A slightly rubbish Samaritan

I was standing outside the library today chatting on my mobile when I saw a man fall over. Now, normally I'm a fan of the al-fresco slapstick scenario: I enjoy You've Been Framed as much as the next bored person on a Saturday afternoon. Unfortunately this wasn't very amusing. I had been watching the old, clearly drunk, man totter slowly across the road for at least a minute before seeing him fall very slowly to the ground, almost as though he was lowering himself down.

Assuming that he'd get up quickly, I carried on with my phone call, but after at least a minute of watching him struggle on his back, like an upturned tortoise, I finished the call and went over to help him. As I got closer, I began to smell alcohol, urine and general grime. For a moment I considered putting on my gloves before helping him up, but then chastised myself for being such a prissy middle class idiot and just got on with it.

He didn't seemed injured so the obvious priority was to get him out of the road so he wasn't going to get hit by traffic. He was surprisingly heavy; luckily another passer-by saw my (and more importantly his) predicament and helped me get him to his feet. I thanked her, he thanked her and she said something like "Stay strong and everything will be ok" and then kissed him. I suspect she was a Christian. There's no way I would have kissed him. Not that I tend to kiss old men generally.

She then turned to me and said: "Are you okay from here?" I just replied "Yes, sure" and she walked away. It was at this moment that I realised that I had no idea what to do next. I asked the man if there was anywhere he needed to go, and he said "The hospital? I've got rheumatoid arthritis you see so I can't walk." Okay, I thought, I'll go in to the library and see if anyone in there can get him some help. "What's your name?" I said. "Peter Paul Behan" he replied. I didn't expect him to give his full name. He sounded meek, used to being talked down to by people in authority. "Okay, Peter," I said, "I'll see if anyone in here can do anything." I helped him lean against a wall so he wouldn't fall over and went inside. "You've got a good heart young man!" he said, smilingly, as I left.

I don't know what I was expecting from the library staff. I suppose I thought that as they work in a library they must therefore be good and decent people who know what to do in that sort of situation. Unfortunately, the first person I talked to set the tone. I told him about the man outside and he just replied: "Yeah, he was in here just now and I chucked him out. He was very drunk and being a nuisance." When I pushed him for any help, he said I should speak to the attendant outside.

The attendant wasn't much use either. He just said "Yeah, he comes in here a lot." I told him that he'd fallen over and he suggested calling 999, although then said there was probably no point as he was drunk and homeless and would just waste their time. "Anyway", he went on, "if it's happened out there it's nothing to do with us." I pointed out that he'd just been chucked out of the library and he just smiled a sad smile. I guess he sees that sort of thing all of the time. For me it was a bit of a shock.

I went back outside. If I'm honest, I was hoping that Peter would have gone, at least that would have suggested that he was okay. He was standing leaning against the wall, in exactly the position I'd left him. I wandered over and smiled. "They suggested I call 999" I said. "Would you like me to call you an ambulance to take you to hospital?"

He smiled ruefully. "To be honest with you, young man," he said, "I'm an alcoholic." No shit Sherlock, I thought. "Thanks for your help, but you don't have to do anything else." "Are you sure?" I said, half-relieved but also saddened by the fact that this was clearly a common occurrence. "Thank you. You've got a good heart," Peter said again. And with that, he turned and began to totter back across the road. I watched him all the way across, until he turned the corner and was out of sight.

I went back into the library to look for some books to read. Didn't find anything. Felt a bit sad. I kept replaying the situation in my head. Should I have given him some money? Offered to buy him something? Called 999 anyway, even though it wasn't an emergency and he didn't want me to? Maybe that's why the other people just walked past him when he fell over in the road; they didn't want the hassle of dealing with the consequences. Maybe helping him up was my good deed for the day. It's not as though I can do much else for him.

So there we go. A long, slightly sad story with not much of a conclusion. I haven't blogged for nearly a month and then go and inflict this on you! I promise next time I'll write about something funny. Unless I see a bird with a broken wing or something...

Broadswords must be carried

The strangest thing I've seen this week was a young woman on the tube in rush hour with a bow and arrows slung over her back. I'm amazed the staff let her through the barriers. I wonder if she's ever tried that at an airport? It would probably just inspire confusion.

