A mystery

Was booked to review the papers on Broadcasting House this morning. When I arrived the other London-based reviewer the ever tip-top Barry Cryer was already there, ahead of the game with his stories chosen, whilst the third reviewer AL Kennedy was trapped outside the studio in Edinburgh forced to lurk about in that piss-soggy alleyway where the BBC in the Scottish capital is based.

Barry is a fantastic source of gossip and stories and while he was telling me of his Fringe eexperiences this year something occurred to him and he stopped dead in his tracks. “You’ve been causing quite a stir, haven’t you?” he said. “Have I?” “Oh yes, with you laying into the critics like that.”

You mean on my blog? My blog, which as far as I can see, nobody reads. “That’s it,” he said. Barry, it turned out, wasn’t one of my three readers and sadly he couldn’t remember – so tantaslizingly – who’d mentioned it to him. How mysterious. Maybe a readership in double figures?

I was only a little peeved that neither our Edinburgh cohort or Paddy O’Connell – the presenter of BH – didn’t mention it. It’s obviously the talk of the town.

Edinburgh hell hole

God, how glad am I not to be up at the Edinburgh Festival this year. Not for the small fortune it costs, not even because of the almost permanently foul weather that comes pouring out of the Midlothian skies but for a year of avoiding the critics. And indeed the rest of the leeches that populate the city in August. A week or so ago I was feeling wistful about not going up, worried that I was missing out on one big party. That feeling has now well and truly gone.

Much is made of the ever-swelling number of shows, performances and turns at the festival each year. Almost nothing is made of the fact that for every person who puts him or herself on the line there is yet another small platoon of opinionated ‘experts’, festival organisers, broadcast producers, competition judges and the rest of them pontificating and opinionating without ever once shown themselves capable of anything more than apparently knowing what’s good and what isn’t. It must be a gift.

Reading for the first time this month The Scotsman reviews the usual critic suspects reared their swollen know-it-all heads. There was their main comedy critic who either loathes or loves and almost never sees light or shade; another one who apparently spends the rest of the year working in the field of pop music but with the arrival of August apprently becomes an expert at comedy, unfortunately an area she patently loathes as when you read her reviews you realise the best she has to say about anything is that she was bored. She is so notorious that press offices even sigh and sweetly apologise if they have to tell you that you’ve got her in to your show. Then there’s another one who spends his reviews noting a tone of upset that his time is being wasted, occasionally being bemused that those around him laugh when obviously they are wrong, and that with a bit more effort it could have all been better. He advises – so shall I: go and do something useful like empty bedpans or swallow cyanide.

As I say it’s the reviewers right now but over the next two weeks promoters will start opining, producers who’ve never raised a laugh in their lives will start bemoaning missed opportunities and the dreadful quality of it all, and the nadir will be reached when the Television Festival kicks off when the city squeezes a few more coked up fools in to moan about the view from their hotel rooms or just generally how exhausted they are. Oh dear.

Accuse me of bitterness if you want. I’ll accept it. I am bitter. Because every year a huge number of talented and even not-so talented people are brave enough to risk trying to bring something off for the enjoyment of others and indeed themselves. It doesn’t always work, but I’m not sure it’s ever worthy of the bile poured on their heads. And if you do ever think fair enough … they deserve it – “I’m being charged a tenner for this crap. Why shouldn’t someone slag it off” then let me point out that almost no performer wants to charge that sort of money but instead it’s the greed of the venues and the city of Edinburgh’s inflated August prices that force them into this position in the first place. Rant over.

Chris Neill – Bearded Wonder

For my shiny new show I find myself thrilled to be avoiding the money-sapping bitch-fest known as Edinburgh in August, and instead am a little giddy to be making a temporary home in the tie-dyed, syringe-strewn, old suede jacket-wearing capital of Britain that is Camden.

In this too-hot-to-handle, just-out-of the-oven, brand new sixty minutes (or a bit under if I can’t find a way of making my routine about opera work),  I shall throw myself at a variety of topics (genealogy, surrealism in suburbia, my desire to make passionate love to every beautiful girl in England* to name but three), wrestle them to the ground, and have them begging for mercy.  That, or I might tell some jokes about offal and jam.

