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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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September 2006 Archives

Saturday 30th September 2006

Posted by on September 30, 2006 3:26 PM

I was still sat in my dressing gown come mid-Afternoon, watching the brilliant Jeff Stelling present Sky’s Soccer Saturday, which is the most entertaining show in the world and all the more impressive as it’s actually just three blokes looking at monitors showing matches you can’t see, saying what’s going on. How and why this show is so good is unfathomable, but it is.

I was feeling lazy and lethargic and my mood wasn’t bettered by the though that instead of being able to sit in all night drinking Cup a Soups and making toast, I had to go to Hull. How selfish of my agent to get me work.

Probably best that I give the Cup a Soups a miss anyway, they annoy me with their stupid name. If it was Cup o’ Soup, that would be fine. It would be quirky, modern take on Cup Of Soup, which is what the product claims to be. It’s not really a soup of course, because it contains none of the essential ingredients of a soup, but the combination of evil chemicals and hot water make it taste a bit like soup and therefore they can get away with their false claims.

But ‘Cup a Soup’. Are they saying it’s a ‘cuppa’ but soup flavoured? A ‘cuppa’ is what British people sometimes call a cup of tea, which is all we ever drink. It comes from us being lazy and shortening ‘Cup of tea’ down to one word. We might say “Fancy a cuppa?�

But that still doesn’t make any more sense out of Cup a Soup because if we were going to ask someone if they wanted a cup of tea that tasted of soup we’d say “Fancy a cuppa, that tastes like soup?� We wouldn’t say “Fancy a cuppa soup?� Soup doesn’t come in cups, it comes in mugs or bowls. We’d say “Fancy a bowla soup?�

Friday 29th September 2006

Posted by on September 29, 2006 3:31 PM

I left my flat to go for a meeting today to discover it was pouring hard with rain. I set off in it, but soon realised I was going to get drenched and had to find some sort of shelter. I cannot be trusted with owning an umbrella because I loose them in quite ridiculously short lengths of time (it would not be uncommon for me to loose an umbrella whilst walking with one through the rain) but I desperately needed one today and looked about me to assess my options.

There are two shops near to me, aside from The Spar which is actually a little walk away and doesn’t even sell umbrellas. The first is Costco, which is for businesses and independent traders and whilst I could argue I am one, I haven’t got an account with them. So that was a no-go. The second is Toys R Us.

I debated even bothering to look for an umbrella in a children’s toy shop but was getting wetter by the second and so ran in. I found the umbrellas, but strangely they were all for children. They were small and decorated with pictures of Disney characters, and even the handles were made of shiny plastic and not really designed for my man hands. I looked outside to see it still pouring, perhaps even harder.

“Excuse me,� I said to an assistant, “but do you have any umbrellas that aren’t exclusively for children?�

“No. This is really a children’s shop.�

I looked trough the umbrellas, aware now that I was getting late, and also aware that it was futile trying to pick the ‘best’ umbrella, they would all make me look stupid. So I grabbed one and took it to the till.

I had to wait in line quite a while, and when it was my turn, the umbrella wouldn’t scan. The man asked another assistant for a price check.

“There’s no way this isn’t going to be embarrassing� I said to a fellow shopper, a middle aged woman who was behind me in the cue.

Thursday 28th September 2006

Posted by on September 28, 2006 3:33 PM

Just as my postal mail is depressing until I get sent photographs from my number one enemy, George in Hong Kong, my e-mails are seldom any better.

I like it when I’m sat at the computer and an e-mail beeps in, not only because it could be exciting or a fantastic opportunity (not that it ever is) but because it allows me to stop whatever I’m doing and become distracted. You’ll know of my illness when it comes to finding things to put me off what I’m doing (hoovering, looking out of the window, etc) and incoming e-mails are perfect.

So when one came in today, I eagerly clicked to see what it was, but again was let down. It was just from the FACT Cinema here in Liverpool, telling me what they were showing this week. I nearly didn’t bother with it, but happened to glance at what was on tonight and was astonished to see they were screening, for one night only, one of my favourite films and one I’ve not seen in years and years – The Double Life Of Veronique.

