and I’m stupid for doing this and so it felt great asking for help because they are more than happy to impart their wisdom, seeing as it’s in their job description as parents and yet it’s a skill (in my case) they’ve hardly ever been asked to practice.

Tuesday 22nd August 2006

Posted by on August 22, 2006 2:21 AM

I hope this trip (which is already longer than I envisaged initially) isn’t going to be another that just drags on and on, all for the sake of me not being enthusiastic enough to get on a train and go home. This can happen. This time I have the inconvenience of not being able to get into my flat or my car because I don’t have any keys but I can remedy that, and will have to remedy that sooner or later, and so I don’t know why I don’t just go home. But a few things are keeping me down here. It’s my granddad’s 85th birthday on Thursday and so it would be nice to go to that, and amongst other things The Idea is really starting to take shape and so I want to spend more time with Wade.

I’m sorry I can’t give you more info about The Idea. It’s boring of me not to, and I feel that you deserve to know because you’ve stuck with reading this for so long, but as I said the other day, it’s important for me that this isn’t just another of those pipe dreams of mine that start strongly out of the blocks and then trip over it’s laces, and so I want to have it up and running so I can go “Da-DA! I did that!�

And also, before it’s all designed and the company is official (we’ve only bought the web site domain so far) I’m going to be privy about it. I know that’s silly. Well, I promise not to bang on about it and therefore be annoying, and I will give you a sort of idea now, and seeing as I’m stupid and indiscrete more information about it will undoubtedly be mentioned over the next few days as it develops but basically it’s a community website with a bit of a unique twist. You know Myspace?

“Yeah, the website that’s got about three billion members and was recently sold to Rupert Murdoch for about £750 million.�

That’s it, well it’s kind of like that, but better.

“Right-o. And there was I thinking you might have finally come up with a workable idea. But oh no, you want to be bigger than Myspace. You’re an idiot.�

Monday 21st August 2006

Posted by on August 21, 2006 2:20 AM

I went to King’s Cross to meet an old school friend I never see anymore, Nicola. She lives in St Albans and the trains from there don’t run to the main terminus, but to the Thameslink station a short walk away, amongst the filth of the locale. King’s Cross is really a horrid part of London and should be bulldozed. It’s amazing that it’s theoretically prime real estate, it’s soon to be the gateway to Europe because of the Channel Tunnel link running to St Pancras, therefore also the first thing visitors from the continent will see, and it’s grim. It’s held together with exhaust and dog crap, the roads are unnavigatable to pedestrians – the centre of every carriageway having a metal fence running down it to restrict people crossing – and even the major high street shops give the area a wide berth. There’s no Boots or anything like that.

I don’t know how this came to be, and it’s odd to think that this ugly, unliveable Kings Cross is actually the vastly cleaned up area that the council have spent millions on. But what’s the expression; you can’t shine a shite. It used to be full of prostitutes, which – okay – might not be the sign of a great area but at least it had a purpose then. It really doesn’t now, aside from the notorious cheap, and therefore notorious, hotels. And it’s a shame because the houses and streets are actually nice, if they weren’t all in disrepair. You’ve got the two stations in King’s Cross and St Pancras, with Euston a short hop up the road, and so you’d think it would be sparkling with expensive terraces but no, it’s a grimy mess. I wish I was in charge of the world, I’d change King’s Cross. That is what I would do with my powers. Poverty, world peace, they could all wait. Kings’ Cross needs some urgent attention.

Sunday 20th August 2006

Posted by on August 20, 2006 3:13 PM

Wade, Aria and myself took a walk down to the South Bank this afternoon. 99% of the people that live in London are idiots, because when I lived here I never did things like this and if Londoners generally did, you wouldn’t be able to move. But it’s great – there are performers, food stalls, a lovely relaxed atmosphere by the Thames, space to move freely, things to see. I’ve walked along the South Banks countless times but I don’t know if I’ve ever done it on a Sunday because I’d never seen this before. From the London Eye, right down past the Tate Modern to The Globe Theatre, there are things to see.