* One of these is a lie.

*****

“Not just funny but on the nose.  Neill is the epitome of intelligent middle-class camp.  … A talent for observational comedy to hilarious effect.”  – The scotsman

“this acidic storyteller is the natural successor to Kenneth Williams.”  – evening standard

“Like an over-enthusiastic bachelor uncle stealing centre stage at a family Christmas dinner.” – The Stage

“Chris Neill is deliciously funny; bitchy and sharp, he would suit Have I Got News For You perfectly.”  - The List 

“Chris Neill is doing his show.  Tickets Still Available” – Bracknell Herald

*****

Venue: Etcetera Theatre, Oxford Arms, Camden High Street

Time: 21.00 (22.00) 8 / 9 / 10 / 11 August

All tickets £7.50          Ticket booking 020 7482 4857 or www.camdenfringe.org

Here’s a dodgy photograph I’ve never had the courage to use before…

The potency of cheap music

Here I am late at night, still slightly steamy from three bowls of rather spicy oxtail soup watching BBC 2’s Glastonbury coverage. Not something I had crossed as a must-see in the Radio Times but rather something that happened to roll round after Gordon Brown finished his pally chat with some BBC journalists on Newsnight.

Despite that I’m rather engrossed. The Arctic Monkeys are performing over the mud bath and mosh pit beneath them. Barely a year old and I find their songs intensely nostalgic (I’ve obviously acquired the time perspective of a teenager), listening to them as I did on many late night drives last summer coming back from gigs in the first few months of my doing stand-up.

Music back from gigs was split: if it was me all on my tod the the melodic and lyrical thrashing of the Arctic Monkeys was the thing to keep me perked up on an empty M4 or M1, whereas if there was a group of us (Robin Ince’s Book Club tour, as a rule) then we’d all sing along to the curiosity that is Sarah Vaughan interpreting the Beatles songbook.

Of course, if things took a pedestrian yet energised turn then it was E.L.O all the way.

Why I’m not really sure, but only a year later this all seems terribly evocative.

The latest showbiz news

God. Having a blog is a tiresome business. Despite no readers to speak of, I still feel guilty that I haven’t written some words for nobody to read.

To be honest, I’ve got lots on at the moment: there’s a new sixty-minute show to write, a treatment for Radio 4 to get done, and the freezer needs some organisation – game soup doesn’t make itself, you know.

As I sat in the Radio 2 building last week waiting for a taxi that had been booked – rather unhelpfully – for the middle of the night I found myself for that wasted hour or so rather holding court. Here comes Ken Bruce and we have a little chat, there goes Stuart Maconie looking strangely squat who waves a cheery hello, and here’s lovely Stephanie Calman fresh from the Jeremy Vine show who shares my taxi back to Dulwich with me, while we moan about taxi drivers a lot but apologise to our cabbie who is perfectly nice.

Perfectly nice he may be but he cannot compete with one of his peers. The very fantastic Roy of Sydenham. Roy occasionally drives me to Broadcasting House (as he did so that morning) and he is the most fantastic character. A big bloke who’s done a lot of “showbiz security” over the years – “sometimes the two dames can be a bit much, you know Chris.” That’ll be Judi and Helen then.

He told me and Piers about Damien Hirst’s skull of diamonds. Apparently it was Roy’s job to bring back the sparklers from Antwerp in his jacket pocket; we’re then treated to the latest news on ‘Cill’s’ (that’s Cilla Black to you and me), Paul O’Grady’s state of health, and the price of Rod Stewart’s new carpets.

Why, he told us that he had only recently asked Kevin Spacey, doesn’t he just come out of the closet? “It just seems so bloody ridiculous – everyone knows. I love the gays, me.”

Only Roy, large and mildly intimidating in his big car, with his Metropolitan Police badge which allows him to park anywhere he could fancy in the capital for nought could do that.