I started to speculate about why she had the bow and arrows. I hope it wasn't for self-defence, because I think in a struggle you'd be better off with a can of Mace or a fistful of keys. With a bow and arrows you'd barely have time to pull back the string before the mugger would be half way down the street with your handbag.

On the other hand, it might actually be a pretty good deterrent. It's easy to see from a distance, and you'd have to be a pretty confident attacker to decide to pick on a girl with a bow and arrows. After all, she could be a Vampire Slayer. Or an accidental time traveller from the Medieval past with a bad attitude. Or simply insane.

Topical Schmopical

I had a (nice) gig at Hull University on Sunday night, and returned to London on Monday early afternoon. Practically the first thing I saw as I got off the train was an Evening Standard billboard reading:

"DEADLY SKUNK FLOODS LONDON"

For a couple of seconds I thought I might have entered a B-movie! I half expected to see terrified people in masks fleeing from a massive Pepe Le Peu creature spraying his lethal gas around. It turned out to be about drugs, which was disappointing.

I immediately wrote it down as an amusing observation, and indeed got some good laughs from it at my gig last night. However, I was well aware that as a topical joke it had a very short half-life. Other, more well-known, people were bound to make the same kind of observation so if I mentioned it too many times I might end up being accused of stealing it. It turns out I was right. Oh well. Great minds think alike, etc.

There was another great headline yesterday on the front of thelondonpaper:

"TORIES LOSE £8.2m FROM INSANE DONOR"

I considered writing a joke about that, but then thought I'd just wait and listen to the News Quiz on Friday instead. Or read Private Eye next week.

The traveller returns

Well thankfully the Scottish gigs were lovely. Dundee was a particular pleasure, and Edinburgh was nearly as good. They restored my faith in student audiences. To be fair, most student gigs are fun - it's just badly set up ones at late night balls that should be avoided!

It's always odd for me to return to Edinburgh for the Comedy Network gig, because it's held in the Pleasance Cabaret Bar, where I performed in The Comedy Zone at the Fringe in 2005. The room is laid out slightly differently, but the smell is identical, and as soon as I walked in it immediately brought back memories of the great gigs and the not-so-great gigs we had that month. It feels like a very long time ago. The little dressing room at the back is almost exactly the same as well. It's plastered with posters and flyers from Edinburgh shows and the Comedy Network from around 1997-98. Most of the names are familiar, indeed many of them are very successful now. It's strangely inspiring to know that people like Lee Mack, Chris Addison, Al Murray, the Boosh etc all performed there. And then there are a few names that I've never heard of, which is conversely slightly depressing.

The city is much quieter without the Festival. Instead of lots of tourists wandering around there are a few students. Most of the venues have reverted to being cupboards, store-rooms or holes. And the Pleasance Courtyard is not a bustling centre of excitement, networking, drinking, whinging and flyering. It's just a car park. Quite disconcerting. The only reminders of the madness of August are a few weather-worn posters on abandoned properties; most of them are ripped down within days. That's why the Cabaret Bar dressing room is fascinating: Edinburgh posters are usually transient and disposable. That room is a snap-shot of a particular moment in comedy, which also happens to be around the time I first performed in Edinburgh. I hope they don't re-decorate any time soon.

A tale of two gigs

My last two gigs could not have been more different. Stand up is a weird job because before every gig you have no idea what might happen, who'll be in the audience or what the room will be like. Although in the case of these two gigs, I had a pretty good idea what the night would be like when I got to the venue, and I turned out to be absolutely right.

On Friday I performed my first full 20 minute set at Banana Cabaret in Balham. It's a lovely club and I've always enjoyed my time there. This time was no exception. I played to a near sell-out crowd of people who were attentive, playful and intelligent. Everyone on the bill had a good gig and I enjoyed myself on stage more than I have in ages. I hadn't played to an audience of more than a hundred for a few weeks, and it's always very rewarding to be able to take a bit more time with the jokes, leave longer pauses, play with the timing. As I left the venue I thought: "That is why I do comedy!"