FACT really is fantastic. It’s not an art house cinema, per say, because it’s a commercial venture that shows big releases too, but importantly only good big releases. You won’t get Men In Black III or anything like that on, but you’ll get any blockbuster that they deem to be of interest. These is mixed with independent releases, and interesting offerings from the rest of Europe, quite a bit from the Far East, and indeed the rest of the world.

It’s not pretentious though, and attracts a wide range of people. It’s modern and clean, you can take drinks into the auditorium (there is a sign saying so at the nice bar which is titled ‘How Civilised…’) and basically acts as a great addition to the city.

So I tried to get an impromptu gang together to go and see the film tonight yet was unsuccessful, I went on my own. It’s a Polish / French production from the late, great Krzysztof Kieslowski (who did the Three Colours Trilogy - Blue, White and Red) and like I say, I’ve not seen it in years, probably since I was about 19.

Wednesday 27th September 2006

Posted by on September 27, 2006 2:38 PM

I got a letter today from China, Hong Kong to be precise. My mail is depressing and so this was a lovely addition, it’s rare I’ll get too many letters from Far East, unless BT, NatWest, Powergen, Liverpool Council, or the people that send parking tickets relocate there, and so this was a treat.

It was from Fook Ping Lau, or ‘George’, the elderly man I met on the 15th of last month in Edinburgh and had a meal with because all the tables were busy. He sent a photograph of the two of us, another couple of himself, and on the back of one was a note;

‘Hi! How’s your trip in Edinburgh? I went for “a one day tour of the highlands� and have had some “horrible� seafood the following day before returning to London. Went to Paris for another five days and “suffered� a lot with the live shellfish / prawns (cooked) of course. Here is a snapshot taken during the Chinese New Year in Kowloon side with your oriental foe in it. Hope you “HATE� the (can’t make out last word). Ciao and Best Wishes, George. Your enemy of course.�

The references to ‘enemy’ and ‘foe’ came about from him saying to me that he has enemies all over the word, and he calls his friends that “because you always keep your enemies closer�. So therefore I can assume he is calling me his friend. I hope that this is the case and he hasn’t forgotten about this discussion, deciding that he does hate me and we are now to be enemies for the rest of time.

It would be unfortunate to have an enemy in Hong Kong, and he’s obviously a successful man with connections, and so that would make pretty much all of China a no-go zone for me. I think I’d rather pick a fight with a Chinese gang than, say, a Japanese gang (gotta fear those Triads) but I think that even a small Chinese gang (in terms of numbers, I’m not making a remark about their size individually – one enemy is enough) would make mincemeat out of me as soon as George gave the word. Indeed, one Chinese man probably would. One Chinese woman probably would. One Chinese hamster.

Tuesday 26th September 2006

Posted by on September 26, 2006 3:24 PM

I met my friend Kerry today who’s agreed to draw up the Muller ads and make them look professional, not like the work of a demented toddler.

It’s odd how some people can draw and others not. Even stranger how some people are artistic and others not. I suppose it would be a poorly functioning world if everyone was artistic – it would be a world of dandies, creatives and ne’er do wells. We need our methodical sorts.

I can’t draw very well, which is frustrating. Why is it my clumsy hands can’t pick up a pencil and transfer and image in my head onto paper whilst others, like Kerry, can do it easily? God has short changed me here and I for one will never forgive Him. When I meet my maker I’ll say “You’re not very good at making things. At least not very consistent. Look at me, shall I draw you a picture of how this makes me feel? Oh, sorry, I can’t, can I? You’ve not made me correctly.� That is what I’ll say.

And God will say “But I have given you a large, round head as compensation.�

“It’s not a consolation though. How is it a consolation?�

“Lots of people would like a large round head.�

“No they wouldn’t. It’s only me and dwarfs that have them. They’re rubbish. I would like to have had a normal head and the ability to draw. Now I’m in Heaven, can I have these things?�

“If you were in Heaven you could, but you are in purgatory for writing disrespectful things about me in your rubbish and glib Blog. The head and untalented hands remain.�

Monday 25th September 2006

Posted by on September 25, 2006 2:39 PM

Faced with writing a week of Blog entries today, it made me weight up the pros and cons of doing this at all. Because I’ve lost my computer, my laptop computer, I can’t write Pathetic Lot when away from home and therefore even a short trip away leads to backlog of about 6,000 words.

