Still haven’t got swine flu yet. I’d have assumed that by now I should probably have it, being a pandemic and all. I think a lot of people assumed that and yet only 27 lucky people have it. They’ve been all selfish and kept it to themselves, locking themselves away so they can get all the newspaper coverage like the media hogs they are. One of them was even on This Morning today, talking via phone so Phil or Fern wouldn’t have a chance at being lucky enough to get it. Selfish bastard. He sounded alright too. He’d had a headache and a sore throat, but was now feeling better. I think he didn’t even have it to begin with, I think it was just a hangover. I’ve had those symptoms from too much beer before. He was probably just saying that he had the pig flu so people would point at him in the street and ask for his autograph. ‘Hey aren’t you that hero who got pig flu but still survived?’ and he’d suck up all that glory. Well I’m not going to let him. If I don’t at least sneeze a bit tomorrow I’m going to go out and do something about it.
No one at Old Rope had swine flu yesterday but there were several jokes about it. It got to a point where the audience were groaning about it a bit, but I think its brave how us comics can laugh in the face of a pandemic. All those thousands of 27 people are dying/coughing a bit right now and we keep a strong face and laugh at it. There was laughing about lots of things last night with a rather lovely line-up. Brussell Flowered didn’t attend in the end but he was replaced by Rich Hall who more than delivered with a great tale about sucking up prairie dogs with a giant hoover. As well as Rich there were a large amount of Twitterers at the Rope. It was like a small Twittervention, which I assume is what it would be called. Although I assume that’s also what an invention discovered on Twitter would be called. Its also what an intervention on Twitter would be called. In fact, adding the Tw to various words to Twitterize twem twoesn’t tweally twork twat twall. See. A few more people that I had previously known only in 2D and 256 bit colour resolution have now become known to me in 3D and er, 256 bit colour resolution. I don’t know more than 256 colours so I guess that’s the limit in reality too. In fact I don’t really remember more colours than the ones in that song about a rainbow, which I’m sure was incorrect. I’ve seen rainbows and they often only have a few colours in. And they definitely don’t have a leprechaun at the end of them either and there is a distinctive lack of a pot of gold. I’ve come to believe over the years that rainbows are a con and should be stopped by the fraud police.
So it was nice to finally meet Tommy Campbell who I have never gigged with ever but we have spoken numerous times on the interweb. He also had a really good gag about unretarding. Its nicely wrong. I also met Lauryn who knows lots of other people I know proving once again that either the world is a tiny tiny place or I am living in my own version of the Truman Show. If its the latter I really hope its on a classy channel like BBC2 or 4. If I discover I’m on CH5 or BBC3 I’ll get in a boat and row to the outside as soon as possible. Also I think Layla should really get a BAFTA. There were at least six other Twitterers there last night which I think goes against my usual theory that the internet ruins communication between people. I’ve read ‘The Possibility of An Island’ by Michel Houellebecq and I really assumed that sites like Facebook would leave us as shallow clones of ourselves, all sitting in our individual spaces contacting each other just on the computer but never going outside. Saying that despite us all being there we didn’t really talk much, instead just passing each other notes of 140 characters at a time.
Team Tiernan on Twitter have become quite a phenomenon. Their chants that they send before I gig are becoming more and more inventive and the group has grown to a decent size. You can have look here:
http://search.twitter.com/search?max_id=1704578603&page=1&q=%23TeamTiernan
I’m not the sort of person who knows what to do with a team. Especially as more than half of them have never seen me live. When they do, I’m sure they’ll quit the group. In the meantime I’m thinking that perhaps I should use their talents and locations to create some sort of crime fighting team. I’ve always wanted a crime fighting team. Preferably we would be like a cross between CTU and MASK. Imagine Jack Bauer driving a car that turns into a plane and you’re there. As none of us have flying cars, and I have no formal martial arts training, we may have to start with petty crimes. Next time an old lady gets her bag nicked we’ll pull up in a multi coloured VW van, point some fingers at the bag stealer and then call the police before going away and having some tea. Crime rates will drop, you’ll see. Or if they don’t, we will at least drink a lot of tea. Eventually we’ll be drinking tea all over the world and they will make a film about Team Tiernan where I will be played by Jonathan Lipnicki and the rest of the Team will be played by Sean Penn because he’s very versatile. It’ll be great.
Of to Norwich tonight where I will meet more Twitterers. Everywhere is full of them. Its more places than swine flu. What swine flu should do is get on Twitter and Facebook then it’ll do a damn site better and possibly make some nice new friends.