And then on Saturday I was at Loughborough University Freshers Ball. The contrast was extreme. The comedy was placed in the middle of a noisy bar that was also a thoroughfare between a smoking area and a dance floor. It didn't get going until nearly 11pm, and there were several of us booked to perform until 2am. Within seconds of the first act going on it was clearly a write-off. Nobody in the room was listening, partly because it was difficult to hear above all the ambient noise, and partly because they were very drunk students. They immediately started to shout, chant, heckle and jump in front of the stage. All of the acts tried to make something of the situation but it was a lost cause. By the time I went on at about 1am the room had calmed down a little, but my time was still spent dealing with 5 or 6 persistent, drunk and stupid hecklers and trying to tell a few jokes for the benefit of the 4 people who seemed to be actually listening. It wasn't exactly a tough gig - it just wasn't a gig at all. As I left the venue I thought: "That is what I hate about comedy!"

I'm going to Dundee tomorrow and then Edinburgh afterwards. I hope they're more like Friday than Saturday.

Otherwise I might cry.

Too Soon?

Stand ups causing offence are in the news again. It's a familiar sequence:

1. An emotive story dominates the headlines for a few weeks.
2. Comedians try to make something funny out of it
3. Some of them come unstuck with unsympathetic crowds.
   
4. The press treat them as public enemy number one.
5. Repeat until story fades from public consciousness.
   

Billy Connolly was attacked for joking about Ken Bigley a couple of years ago. Stewart Lee, no stranger to controversy, wrote perceptively about it at the time.

This year it's the turn of Patrick Kielty and Dave Longley.

I have a tenuous personal connection to both of these stories. The more tenuous connection is to Dave. I've seen him perform a couple of times and enjoyed his work. He has always seemed to me to be a comedian who tries to push boundaries, both in material and style, someone who wants to produce something a little different to the usual. I've also performed at Baby Blue, the Liverpool club he was booed off at. I did ok at my gig there, but remember it being a pretty tough crowd; lots of city-boy types who liked the sound of their own voices. I also heard about a recent gig that had to be abandoned there because a stag party got out of hand. And it's in Liverpool, a notoriously difficult city to perform comedy in. It's the last place I'd choose to try a risky topical joke about dead children. But that's me. Dave is clearly someone who enjoys pushing a crowd's buttons, and he often succeeds in getting the balance right.

I completely understand this impulse. All comedians have the devil in us sometimes, which dares us to say the funny thing, regardless of whether or not it's the sensible or sensitive thing to say. To some extent, that's our job. Laughter is often a response to surprise, and to get the biggest laughs it can be necessary to surprise an audience by straying out of the usual social comfort zone. For many comedians this involves talking about sex or other mildly taboo subjects, but a topical reference has the added novelty of immediacy. I managed to get three laughs when I was compering at a gig last week just by mentioning Northern Rock. I didn't have any jokes written about it - all I needed was to say the words and the crowd laughed. Everyone was talking about it, and we were all a little worried about it, so by referencing it I was releasing a little bit of tension. In the aftermath of the London bombings, I heard many comics start their sets by saying something like "Great to see you haven't been put off coming out tonight - after all if we stop watching comedy then the terrorists have won!" It's become a hack joke now, but for a few weeks it almost always got a laugh. When a big story is dominating the headlines there is a pre-existing tension in the room that, as a comedian, you feel that you have to try and defuse. The problem is that sometimes addressing it works and sometimes it makes things worse.

In Dave's case, I think that his biggest offence was really about football. By establishing that most of the audience were Liverpool fans, he was trying to implicate them in his observation about Everton shirts. The Rhys Jones case has caused understandable horror across the country and has also become strongly linked with football throughout the media. Liverpool and Everton fans have made very public declarations of solidarity with the family. Trying to exploit the traditional football enmity in this situation was misjudged. If the joke had been framed more as an idle observation, and had crucially not been delivered in Liverpool, I doubt it would have made much impact. But then maybe it wouldn't have been as funny. It certainly would have been less shocking. After all, to an outside observer, joking about Catholics in front of a comedy club may be funny, but joking about them in front of a congregation is hilarious and joking about them in front of the Pope is hysterical. Only to the observer, though. To the rest of the audience, it's not so funny. As Dave found out to his cost.