We stopped by a large stage that had impressively been erected and saw a large group of people, predominantly old, sat around in a large semi-circle of chairs, watching some Jive dancers. Should ‘jive’ have a capital letter? Anyway, it was a very British, almost seaside sight, and it warmed the heart to see the delighted looks on the oldies faces as the young dancers did their stuff, encouraging the audience to clap along and do hand-jive moves along with the music. I mean, they LOVED it. They were beaming. And the dancers were really very good, but you couldn’t help but stare at the audience rather than the show. Then, as their performance was coming to a close, people just seemed to move, one by one at first, and then as a tide, into the open space in front of the stage and start dancing. They were not in the least self-conscious, really getting into it, and it’s so rare so see that in this country. Standing by the river wall, other spectators started to clap and move to the music, as if under some sort of trance – it was almost unnerving to see people enjoying themselves so very, very much. I don’t think they’d intended to come and watch the jive dancers, they’d just been walking past and stopped to watch the show. Now they were dancing along. I don’t know why I found it so amazing but I did.

There are strange things a-foot down on The South Bank. Aria had been telling me about these two young girls, aged about eight or so, who float around almost mystically, holding roses, and who both Aria and Wade are convinced have magical powers. One time they were down there, one of the girls sold Wade a rose for Aria, and an hour later they fell completely in love. And wired stuff started happening to lights. Anyway, we were walking along when Wade spots one of these girls, who are twins and have extraordinary blond ponytails that curl outwards and upwards from the side of their heads, and rushed off to catch her. He looked slightly suspicious racing after a young girl, but I went after him and felt slightly strange when we stopped her for a chat. She’s got a strange aura around her.

Saturday 19th August 2006

Posted by on August 19, 2006 6:58 PM

I met A for an impromptu get together at Trader Vic’s, the tiki bar chain, under The Hilton hotel on Park Lane. Whilst it seems strange, even slightly vulgar to seek out a bar in one of London’s most expensive and ugly hotels, and bearing in mind I won’t generally support chain pubs/bars of any kind, a tiki bar’s a tiki bar and once downstairs, you can forget about your location all together.

It’s not a tiki bar in the retro sense. The lowish lighting is fine but whilst the excellent drinks are varied, outrageous, and served in a host of great tiki mugs and glasses with often bizarre decoration (full sized wooden bird on a stick in your drink, Sir?), the place is slightly over the top and exactly like the one we visited in Berlin earlier in the year. A huge canoe dominates the ceiling and the central bar has huge bamboo poles supposedly holing it in place from the outer sides of the room, but the music is not traditional exotica, and it was basically full of hotel guests as opposed to tiki fans or hipsters. Still, we weren’t there for a party and, sat opposite each other at a table for two, it was a great way to spend the evening.

And it dawned on us what a special evening it was soon after… I met A at a Morrissey / Smiths disco I organised in Camden Town ten years ago. Wow. Ten years and I’m still listening to the same music. I was nineteen and A had heard about it somewhere (I can’t think where – I don’t know where I advertised) and came along with her friend and housemate Michelle. Yes, the same Michelle that recently lived with me. Do you see how the picture fits together? So, I met A for the first time that evening in 1996 at about nine O’clock. We’ve been thinking of the date that party was held. It was in August, ten years ago, and we both agreed it was the 19th. We were sat together, by pure coincidence, a decade after we first met – to the hour.

A Few Days Added

Posted by on August 19, 2006 4:18 AM

Further to the below, I've added a few more entries for the 12th to 17th.

We should have this pointless task up to date in a couple of days.


Hi to all of you,

Sorry that I've not updated in a while, I went to Edinburgh and got my bag, therefore computer, house keys, car keys, etc stolen from a bar at some unGodly hour. This is clearly entirely my fault. I'd written Pathetic Lot entries up until the day the bag was swiped but was unable to upload them. So, I'm now in London and with the help of my friend's computer am now rewriting them. You might think it is autistic and wrong to rewrite entries already written and now in the hands of a Scottish thief, and you'd be correct, but rewrite them I will and they'll be on-line shortly in all their unimpressive glory.

