Hello T-Folks
It’s an exciting month with elections, the sort of weather that looks like it’ll make forecasters cry trying to work it out, and Star Wars day giving a valid reason to pun all day until everyone hates you*. I’m sure you’re all excited about all of those things.** There’s so much going on this month that I’ll keep this blurb brief, which is a sentence that’s not as easy to say as read. Go on, try it.
Finished? Ok, you have much better pronunciation skills than me which is embarrassing. I bet you don’t even have to use yours very often do you? So essentially you’re just showing off. Disgraceful. Next time I imagine the person reading this I’m going to give them a much less*** smug personality.
Anyway, May things for you:
FRANKIE GIGS
Ok this is probably a bit late for you to do anything about these, sorry. So if nothing else it just seems like a tiny boast from me that I’m going to have some lovely gigs that you can’t come to. Well, deal with it. It’s my email, I’ll do tiny boasts if I want to. And yes, auto-correct made that ‘tiny boats’ six times before it let me write what I wanted to and yes, I was tempted to leave it as that. Anyway, Frankie Boyle is doing some very, very early work in progress gigs in London over the next two weeks. I don’t mean it’s early in the day, I mean it’s material he’s really not worked on much yet and told me might be a ‘f*cking catastrophe’****. I’m supporting him on all of these doing material that I already know. Though this doesn’t necessarily mean it won’t still be a ‘f*cking catastrophe’.*****
The dates, if they haven’t all sold out yet are:
May 4th – Hen and Chickens, Islington 9.30pm
May 7th – Hen and Chickens, Islington 9.30pm
May 8th – Leicester Square Theatre 7pm
May 9th – Leicester Square Theatre 7pm
May 10th – Hen and Chickens, Islington 7.30pm
May 11th – Hen and Chickens, Islington 7.30pm
All the H&C tickets are here: https://t.co/aavhVGGSNP . The Leicester Sq ones aren’t on sale yet so keep your eyes peeled on Frankie’s Twitter feed if you want to grab some.
POLITICAL ANIMAL
If you can’t make those, or y’know, don’t want to****** then I’m also doing Andy Zaltzman’s Political Animal at the Udderbelly Southbank on May 5th (this Thursday). Yes that is also the day of all the elections, so why not vote, then come along and spend the hours afterwards laughing instead of worrying how many idiots with the wrong opinion also voted and ruined everything. Tickets are here:
http://www.udderbelly.co.uk/whats-on/andy-zaltzmans-political-animal-election-special
PARTLY POLITICAL BROADCAST PODCAST
You already listen and subscribe to this yeah? Great news. I knew you wouldn’t let me down. Not like that other smug reader on the mailing list. No, you already know what interesting guests I’ve had on the show and have learned and listened to them all, haven’t you? You’ve already spread the word about it and reviewed it on iTunes yeah? Of course you have. Well in which case, I have no need to leave these links here do I?
iTunes: https://itunes.apple.com/gb/podcast/partly-political-broadcast/id1075342863?mt=2
Not iTunes: https://www.tiernandouieb.co.uk/podcast/
In all seriousness, I love doing this podcast, despite it being a lot of weekly work. It’s somehow already on episode 15 and I’ve got several more interesting guests lined up, so please do give it a listen and pass the word around about it, as while there’s a nice amount of regular listeners, it’d be dandy if that number grew too. The Twitter for it is @parpolbro and the Facebook is at facebook.com/parpolbro, neither of which I update enough but I’m getting there.
FILMED SHOW
Yeah look, it’ll be out soon alright? Soon. Very, very soon.
BBC Comedy Classroom
The BBC have launched a new Comedy Classroom webpage which, while probably going against everything John Whittingdale wants it to do – ‘LAUGHTER? That’s not fair to ITV where there isn’t any of that!’ etc etc – is a brilliant new educational program teaching kids how to write comedy so they’ll all be better than us professional comedians and steal all our work when they grow up.
I helped write some of the guidelines and also I’ll be part of the live lesson they are streaming to schools and online live on 12th May at 11am. It’s hosted by Sara Cox and London Hughes and will feature several other comedians too all giving mini-lessons on comedy writing. My bit’s on captions because I spend too much time on Twitter probably. Anyway if you want to watch then details are here:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/articles/14QM7N5x5qfVsjdvkqqjrbp/comedy-classroom-live-lesson
CASTING CALL WOE SHOW
My wonderful other half Miss L or @proresting is taking a live version of her Casting Call Woe show to Edinburgh, which she’s co-written with pal and funny comedian Tiffany Stevenson. I saw a preview back in February and it’s very very funny but also brilliantly shows up the sexism in the acting world. I’ll bug you more about the Edinburgh run nearer the time but before then they have a few previews starting with one at the Tabard theatre in West London on May 8th. Do go check it out:
OTHER THINGS:
- Gary Tank Commander is my new favourite political interviewer: http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b0798qlw/gary-tank-commander-election-special
- If you’re still baffled about how to vote in the EU referendum in June then check out https://fullfact.org who are fact checking both campaigns.
- This Guardian sketch featuring Patrick Stewart about the ECHR is excellent if you haven’t seen it already******* http://www.theguardian.com/culture/video/2016/apr/25/patrick-stewart-sketch-what-has-the-echr-ever-done-for-us-video
- I was the guest on comedian Samantha Baines’s radio show and podcast and we nattered about many a fun thing. If you fancy a listen, the link is here: https://itunes.apple.com/gb/podcast/baines-plus-one-comedian-tiernan/id1097045199?i=366450176&mt=2
- Also if you’ve watched Louis CK’s Horace and Pete then have a listen to Marc Maron’s recent WTF podcast, number 700 part 2 with Louis CK explaining how he made it. It’s inspirational stuff. https://itunes.apple.com/gb/podcast/episode-700-part-2-louis-ck/id329875043?i=367247901&mt=2
- If you haven’t watched Horace and Pete, we probably can’t be friends anymore. It’s really special stuff: https://louisck.net/show/horace-and-pete
And that’s all folks for this month. Next month I’m not doing much at all so you can look forward to a boring email then.******** Until then, enjoy this month that’s been all greedy with it’s bank holidays. As if banks deserve a holiday after everything they’ve done! Eh? EH? I’m now going to go outside and enjoy the sunshine before it starts hailing then becomes extreme heat and then snows or something.
CIAO FOR NOW*********
T
* It’s usually about 0.2 of a second after you first say ‘May the Fourth’ be with you. You probably already feel angry after reading this don’t you?
** By ‘excited’ read ‘apathetic’.
*** Fewer
**** The asterisk in this word isn’t for one of these footnotes. It’s just to stop spam filters from blocking it due to swears. So really, you had no need to read this.
***** Or this. You realise this is all just life you’ll never get back right?
****** I can’t make you. I’m not your dad.
******* You probably have. I know what you’re like.
******** It won’t be boring. I’ll say a word in it you didn’t expect and you’ll be all like ‘I can’t even’ and I’ll be like ‘can’t even what? These new sentences kids use are stupid. I hate you.’ And you’ll be like ‘ZOMG!’ Or something.
********* I’ll never ever say this again. Promise.