Onto Patrick. I have a slightly less tenuous connection to this story. At the end of the usual strident Mail nonsense, a spokesman defends him by saying: "He performed the exact same material last week in London with no complaints whatsoever." That's an interesting statement, because I was at one of his warm up gigs in London that week. In fact, I was compering it. And although it's true to say that there were no "complaints", there weren't that many laughs either. I was surprised that he opened with his Madeleine material, because the audience weren't very keen on it, and he then struggled to engage with them for the rest of his set. I didn't resent him doing it, because it was a small warm up gig and everyone needs to try stuff out, but I was surprised to hear that he'd proceeded to do it again in front of a much larger crowd where the likelihood of people taking offence is much higher.

This all comes down to one big question: should comedians make jokes about these kind of stories? My position on this has always been clear: You can joke about anything, but if you're going to joke about something very sensitive it had better be a really good joke. Or to put it another way: weak puns about sex or Easyjet are bad enough. Weak puns about dead children are unacceptable.

Personally I haven't made any jokes about the McCann case and I haven't heard many that have even made me smile. I think we are all so aware that it is a tragedy and unlikely to have a happy ending that I can't imagine many jokes working except in a very dark and shocking sense. The media circus that surrounds the case has provided much more potential for humour, but even so it's hard to bring it up in a comedy club without alienating the audience. I've seen a few semi-successful attempts to do it, but have never felt comfortable addressing it myself.

Despite all this, I feel strongly that comedians should have the right to address any issue in a comedy club. They should be special places where taboos can be confronted and sick jokes can be told. This doesn't mean that an audience has to laugh at them, but the comedian shouldn't be pilloried for them either. Unfortunately this increasingly seems like a unrealistic prospect, but it's a nice ideal to aim for.

I just hope I never end up having to apologise for a joke in the national media.

Not unless it's really good.

On a (hopefully) unrelated note: Am I the only person who thinks that dog-walkers and ramblers deliberate go out looking for bodies? After all, they're the only people who ever seem to find them. I imagine a dejected dog-walker returning home one morning:
"Morning dear? How was the walk?"
"Rubbish."
"Oh dear. No body?"
"No. And Jeff found two last week. All I found was a dead pigeon. And I had to kill it first."

"Here, Five-A-Day! Eat your Whiskas!"

The Blue Peter cat deception has been getting a lot of media attention today. I happened to turn on Newsround this afternoon and it was the lead item. It was fascinating to watch how they dealt with it.

The story was treated like a massive political scandal. Po-faced presenters said sentences like "the name chosen, Cookie, was ignored for reasons that are unclear." There was an interview with a chastened-looking head of CBBC, in which the anchor asked "How are children supposed to trust CBBC now?" and the head replied that they had made only 3 mistakes in 3 years, although "that is clearly 3 mistakes too many". It was brilliant. The number of entirely confused children across the UK must have been huge.

Essentially it's a tiny version of the David Kelly scandal. I just hope that Socks isn't discovered next week face down in the Blue Peter pond. Then we'd have to have the equivalent of the Hutton Report. Perhaps conducted by Gordon the Gopher.

The strangest thing about this whole story is why they changed the name in the first place. My only thought is that they felt that the name "Cookie" wasn't promoting a healthy diet. In which case I'm surprised they didn't end up calling the cat "Salad".

I may be a bit bored today

When I was shaving this morning I noticed that the shave gel had instructions on it, which included: "Take a hazelnut sized blob of gel on your palm..."

Why hazelnut? It will put off anyone with a nut allergy. I'm also not entirely sure how big a hazelnut is. It's probably smaller than a Brazil nut, but I can't be certain. However, everyone knows how big a peanut is, which I'd also guess is approximately half as big as a hazelnut. So instead they should have put: "Take a blob of gel about the size of two peanuts on your palm..."

Or perhaps they should just let us decide how much gel to use. If I want to use a walnut sized amount, or even go crazy with a coconut sized amount, I shouldn't have the dispenser making me feel guilty about it. It's not a medicine. It's gel.