I know that some of you are nerdily attached to this Blog and find delays in updating upsetting, even perhaps disabling, but it should all be updated and correct in a couple of days. The infuriating thing is having to rewrite days that seemed good at he time but now seem trite, but clearly that will be in keeping with the vast majority of my output.

See you soon,

A much poorer and annoyed Stanley

xxx

Friday 18th August 2006

Posted by on August 18, 2006 11:22 PM

I spent a great deal of today rewriting the entries below, the originals of which were on my poor computer and now in the hands of Edinburgh Underworld, or more likely the stinking flat of an Edinburgh heroin addict who has to steal in order to feed his or her nauseating existence. Don’t worry, I’m over it now. I am.

Rewriting stuff, especially reasonably pedantic, personal and unprofitable stuff like this is not particularly enjoyable. I remember having a few ideas when doing them the first time, but struggling to remember what those ideas were, and how to get them across again proved impossible. I’m sure regular readers, let’s call you aficionados, will rate entries between the 12th and the 17th the most pedestrian ever. Not to fear, as soon as I’m caught up completely and simply writing about something that happened the previous day that’s still fresh in my memory we’ll revert back to the poorly conceived half-baked/arsed ideas that has made this Blog the mild distraction for a small number of people it has become today!

But reworking anything… It’s a pain isn’t it? We get our first taste of this at school when we loose our homework or the school bully stamps it into a puddle. It’s the first sour taste of unfairness that will accompany us our whole lives. ‘School bully’… I can’t believe I wrote that. Do schools outside of the Beano or Dandy actually have one, individual school bully? Mine didn’t. There were just a few nobs in every year, I don’t think there was a hierarchy and certainly no all-powerful leader of the bullies. It is true that, like in comic books, the bully did have a couple of hangers-on around him the whole time. Like Nelson does in The Simpsons. Goons. Couple a’ goons, just like any good gangster.

Thursday 17th August 2006

Posted by on August 17, 2006 2:52 AM

Up early and down to the Gilded Balloon to make the round of searches and enquiries for my bag and it’s valuable contents. All the while I kept asking myself “Why take it out with you anyway? What did you need it for? You’ve got a habit of being careless and now it’s bitten you on the arse. You’re the stupidest person of all time.� The only reason I had it on me was to transport my computer over to a café at lunchtime to try and get on-line, then I’d continued to lug it about all day. It was only ever going to end in tears.

Whilst I am a lucky person generally, I am also a pessimist and knew that the lost property searches and checks weren’t going to be fruitful. And they were not. Having exhausted every channel of enquiry save trawling though CCTV footage, it was over and the bag was lost. Stolen, rather.

This will sound silly but I’m attached to that computer. We’ve achieved quite a lot. I use it every day. To have it taken is distressing. It’s not only about the financial cost of replacing it, it’s the emotional cost of having an everyday work tool taken away. And when I think of some of the new work that’s on the hard drive I shudder. But it’s gone, and that’s that. It’s horrible to think that it hasn’t been destroyed, it still exists, but in someone else’s hands.

Met K, Rachel and Gareth outside the Café Royal and said my goodbyes. I was due at the airport and almost felt guilty towards my bag that I was leaving so soon, as if I should really have stayed on and investigated further. K said he’s investigate, and he’s pretty good at stuff like that. There’s still a small dot of hope.

Wednesday 16th August 2006

Posted by on August 16, 2006 2:51 AM

And so, in the Edinburgh sunshine, I walked down to North King Street and the offices of the Autism Action Trust and rang the bell. Bill answered and seemed pleased. “I really did wonder if you’d turn up!� he said, smiling. I still wasn’t entirely sure why I was there but Bill seems like a very decent bloke, and it seemed rude to ignore an arrangement. He used to run a number of advertising businesses, did well for himself I imagine, and then discovered his grandson had been diagnosed with autism, the doctors saying it was incurable. He decided to disagree and has spent the last eight years or so setting up a charity to investigate the disease and prove that it is curable. That’s what you would call a pro-active response, isn’t it?

