Evil and Lovely

Layla and me have promised to each other not to do any work today, so this blog shall be short-ish. Not that I do any work most days, but its nice to not even pretend to do work and procrastinate. Technically no procrastination will happen today as I’m not attempting to do anything in the first place. There were plans to do something, as its a nice day for it. Then one big cloud appeared and we got scared so those plans are off. Yes its fickle, but I am fickle and I like the word fickle. It rhymes with pickle and stickle, which are good words. Clouds ruin everything. Except the water cycle. Apart from that they ruin everything. Especially days when I consider going out but could at any moment decide to stay in. Days like these clouds are the deciding factor. Its like they know they can keep me on house arrest by making an appearance. One day I’ll get my own back and destroy them all. I’m not sure how I can do this but I once saw an episode of Bod where he clapped and they went away. Bod however was some sort of genius and had a triangle body and round head. I posses none of these qualities. Neither do I have a friend called Frank the Postman, or Farmer Barleymow or an Aunt called Flo who unnecessarily pirouettes. Guess my chances of beating clouds are slim to none.

The Late Show at the Komedia last night was vast amounts of fun. Normally at the Late Show the crowds are either rowdy or sleepy. Never both as the latter counteracts the former. You don’t tend to get people who shout and snore. ‘Oi, you’re shi…zzzzzzzzzz’. I would quite like self sedating hecklers though, it would make rowdy gigs really easy. The crowd last night was neither of these things. They fought against all the odds. There were two stag-dos, two hen dos, it was late, they were drinking lots and yet somehow they remained attentive, supportive and full of energy. I was almost worried it was some sort of set-up as thought at any moment the corpse of Beadle would appear and the crowd would suddenly revert into monsters and start throwing tables. But they didn’t. What was odd was despite their loveliness most of the audience I spoke to did really horrible jobs. Two in particular were terrible. One women worked in the diamond industry. I joked about whether she worked in the part of the trade that involved killing minimum wage African workers. The crowd laughed but she didn’t. Instead she made some rather odd comment about ‘telling them before we do anything’. I remarked on what it was they were telling them and what it might be they were doing, before she retorted with ‘well they don’t understand anything because they’re Africans’. Ladies and Gentlemen we’ve uncovered a racist. I’ll be honest I wasn’t sure where to take that comment without causing a lynching and until that comment the women seemed very friendly which was not right. Racists are not normally friendly, on account of their racism. I was assured later that she had been misunderstood but we still dared Ninia Benjamin to walk out on stage with an African accent just to mess her up. It worked brilliantly, until Ninia also decided she would leave her alone as she seemed quite nice.

The other evil person was a Welshman who repossessed people’s cars. Essentially in profession he is a truly horrible man. I laid into him probably slightly too much and he didn’t deserve it. He was also a very nice man, even though he spends five days a week taking people’s cars away from them. It baffled me. How can two very nasty people who work in nasty trades actually be really nice? Whats happened to me? I started to get worried that I might leave the venue and hug Nazis and Bond villains. Surely its not possible for people to be nice and treacherous? No one ever commented that Hitler had lovely manners, that Mugabe is very complimentary about haircuts or that Dr.No would always open doors for ladies and would be first to get a round in. I just don’t understand how a room full of people who do terrible jobs were such a nice crowd? Maybe even they have nights off being evil. If that’s the case I may start doing corporate gigs for mercenary killers, as I bet they’ll be delightful.

The night was just brilliant from start to finish. Ninia, Simon Brodkin and Chris McCausland all stormed it and for a late show it really couldn’t have been better. The only way I topped it was by beating my satnav’s ETA by 23 whole minutes on the way home. Take that satnav! You didn’t count on me driving at illegal speeds like an idiot did you? Hah! I wonder if TomTom have something in development that tells you when you are driving at a dangerous level and refuses to help you. Or you could switch it to ‘boy racer’ voice that just eggs you on and tells you to go faster. I would get arrested far too quickly.

Right, that’s all for today. I have to stand in the garden and clap at clouds.