It would be lovely if I wasn’t so anal and autistic as to be able to let a few days go, but I have a nerd collector brain, and everything needs to be complete. I know for a fact that if I missed a single day, I would completely loose faith in the whole thing and would stop immediately. It’s wrong, isn’t it? I can’t believe the readership is as high as it is, because even I don’t find it entertaining half the time and it’s all about me, but I don’t for a second think that anyone would particularly miss it if I stopped, but there is no chance of that because of my obsessive nature.

But bearing in mind it will have to stop one day, in theory, I know I could only stop clean on an August the 2nd, to make another complete year. Is this an illness or is it common? So at the very least there’s going to be another 10 months of this nonsense and if I’m going to be as busy as I hope, that’s just a real pain. The other option is to stop after exactly 1,000 days, which I suppose would be about 2.7 years. And seeing as I write about 1,000 words a day, I’d quite like it to work out as exactly 1,000 words a day on average, so exactly one million words in all, and purposefully construct the final few months so that it meets this target. I am insane.

Not that I’m being down about it, Pathetic Lot has given me loads of ideas, but I wish it didn’t take up so much of my time that should be spent on proper projects.

I suppose in three years time when I look back at it, I’ll be glad I kept it up, and I’ll probably have a lot of stuff to draw on for stand-up work and scripts and what have you, but if I begin to think how much time I’ve wasted doing it, I’ll break out in a cold sweat and probably cry.

Sunday 24th September 2006

Posted by on September 24, 2006 12:56 PM

I’m aware that for consecutive Sunday’s over the last few weeks I’ve bemoaned Sunday rail travel, as if I each Sunday comes as a fresh surprise. This Blog should be renamed Stanley McHale's Inexplicable Delusion That Travelling On A Sunday Is Similar To The Rest Of The Week... Lot. Hmmm, catchy. I rung National Rail Enquiries from my hotel and told them I was travelling from Edinburgh to Liverpool.

“Right… Well there are quite a lot of disruptions today.�

“Let’s hear it…�

“Well, you can do it with either one change, or two, or three. Which would you like?�

“Let’s go for one, shall we?�

That’s like being asked, upon the day of your execution, “Well we can give you a bullet in the back of the head, or we can chop bits off one by one. The advantage of the chopping is that it will take longer.�

I got to the station and bought my ticket. They are friendly at Edinburgh Waverley and always tell you which platform to go to when you buy your ticket, unlike in Liverpool, where they give you your ticket and then pull out a small voodoo doll of an basic passenger and stick pins in it.

Saturday 23rd September 2006

Posted by on September 23, 2006 4:09 PM

Obviously only an ignorant fool would waste a full day in Edinburgh, and so that’s exactly what I did. I enjoyed a stroll around the New Town, then crossed down and up into the Old Town where I sat with the paper and watched the world go by for a bit, but there were no museums, no special tours or anything… none of the stuff you really should do with a day to kill in such an interesting place. But I was happy enough… maybe ignorance really is bliss?

There’s one Edinburgh tour that runs all year and has always grabbed my attention. It’s a ghost tour and is marketed with press quotes saying that it really is the most horrific and terrifying thing you will ever witness. I believe them and have therefore been too cowardly to go on it. You go into dungeons and black, mysterious rooms, which I have no doubt is a stupefying attack on the senses. I am quite scared of the supernatural and I reckon that the tour guides, having done this every night for countless nights, have probably got their performance and speech to a point where it’s seamless and disturbing. It annoys me that I am too childishly petrified of standing with a large group of people in an empty room being told ghost stories. Surely Lovejoy would have no problem with this, and once again I have to admit that the fictional antiques dealer/detective is far and away a better human being than I am.

I also fear that there would be some tricks employed on this tour, perhaps an extra member of the tour’s staff dresses as a ghost and jumps out at you or something or brushes his or her hand on your neck at a particularly terrifying part of the journey. I would hate this and probably spin round making wild punches with my petrified hands, perhaps causing injury to the innocent but irresponsible tour guide and being arrested by the police.