However, I do approve of the word "blob". It's a word that should be on more packaging. Other words I'd like to see more of include: "squirt", "dollop", "squidge" and "sliver".

I had it a minute ago...maybe it's behind the sofa?

This caught my eye today. It's an amazing story, and one close to my heart, because I am a Yorkshireman born and bred but now speak with a pretty much RP accent. In fact, in several castings I have been asked to speak "less posh". Not asked to do any specific accent. Just "less posh". At that point I tend to go into a awful Mockney/Northern cross-breed accent and invariably don't get the job.

I get asked about "losing" my accent all the time, particularly when I'm interviewed for a local paper or something:

"So where are you from?"
"Yorkshire."
"Really? You don't have much of a Yorkshire accent."
"No."
"Why not?"
"Er..."

I don't know exactly why not. It's probably a combination of factors. My parents aren't from Yorkshire originally. I didn't pick up much of an accent at school for some reason, despite the fact that most of my friends had quite strong accents. And then I went to Cambridge, where I've noticed that people seem either to hold on to their accent very strongly or lose it altogether. Plus I've always been interested in stage performing and public speaking, and I think that often encourages you to develop RP.

However, that's not a very interesting or concise explanation. From now on if anyone asks I'll tell them it was the result of brain surgery. Much more exciting.

In other news, I saw a brilliant headline on Ceefax today:

"Churches in gay bishop showdown"

Now that's a confrontation I'd pay to see! I wonder if it's no holds barred?

May Contain Dancing

There is an advert in Time Out this week for a new dance piece called Touch Wood. It shows two naked dancers entwined, and the tag-line is: "a season of naked ideas danced on a bare wooden floor". Then at the bottom of the advert is a small note: "Warning: may not contain nudity".

It's pretty unusual to have a negative warning like that. You can't imagine the same sort of thing for a film. The poster for Shrek 4 probably won't have the note: "Warning: may not contain violence, sex or real people."

They probably had to put it there because of a case a few years ago when someone complained about the lack of nudity in a dance production at Sadlers Wells. I'd love to have been there when he made the complaint:

"When I saw the production I was dismayed and disgusted! The only reason I went to this show was because of the nudity."
"You went to Sadlers Wells for the nudity?"
"Yes. I could have gone to Soho or the internet but I saw the poster and expected to see hot naked babes in the premier dance theatre in Islington."
"Right. Presumably you'd want this complaint to be anonymous?"
"Oh yes. I'm a theatre reviewer."

You couldn't make it up. Well, you could, but that would be weird.

Two stories that made me smile today, for quite different reasons:

1. The twins from Big Brother are recording a song - a cover of Barbie Girl by Aqua. They are quoted as saying: "It's a dream come true for us to record our favourite song of all time". Barbie Girl? Favourite song of all time? The apocalypse may truly be upon us.

But the quote that really made me smile in that story came from their new record company:

"It is a measure of how much viewers identified with the twins that they were the only Big Brother contestants never to have been nominated for a single eviction."

Now, I'm not exactly an avid viewer of the show, but even I know that the nominations are decided by the house mates, not the viewers. "Nasty" Nick Bateman was never nominated for eviction either. What the quote should read is: "It is a measure of our desperation for a quick buck that we take the opinions of a random group of freaks not to vote to evict the twins as somehow suggesting that they can sing and/or dance. Fuck it, it's only a cover."

And the follow-up quote is in some ways even funnier:

"They are also the only Big Brother contestants ever to have signed with a major record company."

Right. So the record label is trumpeting its own decision as somehow momentous. Translated: "They'd better sell some records or we are going to look like proper idiots."

2. A region of Russia has announced a "sex day". I think there could be some awkward conversations in H.R. offices:

"Vladimir?"
"Yes, sir?
"I've just got your holiday form for next week. You want a day off?"
"Yup."
"To have sex?"
"Uh huh."
"Right. I suppose your wife will need the day off too, then?"
"Probably just the morning to be honest."
"Okay..."
"Actually, can she just come in an hour late?"