The only slightly icky moment comes when Roy and I disagree a tad on quite the level of loveliness personified by the Krays. Roy is more generous in his assessment of Ronnie and Reggie than me. (Maybe it’s something to do with all their names beginning with the same letter.) But like the pro he is, when the conversation plateaus at an impasse he moves the chat swiftly on to west end musicals. He’s got the measure of me and Piers indeed.

Three nights and three strange gigs

Not really strange gigs as such, just rather contrasting. But the word contrasting doesn’t, I feel, sitting enticingly in a headline.

A couple of Wednesdays back I happened along at my first Book Club since Christmas. I’d gone to the Battersea Arts Centre show back in March but decided not to take to the stage as I was having a nicer time round the back of it. This outing (back at its home at Lowdown At The Albany) for the old stalwart was an intimate, if not entirely deserted occasion, as Robin had forgotten to send out any billings. I felt rather giddy as I could drink because I wasn’t driving and I therefore re-hydrated splendidly on white wine spritzers. Flushed as I was I think I did a nice enough little set until I worried that I might have done it all there before: a bad and wrong thing at the Book Club.

The next night my oh-so glamorous life took me to the Cafe de Paris for a charity gig which had something to do with one-parent families. Why comedians are booked for these sort of dos is an eternal mystery, if a mystery not entirely worthy of much contemplation. Everyone in the room is a bit pissed and I suspect the last thing they want is to listen to a succession of needy souls trying to raise laughs. Preceding me was the brilliant Antonio Forcione who was the first act to go down a storm: that’s it I thought they want clever and talented variety acts and Italians slapping guitars will be the thing, how disappointed will they be when I come on moaning on about offal and old ladies buying tampons. Thankfully, Antonio had warmed them up splendidly and I rode his wave merrily for ten minutes. The event was headlined by Simon Amstell who spent a while being extremely rude about Neil Morrisey who, along with Michelle Collins, had conducted the raffle. It all ended rather bleakly and I suspect Simon and Neil won’t be mooning at each other over a frothy coffee for quite a while to come.

Unfortunately I missed this excitement on stage and had it reported back to me second-hand as I was being interviewed by a blonde lady who apparently is the ex-wife of Chris Tarrant and is in that show on ITV 95+7 about a putting a magazine together with Janet Street-Porter. The Tarrant lady had a terrible problem with her camera and I only realised later that this has become a leitmotif of her performance. I suspect she’s been kicked off the show by now…

The chap filming the Who Wants To Be A Millionaire’s host’s ex was rather handsome and seemed to have rather a lot of his tip-top body on show but curiously he wore the facial hair arrangements and a weary-looking mullet of a 1970s footballer. I thought it was a party fright wig arrangement at first and maybe he was part of the show in some sort of Life On Mars segment but no. It was all for real.

Taking inspiration I’ve grown a beard which I thought might be slimming. Unfortunately I realised I’ve confused growing a beard with weight loss. Thankfully I don’t have enough hair on my head to craft a dodgy hair-do.

The next night was a much more pedestrian affair: to a football club near Kingston. The gig took place in the sort of large, low-ceilinged function room that surely has held host to some of the drabbest weddings you could imagine. The audience was lovely though and thankfully didn’t include any footballers which I would find exciting and terrifying in equal measure.

How do I do it?

A production company has asked me to devise a radio panel game which might be good for me to appear on. One of the several reasons I wasn’t a particularly shiny staff producer at the BBC was that I found rising to this sort of challenge nigh on impossible. My brain would freeze over and where it might be useful to spend some of my salary on a ‘Unleash-Your-Creativity’ workshop, instead I spent my time and money shopping for suits in Liberty.

You might think that now my steamy furnace of invention isn’t stymied and sated by a monthly pay packet necessity would do the inspiring for me, surely I should be bubbling over with a freelancer’s capacity for ideas, ideas, ideas. You might think that but you’d be wrong.