Friday 22nd September 2006

Posted by on September 22, 2006 3:18 PM

Wade and I went to buy the desk from Habitat this morning. As I was walking up there to meet him, a girl from a charity was hawking for bank accounts. Everyone knows how to avoid getting drawn into these conversations, from a rude but simple dismissive wave of the hand, blank faced incredulity, an apologetic smile and brisk pace, or my personal favourite, pretending to talk on your phone.

I never stop for charity muggers, but today I must have been really off guard because I suddenly found myself answering when she asked my name, and then shaking her hand as she offered it by way of introduction. They like to get the hand shake in, I suppose they’re taught people are less likely to move away once formally introduced. I was thinking ‘Oh what have you done now? Why did you stop? This is going to get awkward.’

It does get awkward, because they probably only manage to stop one in five hundred people and when they do they know how to get their teeth in straight away. This charity was for carers, people who spend a proportion of their lives caring for others who are just civilians, not nurses. Like any charity, it’s very noble, and this girl had all the right points to fire at me.

‘Did you know there’s a 60% chance you’ll be a carer one day?’ she stated.

I wanted to tell her I was too selfish and mean, but my mind was on an escape route. There’s one good option, and that’s to say ‘Sorry about this, but if you’re going to ask for my bank details, I should tell you now I don’t have a bank account.’ But they wont believe you. Who doesn’t have a bank account? I could pretend I was from Croatia and just here on holiday but that was ruined when I said hello.

Thursday 21st September 2006

Posted by on September 21, 2006 1:46 PM

It’s a sad and pathetic boast, but I am the best at planning work, just one of the world’s worst at getting it done. I’ve got a bit better recently, managing to devote myself to something after a lot of faffing around, when once it was pure faff and no devotion. I think that, no matter how futile it was, writing The Power Of 10 proved to me that I can get something finished, but God knows how much tea making, flat tidying, Lovejoy watching and CD organising that involved, all helping to slow me up.

I love shopping for stationary, but how often do those pens get used, those files filled? I love the idea of a great office, but what would I do in it?

Wade needs a desk, I’ve decided, if we’re going to work solidly and equally on Global Hangover over the next few months and so I went to Habitat on Tottenham Court Road to find him one. This, I decided, could count as work for the day. I’m in London to get GH moving, and despite having the paperwork in a folder under my arm to be getting on with, I chose to carry it around and look at desks for my business partner instead. This is so very, very typical. It’s actually working to avoid work.

I’m acutely aware that I’m doing this too. Everything in my head, well let’s say 95% of it, is saying ‘just sit down in a café and get on with the stuff you should be doing’ but the 5% that knows there isn’t a deadline or anything for the proper work is saying ‘you could do that, but think of Wade. He’s not got a desk. You should find him one. That counts as work. It does.’

Wednesday 20th September 2006

Posted by on September 20, 2006 1:01 PM

Morning train to London to get some Global Hangover stuff sorted out. I’ve got a load of old train tickets on the sideboard and hopefully looked through them for a return to London that I might have acquired when travelling up in the last month. See, it’s a pound more to get a return than a single so if I’m in London and I need to get to Liverpool I’ll get a return which is valid for month. I found one, remarkably, so although this meant sitting in standard class (which as discussed last week is perfectly fine and comfortable until you’ve travelled in first class which then makes it feel like youth hostel) I felt I was getting the journey for free, which in a way I was. This made it more comfortable.

Drew out the Muller ad on the way down and I’m quite happy with it, but that’s for later. Met my Dad in The Ship on Wardour Street and he’s really going to be a big help in getting this project ship shape. Mum too, because she runs a business, and I’ll have to get her advise, but for today Dad offered some really good pointers and mapped things out on paper. What helps is that he really likes the idea and wants to see it work, so there’s a drive and enthusiasm. I think if I said ‘I want to set up a silver mine below the River Mersey’ he’d be able to spell out the first steps, but knowing it’s a rubbish idea, not be able to put together a proper plan. With this idea, which is about as ambitious as a silver mine under the Mersey but rather more possible, he can tell me how to go about it.

It’s amazing the people you see wandering about in Soho. You keep having that awkward feeling of seeing someone you know and trying desperately to think where you know them from in case you make eye contact and they come over to say hello, before realising you saw them in some drama or comedy on the TV last week. Everyone’s an actor, a producer, a runner, or a courier. You see lots of famous faces too. When my Dad was outside the pub on his phone, Peter Stringfellow walked past him. It was interesting to see my Dad and Peter Stringfellow together, and looking at them both, I knew very defiantly which one is the best Father.

