Tuesday 12th December 2006

Today is the 500th consecutive Pathetic Lot entry, which I don’t know whether to consider some sort of an achievement or just incredibly distressing and wretched. It does seem remarkable that I’ve in some way documented the last 500 days of my life, but at the same time I do wish I had more to write about.

I suppose a life seems dullest to the person who happens to be living it. I’ve been lucky enough in the last 500 days to make a few trips abroad, have had a few good times, and – alright – generally lived the life of Riley (who was Riley and why did he have such a good life? Please write to me about this. It saves me looking on the internet) but I don’t know what could do down as a major achievement… The stand-up has been going well but it’s not like I’m being offered a TV show any time soon. Not that I want one, as I explained very recently, the best medium is radio. But I can’t see anyone offering me a radio show anytime soon either.

The ‘new’ radio, and uniquely the kind you don’t get paid for, is Podcasting of course and I did go through a stage of insisting Pathetic Lot would become a Podcast, as well as buying a really good microphone for the purpose of recording it on as I remember. I did do a ‘test’ one, which was 30mins and I thought was okay. It had some good characters (me, but put through a voice distorter) and I think it might have got something of a small following but was very time consuming. The reason I get so far behind with this silly Blog is that some days I don’t really have the time and it causes a backlog which I try and clear when I do have a free day, which doesn’t make for consistency, and I think trying to do a weekly podcast would be a self-inflicted headache. But it’s still a real possibility. Maybe a monthly one? But the trouble with that is there would never be a regular audience and it’s important to have it come out on the same day every week as something to put into your dull schedule.

I’m quite aware though that putting together a good, regular podcast that people did bother to download and enjoy would help me get a lovely radio show on a proper station, and therefore I should make the time to do it, but believe it or not I am quite busy most of the time (trying to find lots of things not to do on the whole) and so I would have to dedicate, say, every Sunday to it. If you think it’s a good idea and that would definitely download it then let me know. If more than three of the six of you respond then I may consider it.

Ah! You long term readers, remember the running joke of having six readers? Well sorry to burst your bubble but it’s way more than that now, I think more than a thousand individuals read this daily or something insane, and whilst I have absolutely no idea why you’d bother, I do thank you for that. I think in the same way that Girls Aloud or Take That thank people for buying their records whilst wanting to add “But WHY, even WE know they’re crap?�

I got a message from Derek in Ottawa the other day saying how he’d enjoyed the recent entry about taking my clothes off on stage, and that he’d read every single one now. That’s remarkable, thank you, Derek. I don’t think that was one of the better entries, I’m not sure which ones I like the best though. I mean, please don’t think I consider any of them to be particularly special. They are written very quickly, aren’t edited, and owe a great deal to Richard Herring’s ‘Warming Up’ Blog. You can find it at Richard’s site.

I mean the overuse of the word ‘idiot’… completely Richard Herring.

Some entries have made it into the stand-up set in one form or another. And I do still intend to do Pathetic Lot as an annual full length stand-up show, but it’s a case of getting a high enough profile to perform anywhere that will get a good number of people in. Clearly it has to be Ottawa.

One idea that’s not made it to stand-up yet, but might be my favourite entry, is the one about God and Jesus having dinner and complaining about blasphemy. I can’t remember how to do links to previous pages anymore, but it was when I was in America I think… so July. Use the search bar at the side if you want to find it. I think that could easily be a routine. Or maybe a live sketch with other people in it.

One other thing regards this silly ol’ site, if you want to leave a message about something I’ve written in an OLDER entry, then write it under the most recent entry so other people can see it, otherwise it appears under the entry you’ve been reading, which might be 12 months old and will rarely be viewed by anyone else. If everyone writes under the most recent entry we might even be able to get little discussions going.

Thanks for reading this, I know it’s frequently awful, but I’m going to keep going and see what happens in the next 500 days. God willing they will be slightly more productive. I plan them to be.

Cheers.

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