I shouldn’t be so downbeat about it really; let me big myself up here. I had an idea for a round in this show which involved having to guess what your team partner is listening to by watching them dance appropriately to music randomly chosen on an iPod. Could be anything from a Mahler song cycle to something raucous from The Flaming Lips by way of Bernard Cribbins singing Inchworm. What a game, you cry, how can it go wrong? Splendid on Radio 4; I have to say I rather like the idea of a panel game where you’ve no idea whatsoever what the audience are laughing at. Or indeed what it is that they find so unamusing that all you can hear is static coming out of your radio.

I’ve not written my blog for a while now because this is the kind of stuff I’ve been putting my back into. Thank you.

Kicked out

Here I am watching my mate Fred MacAulay chatting to one half of Dick and Dom and a woman with a shoulder uncovered on BBC3 about having just been voted off Celebrity Fame Academy.

Normally, I would have had no interest in this sort of thing whatsoever: watching people I’ve not really heard of sing quite badly and then talking to some other people I’ve not really heard of about it but this time round I’ve had two good chums in the show and therefore found myself quite gripped.  Miranda Hart was kicked off in day 2 and as of thirty minutes ago Fred is no more.  Hurrah I can stop watching.

I decided that as I’m not made of money I couldn’t vote for both of them and therefore not wanting to take sides I decided to vote for neither.  Maybe, just maybe, if I’d worn my thumbs to bleeding stumps voting by text for them they would both be in there now and my tv would remain tuned to a programme the highlight of which surely must be watching a night club bouncer called Ray Stubbs jumping about like he’s trying to get rid of chronic pins and needles.

What to do when all the crime has been cleared up

 

It was good to see that, despite five unsolved murders – three of them of children – within a two mile radius, the police in London have so much spare capacity they can have six of their finest hanging around Peckham waiting to deal with bus fare dodgers.

As anyone is who lives in London will know our splendid mayor Ken Livingstone introduced some new, long, bendy, and easy to board buses in the last couple of years which replaced the almost impossible to use Routemasters. (Legend tells of how these buses ran devoid of passengers for decades because no one could work out how to get on them.) Another thing in their favour is that unlike the old fuddy-duddy buses these splendid new beasts show a tremendous capacity for bursting into flames if a corner is taken at the wrong angle. Finally and easily the best of their advantages over the old machines is that they are very easy to ride on for free. It has come as a bit of a shock to our city’s leader and his mates that given the chance of not paying to travel on public transport that is exactly what a large number of his fellow Londoners choose to do. The solution: instead of employing one bus conductor on each bus to make sure that sort of thing doesn’t happen he has come up with the plan to employ not infrequent hit squads of inspectors with full police back-up striding efficiently the length of these buses catching the wrong’uns.

BAD OLD BUS SPLENDID NEW BUS

On the number 12 the other day I listened in as an inspector had a long conversation with some chap who obviously wasn’t willing to pay. The bus arrived at the point where the assembled rozzers were shuffling about and she got off to alert them to the dreadful deed being perpetrated within. The bloke, seeing the police and I assume unwilling to discuss his lack of a valid ticket with them, got off soon after her through one of the open doors. Our hero inspector returned obviously expecting the villain to be patiently waiting his punishment, hands folded in his lap, contemplating his nefarious ways.

 

To her bemusement she was informed by another passenger that he’d already decided to disembark. She gaped for a moment obviously stunned by his ingenuity and then gently nodded her head while her smile indicated sage and even inscrutable thoughts. “Clever” she kept repeating to herself as is she’d been foiled by some criminal mastermind, who, despite her better judgement, she couldn’t help but show grudging admiration for, “clever.” I only wish our villain could have been there to see it: I would put money on the fact that when he awoke that morning he would have had no idea that by tea-time he would have morphed from some fare-dodging bloke in a shiny suit to south London’s Professor Moriarty pitted against Transport for London’s very own Sherlock Holmes. Clever.

 

Nature’s way?

Living the dream as is my wont to do, I was in Lewisham’s Superdrug this afternoon.

Ahead of me in the queue was an extremely stooped, extremely old woman buying the most enormous pack of tampons (by my guess, catering size at least, although I concede I’m no expert).

I wondered had biology played a cruel and tiresome joke on her or perhaps was it a rather crass, if at least practical, present for an unlucky grand-daughter?