Sorry Dad, but it would be great to be Peter Stringfellow’s son. Can you imagine? I am kidding.

Tuesday 19th September 2006

Posted by on September 19, 2006 3:33 PM

I was speaking with my Mum the other day about the various small irons I have in the fire, the different projects and what have you, and she commented that she’s always been impressed by ‘eternal optimism’. I’ve never really thought of myself as particularly optimistic, indeed I am a pessimist and curmudgeon, but I suppose it’s true that I do always hold out hope for projects, watch them come to nothing, and then hold out an equal amount of hope for the next one. I don’t think its optimism though, I think it’s a case of not having much choice. It’s this or working in an abattoir.

This is why I like Lovejoy so much. He was always perpetually broke, but his love for antiques was such that he could never really do anything else, and so each day brought a fresh set of challenges. What I’ve done there is confuse a fictional antiques dealer written for television with my actual life, but he’s still a good role model.

I suppose one reason I stay positive is that I know I’m going to have to make it big from an idea of my own and not be employed by anyone else, and therefore there is a very strong need to keep putting my energies into idea 578 even when the previous 577 have disappeared without trace. The law of averages suggests one will come off. I hope its Global Hangover – that just needs the start up cash. I hope it’s Tolerance, but that’s a long long long shot in the world of TV. I dunno… there are so many avenues and options. One more presented itself today.

A while ago I was sat having a drink with my friend Wade when we got to talking about mobile phones. The conversation turned to how it would be strange if mobile phone technology was so basic that we all communicated by yoghurt pots attached to a piece of string, as we tried to do in the playground as kids.

In this strange, yoghurt pot phone world we envisaged, all these millions of pieces of string went down into holes where there were big string caverns in the earth and telephone exchanges where operators were busy putting different bits of string into different holes to connect people, whilst wearing a headset with a piece of string coming out of it themselves.

There would be chaos on the streets as people got caught up in other pieces of string leading from different people’s yoghurt pots (therefore getting caught up in people’s conversations) and how messy and confusing everything would look. Could you get broadband string? Then we suggested that instead of someone showing off their new Nokia handset, people would be showing off their new Muller yoghurt pot.

Monday 18th September 2006

Posted by on September 18, 2006 3:02 PM

I made a meal today and cut up a clove of garlic. I’m not a very good cook, but I like doing stuff with a clove of garlic because I know that trick of smashing it with the flat side of a knife to get all the skin off which always makes me feel like a bit of a chef. I am simple.

Anyway I’ve yet to get the smell of garlic off my fingers, despite having washed them many times. Does it seep into the pores or something? It is making the simple pleasure of picking my nose very unpleasant indeed.

It’s not even that I particularly appreciate garlic being in the meal I was making. I don’t have a very good palette and find different flavours hard to identify, especially as I tend to eat very quickly and without much thought to what is being lost down my neck. I get quite bored of eating after the first few mouthfuls, and also seem to loose my appetite very quickly once I’ve started eating, and therefore it’s a good idea to get as much down as possible in as shorter time. I am something of a farmyard animal in that respect.

So why bother with ingredients like garlic? I don’t generally even season my food with salt and pepper, and so it seems that bothering with garlic is completely unnecessary, which indeed it is. But I like the preparation of food, of putting ingredients (often far too many ingredients) together even though I probably wont experience much benefit from this when I’m woofing it down ten minutes later. I suppose I like the idea of trying to create something that will excite my taste buds even though this is generally not the case.

I couldn’t even tell you what garlic tastes like, but if it’s anything like it smells like I don’t know why I, or anyone, would bother putting it in their food. People say ‘I love garlic in my food, I can’t get enough garlic’. People are garlic nuts.

Sunday 17th September 2006

Posted by on September 17, 2006 1:55 PM

Waking up in Kendal I had a strange feeling that something was amiss, like that uncomfortable sensation you get when you’ve done something wrong or forgotten something but can’t put your finger on it. So I left the hostel and took a morning walk around the town, which is a tourist trap because of it’s access to the Lakes, but worth a visit anyway, very picturesque and what have you.