He introduced me to two female members of his staff, whose names have rudely escaped me, one of who was a French scientist who shares Bill’s theories. I was shown around their well appointed facility and then we sat at a glass table and had a coffee. All they wanted to do was chat to me and explain their work, the reason they invited me over was simply that they like to spread their message. It really is fascinating. The mercury in vaccinations thing is astonishing. Did you know that mercury is so toxic, that if you broke one of the old mercury thermometers and dripped a bit of that mercury into a river or lake, all the fish would die? It’s potent as hell. And yet it’s in the vaccination we give to babies and Bill believes this is why autism cases have gone up hundreds of percent. There are plenty of other medics and scientists around the world who agree, too.

It was an interesting chat and I left feeling humbled that here were people working so tirelessly, and frequently coming up against brick walls, to do something worthwhile and descent, whilst I am up here because I am in the comedy business which is all about talking nonsense, getting drunk and trying to kiss girls. The contrast is sickening.

Tuesday 15th August 2006

Posted by on August 15, 2006 2:49 AM

Waking up with a heartbeat in your head is never particularly pleasant, but in Edinburgh – a city of untold excess during August – you can satisfy any hangover with another beer as soon as you’re on your feet. It’s the done thing. I had a breakfast pint in the bar of my hostel and noticed a sign on the door that said ‘You can phone from here.’ Indeed there was a payphone, but it seems like a rather old fashioned boast in these days of instant and mobile communications. “Have you heard, dear? St Christopher’s Youth Hostel has one these new ‘phone’ devises. Perhaps we might take a stroll down there later and investigate?�

There was also a sign on the door advertising wireless internet connection. I think that rather trumps a payphone and is certainly more in keeping with the times. Yet the ‘you can phone from here’ sign is more prevalent and certainly the one of which they are most proud. Perhaps there’s a logic behind it in that youth hostels naturally get a lot of visitors from abroad, some of whom won’t have functioning mobile phones, or perhaps come from a country where telephone communication is still a rarity. Borneo perhaps. But it was one of those old payphones that you wouldn’t really trust with an international call, the ones where three out of every four coins you drop into it don’t work and fall through, and besides, calling China for example would be so expensive that the sign should really read ‘You can phone from here for the same cost as buying a new mobile phone. So do that.’

I’d not seen a single show as yet but that will change and besides, you can really appreciate the Edinburgh Festival by simply walking around. Everything’s a riot of shameless promotion, people handing out fliers, posters plastered on top of a wedge of other posters, all jostling for dominance. Then there’s all the free street entertainment, which is all very good but not really my cup of tea. Then there’s the bars where you can pretty much see most of the people in shows for free, drowning their sorrows at a bad review or making themselves seen to show off about a good one.

Monday 14th August 2006

Posted by on August 14, 2006 2:48 AM

To Edinburgh, and the irresistible draw of the Fringe Festival. It seems strange that I was keeping this diary when I visited a year ago, and I also distinctly remember stating within it that I would be performing my own show this year. That just failed to come about through… I don’t really know. I was looking at venues eight months ago, I had a show set out, and it just never came off. K, on the other hand, has now been up three years in a row and is therefore better than me, and this trip was chiefly to do the friendly thing and see his show as well as have a good nose around to see what other comics are up to. Edinburgh’s basically a trade fair for comedians in August. An annual general meeting. Dozens and dozens are up here making up a decent percentage of the 1,700 individual comedy, dance, theatre, opera, and music shows that are on. 1,700 – It seems impossible, but this is the 60th year of the Fringe (I believe) and in that time it really has become without any question whatsoever the most important arts festival in the world, there’s nout to match it.