Down by the river there’s a park and lots of people were out walking dogs. One man had two sheepdogs and one that had the same black and white colourings but looked more like a husky. Well it was a husky, hence the resemblance, but it had exactly the same colourings as the sheepdogs and so looked the same until you got closer. The man had this quite intriguing sling-shot apparatus, which had a rubber ball at one end, and when swung round and released would send this ball a considerable distance. The dogs would then race after it.

It was interesting that the sheepdogs would naturally lie flat on the ground when waiting for their master to launch the ball, but the husky would remain on four legs, tongue lolling out, wagging it’s tail. Let’s presume these dogs have grown up together, and yet the husky refuses to follow the sheepdogs style and lie down. Would this mean that the sheepdogs just lie down genetically, without any training? And huskies will never naturally lie down? Sheepdogs lie down to make themselves less threatening to sheep so that when they stand they can attract attention and therefore better control the flock, I would imagine. But where sheepdogs put on Earth to control sheep? I thought they were just a breed of dog that farmers have begun to use to control sheep because they are quite intelligent and obedient, but if you got a sheepdog puppy, would it naturally lie down when waiting for instruction?

You! Go and find out!

Saturday 16th September 2006

Posted by on September 16, 2006 3:26 PM

I appreciate I’m lucky that my job principally just involves standing on a stage for a short amount of time talking nonsense, and that’s why I don’t often mention gigs here because it would soon get annoying, but I’ve always said that the hardest bit of the job isn’t the performing itself, but getting to the gig in the first place.

True, many people have to face a long commute every single day and I don’t envy them that but sometimes us useless, no good comics also face arduous and unenjoyable journeys, today being a case in point. Waking up in London and knowing your afternoon is going to involve getting to Kendal in the Lake District isn’t so bad on the face of it, but getting to Euston and being told the timetable was invalid because… because it was, is always going to make it a chore rather than a pleasure.

The best way to do this journey would be to catch a Glasgow train and get off at Oxenholme, a short distance from Kendal. That would be easy but all the Glasgow trains had stopped for the day at about two p.m. (I’d just missed the last one) and I was faced with the prospect, after consultation with National Rail Enquiries by phone, of the journey being impossible. My only option was to get a train to Manchester, then rush for a connection to Preston that would be in the station when I arrived from London, then from Preston go to Oxenholme, where another train would take me to Kendal. It was going to take hours and I didn’t like the look of that narrow Manchester connection.

I rang my beautiful agent and explained the problem, trying not to sound as if I was trying to get out of it or making excuses. Apparently there was a comic playing the same club tonight driving from Birmingham, and I could get there easily, so I rang him but he’d got his diary mixed up and thought the show was yesterday, therefore he wasn’t doing it tonight because he was booked elsewhere. Comedians are stupid, never get involved with one and certainly never manage one.

Friday 15th September 2006

Posted by on September 15, 2006 5:19 AM

This entry is unavailable.

Thursday 14th September 2006

Posted by on September 14, 2006 6:06 PM

A morning train to London. This trainline.com website is amazing, even though it doesn’t look it. Book a couple of days in advance and you’ll be in first class for £28. This is the same as you’d be paying in standard class had you just turned up to the station. The added advantage of this is you get free food and drink served at your seat and so can make back a proportion of this cost there. It’s a great deal and yet they don’t ever seem to advertise it.

The trouble with first class travel is that you can never do back to standard class ever, ever again. There’s an episode of Seinfeld where Jerry and Elaine are at an airport getting their flights changed but there is only a first class ticket and economy class ticket available for them, them having to decide who gets which.

“I’ve travelled first class before, Elaine.� Says Jerry. “I can’t go back. I wont.�

It’s not the same as getting used to great restaurants, and then going for a meal in a bad one. Because bad food can be a guilty pleasure, there’s no guilty pleasure in sitting in standard class. It’s fine, absolutely fine, until you’ve travelled in first. God knows the difference on planes is even worse. Unless you’re rich, never buy or accept a business class ticket on a plane. Good God. You’ll never want to fly again unless you receive the same treatment and comfort, surely? I am not rich and so do not travel in business or first class on planes, but when I first do, it’s going to have to be goodbye to economy forever. It will have to be. Forever. Forever I say. I can’t go back. I wont.

So it’s a question of becoming rich, and that’s the reason for the journey down to The Smoke, to get Global Hangover off the ground and therefore retire onto my own island with champagne rivers and a staff of nine thousand beautiful women riding around on unicorns in ten years time. I am modest in my ambitions. But the thing about setting up a big website is that it will either fail, or it will be huge and valuable. There is no in between.

Wednesday 13th September 2006

Posted by on September 13, 2006 3:52 PM

Got the Global Hangover stuff finished today and am reasonably happy. It’s not an official business plan but gives a forty page outline of the company, and should serve to answer any initial questions people have.

I’ve got some meetings regards setting this baby up over the next couple of days and am absolutely determined that this idea shouldn’t fade and die along with so many others. In truth, the other ideas, i.e. scripts, have always been seen through and then lost in the midst of people’s in-boxes. So I’ve kind of lived up to my side of the bargain, but then let myself down by not chasing these things up as readily as I might have done or having one negative comment from a professional put me off changing the project and carrying on.

Callcutta is a good idea, even if it is being done in different form in India already. That was the sitcom set in an Indian call centre with a British manager trying to teach the diligent, hard-working and intelligent staff about the idiot English people and their habits. I still really like that. Tolerance is still in the planning stage but I’m ready to write the script now and it’ll not take too long as I already know most of the jokes in most of the scenes. That one I will follow up until I’m blue in the face because I think this is about my seventh sitcom script and I arrogantly think that not only is it potentially the best, it’s a very viable project. Just me moaning. You’d watch that, right? After all, you read this.

But Global Hangover really does have to happen. If it works, it will be sensationally huge. I’m thirty years of age in seven months and as the blurb at the top of this page says, one purpose of this Blog was to record me making ‘an international success’ of myself by that time. Global Hangover is an international company. Was me writing that back in August last year an unintentional and spooky omen? Let’s hope so. You mess about in your twenties. You make something of yourself in your thirties. I need to hit the ground running and celebrate my 30th birthday (sat alone in my car on a garage forecourt at 10pm with a can of lemonade) knowing that I’ve done something. We’ll know more tomorrow.

Tuesday 12th September 2006

Posted by on September 12, 2006 2:45 PM

I’ve really got to get this Global Hangover document finished before I go to London and meet with Wade and others about it on Thursday but it’s taking me longer than I thought and just when I see a lovely Lovejoy-free few hours of time ahead of me to really crack on with this, other things crop up.

I’d arranged to meet K for a cup of tea in town at lunchtime and whilst it was theoretically possible to cancel this, it would mean putting it back a week and we’ve got work to discuss too. And so even though we’d probably not talk too much about furthering our respective careers and instead just slag off other comedians, it was still a valid reason to leave my desk and wander to the Soul Café on Bold Street. I was on time and ordered a pot of tea, taking the cups and sausers outside to sit in the sun. After ten minutes or so K still hadn’t arrived and because I deplore lateness in any form this began to irk me.

I am impossibly intolerant with lateness. Anything over five minutes after the agreed rendezvous time with me I consider late. Because it is. Anything over fifteen minutes without an explanatory phone call is the devil’s work, and anything over half an hour really should see me leaving. But it doesn’t. My friends, K being an exception to this, are generally the latest people in the World, with Renata being the queen of the group. She can be anything up to an hour and a half late. So I have all these late friends, but I never make a stand and simply leave, I generally sit with a paper, and accept their withering apologies whenever they do feel like turning up.

Yet I am never late. True, you might argue that this is because I don’t have a busy life and therefore have less to distract or postpone me, but I do have several appointments to keep in a typical week (as well as, say, trains or planes to catch) and I pride myself on being a punctual person. I don’t have many qualities, but this is one. Truthfully, I don’t even understand casual lateness. I can’t understand someone agreeing to meet at three, and at five minutes past three still being in the shops, a good ten minutes away. I don’t understand how that can ever happen.

Monday 11th September 2006

Posted by on September 11, 2006 12:57 PM

I was bewildered today to read the news of angry, pathetically stupid fans of the recently deceased animal-imprisoner Steve Irwin making ‘revenge’ attacks on Stingrays and cutting off their tales, hence removing the poisonous barb that killed their poorly-chosen hero.