I travelled up by train after getting a tip about a new website called Megatrain. I’ve absolutely no idea who owns it, and if it’s something to do with Virgin Trains because you can only seem to book tickets on their cross country services, but the prices are astonishing. Liverpool to Edinburgh – fiver. Five pounds! The journey back was available at £3. You book and pay on-line, then they send you an e-mail with a reference number on it and the instruction to show it to the conductor when you’re on the train. It all seemed like a bit of a ruse. I actually started my journey in Manchester and the ticket checks there are stringent. I approached the army of ticket Nazis without a ticket, but just my piece of paper I’d printed Megatrain’s e-mail out onto. I stopped by one of the men checking tickets and went to get this out.

“Megatrain?� he asked.

“That’s right.�

“On you go.�

Sunday 13th August 2006

Posted by on August 13, 2006 2:47 AM

I was thinking today about the opening credits at the start of films, and how we are unaffected by them, despite basically be told that the whole thing is an illusion and fake. The opening images, which are there to be mood-setting and draw us in, will immediately be interrupted with words like ‘Paramount Pictures presents…’ which is just saying “Before we begin, we’d like to point out that this is the work of a studio. A massive company who’s job it is to churn out these films, and gather more money from the sale of cinema tickets, DVD sales and rental than was originally spent on their production, thus resulting in profit� That is what it is saying.

‘A Jerry Dumper film’. This is saying “And look, everything you see is directed by this man. Look at what you’re watching, he decided that. Look at the view of the house you’re seeing now, he said it should look like that. He might have had a director of photography actually frame the shot, but he’s generally told him what he wants. And all the people who speak in this film, he’s told them what to say. So… think on.�

‘Brad Pitt’. ‘Julia Roberts.’

“Ha-Ha! Why do you even believe the people you’re watching are real? You know they’re only Brad Pitt and Julia Roberts pretending! You’ve seen them in other films too, so how can you think they are real in this? And they’re two of the most famous people in the world for chrissakes, they’re on the covers of magazines, they’re super rich, so why do you think they are a pair of eighteenth century farm workers in this? You know Brad Pitt wasn’t even alive in the eighteenth century, so it doesn’t make any sense!�

And then the title comes up. “And this is the name of the film. It’s just a film. Not real, unless it’s a documentary by Michael Moore or that bloke who ate McDonalds all month and then felt unwell. It’s just all make believe.�

Saturday 12th August 2006

Posted by on August 12, 2006 2:46 AM

I believe there is a special wing of Mi5 which contacts the friends and relatives of single people and bullies them into trying to rectify the situation. These poor friends are then forced to try and set up the single person, to engineer a relationship, knowing that if they don’t they face deportation or imprisonment. This is the only real explanation for the consistent hassling single men and women face from their relationship-tied mates on an almost daily basis.

And it’s no wonder the government are worried. We aren’t having children, the population is therefore aging, and this is a big problem. We’re not having children because either we’re career obsessed, or the idea of sitting around in a bar or jetting off on budget airline is far, far preferable to changing nappies and being sensible. Most of my friends are about my age, around 30, and only one has a child. My parents were in their mid twenties when I came about, and that was – and I suppose should still be – perfectly normal. I can’t imagine having a five year old child now. I’d feel it was in some way illegal, or at the very least grossly irresponsible. I can’t even sort out home insurance, it seems far too mature, so how in God’s name could I father another human?

But it’s our one main job, or role. That’s really what we’re here to do and yet our generation, or rather our generation of middle class media idiots, are simply not interested. We’d rather sit around trying to create silly TV show ideas than a new life, and unless babies suddenly become terribly chic, will this ever really change? Will we ever again decide that our jobs and our funky T-shirts are not really as important as the future of humanity? I somehow doubt it. We’re all fools! And the government agree, so this unit has been set up to combat our bohemian, single and childless ways, and they’ve decided the best and most effective way of doing this through gentle but persistent peer pressure.