I know it’s hardly insightful journalism (yes, I said journalism) to denounce this behaviour as mind numbingly dim, but we can’t let this go. Fans of the ENVIRONMENTALIST Steve Irwin, FANS, mind, deciding to go out and kill a load of animals that were, as Steve Irwin would inform them if he made informative programmes, not capable of attacking out of irrational spite, having not the brains nearly capable of individual mood, reason, or malice.

If it was a group of people who didn’t care about Steve Irwin and just hated Stingrays for some reason, some sort of Anti-Stingray League (even though these animals are rather beautiful and hardly ever attack unless as a biologically-coded defence mechanism triggered when they think their life is in danger) and these people thought ‘Look! One’s taken the life of another human, and we are humans so that’s a personal insult’ then that’s another thing. Another stupid thing, but none the less a different motive, at least they’d have a Neanderthal leg to stand on. But these revenge attacks were purely because a Stingray had killed Steve Irwin.

Intelligent Australians must surely be thinking of emigrating?

Sunday 10th September 2006

Posted by on September 10, 2006 12:19 PM

We have a funny relationship with Sundays, don’t we? Some of us like to worship God on this day, thinking that it is a holy day, where really it was the only day people ever got off work in the olden times and so a day the authorities suggested they should spend most of their time in a church to stop them having any sort of fun at all. Peoples existences were grim back then and after a hard week slipping around in a field hacking at the earth with their primitive, stupid tools all they had to look forward to was sitting in a freezing church thanking God for their brilliant lives.

But we still treat Sunday as God’s special day, yet if you were truly wise and holy like me you’d realise that every day is God’s day and Sunday doesn’t have any special significance at all. God probably hates people only coming to see him on a Sunday, like he’s some sort of old person in a home where families come every weekend to visit them for an hour or so and the kids sit awkwardly in the smelly common room. That is how God feels.

So people who use Sundays to worship God are wrong and unholy, you should worship him all the time and not consider him so unimportant that forgetting about him Monday through to Saturday is permissible. It isn’t. You’ll burn in the sulphurous pits of Hell if you only worship God on a Sunday, he’ll see to that.

Think of all the visitors he gets on a Sunday. If holy people were only to spread out their devotion throughout the week that would make it much easier for him. Because a church is, after all, God’s ‘house’, (or one of his many thousands of houses) and the upkeep on these old piles is enormous, hence the obligatory roof fund ‘thermometer’ outside every church. The ones where the red ‘mercury’ rises according to how much money has been collected from old women who can’t afford to keep their own roof in good repair. So why would God only want people in his house on a Sunday, when the rest of the week it sits comparatively empty? He wouldn’t. It would be like having Sky Sports in your house and your so-called mates only coming over on a Sunday because they want to watch the match.

Saturday 9th September 2006

Posted by on September 9, 2006 9:34 PM

I’ve been asked to do a corporate gig for Bang And Olufsen, the high-end electronics lot, on Wednesday. Every comic dislikes doing corporate events and only agree to them because you get paid well. You can simply do some of your normal comedy club material, normally to chatter or silence and without a microphone, but sometimes it’s nice to have an idea what the evening or company is about so you can adjust accordingly.

This evening is apparently about making Bang And Olufsen’s very expensive and very male products attractive to women. I had this explained to me by the manager of the Liverpool branch, where the event is going to take place.

“Well,� he said, showing me a stereo that couldn’t be more male if it tried. “This stereo here has a small card in it, a memory card like you might get in your mobile phone, and you can record songs onto that and then put it into this [also very male] MP3 player here.�

I wasn’t sure how this was supposed to directly appeal to women.

“Well, we just need to explain to them how it works� he said.

I think it was a little patronising. I don’t know how a memory stick works. I presume you’ve got a chip in there, and that’s about it. I couldn’t design one.

“It’s not about how it works. We just need to explain to women that they can record all their songs onto this, and then go out running with it.�

Bang And Olufsen is a Danish company. Indeed ‘Bang and Olufsen’ is Danish for ‘bless their pretty little minds’. It’s the most sexist company ever! Holding an evening to