Also, no elephants with knives attached to their legs

Spotted at the bottom of a poster for the Last Night of the Proms in Hyde Park:

"In the interests of safety, please do not bring glass items, barbeques or flaming torches."

Flaming torches? I know that Chico and Will Young were performing, but surely nobody was going to organise a mob of angry villagers to attack them?

When was the last time anyone went to an event with a flaming torch? It seems like common sense to me. I'm surprised they didn't add: "Also, no broadswords, Gatling guns or anthrax".

Thank God there was no Cod Liver Oil Boy

I've just read this. I think I might be one of the three people she's referring to. Bananas are one of the few things I cannot eat. I can eat banana flavoured things if I have to, but not anything containing bananas themselves. Apparently they are a great source of potassium. Well then I can live without that particular metal. It also means that I can't drink smoothies, because regardless of what flavour they claim to be on the bottle; "mango and strawberry", "cranberry and raspberry" etc, as far as I'm concerned what flavour they actually are is "BANANA and mango and strawberry" etc.

My most horrifying memory of bananas goes back to when I was about eight years old and a massive fan of the cartoon series "Bananaman". A series I now regard as sinister fruit-based propaganda. After watching a particularly good episode, I rushed into the kitchen and ate half a banana without thinking, hoping to turn into an amazing superhero. Instead I turned into the amazing vomiting boy.

Ironically, the first single I ever bought was "Guilty of Love in the First Degree" by Bananarama. I saw the video for it again the other day. All I'll say is that videos have got better in the last two decades. And that as a ten year old boy I had no taste.

R.S.V.P.

There are two types of people in this world. Those who love fancy dress parties and those who hate fancy dress parties. I am firmly in the second camp.

This thought struck me on Saturday night, as I was walking home past various groups of revellers wearing ridiculous outfits. I realised that when I get invited to a fancy dress party my one aim is to spend as little time as possible thinking about what to wear, but still manage to look like I've made an effort. Making an effort for a party is the equivalent of "it's the thought that counts" for a present. Nobody really believes it but we have to pretend that we do, otherwise society will break down into anarchy.

My top three fancy dress party triumphs, in reverse order:

3. Anything with the word "green" in it. It's my surname, so it'll do for a costume. I've used this pathetic excuse at "Tube" parties ("Yes, I'm Green Park! Or Parsons Green, or Turnham Green...") I've even dressed as "Reverend Green" in the past. A dog collar is easy to make with a single piece of plain A4 paper. And I have two green shirts.

2. At Edinburgh one year there was a "come as your favourite popstar" party. That's a major problem for the "making an effort" brigade. Why "your favourite"? I like Kanye West, but I'm never going to look like him, at least not without causing some serious offence. Ditto Beth Ditto. In the end I chose Bowie. Not in the Ziggy Stardust years, or even Aladdin Sane. No, I went for a mix of Heroes and Hunky Dory. Or to put it another way, I wore a jazzy shirt and put on eye liner. That's the good thing about Bowie. He probably looked like that at least once.

1. At college I was invited to a "come as your hero" party. That's even more difficult than favourite popstar. I didn't really have any heroes, unless you count sportsmen (too much effort) or comedians and writers (not enough effort). I'd left this one very late, and was sitting in my friend's room that evening bemoaning my lack of costume. Then I noticed that he had an empty flowerpot in the corner of his room. I don't remember why - I think it was a prop from a play he'd been in or something - but it gave me an idea.

So a couple of hours later I arrived at the party wearing a green shirt and a flowerpot on my head. The host opened the door to this absurd vision and looked bemused.

"Hi Matt!" she said. "Er...what have you come as?"
"Bill or Ben!" I replied.
"Who?"
"The flowerpot men!"
"They're your heroes?" she said, visibly worried.
"Yes! Now, where's the booze?"

I think that was the nadir of "making an effort". In order to avoid having to make or pay for a costume I pretended that characters from a children's programme I didn't even watch were my heroes. It was a rubbish party too. Nobody seemed to want to talk to me. Possibly because I was wearing a flowerpot.

And pretty soon I discovered that the flowerpot had been decorated in silver paint that was coming off on my head and face. Within an hour I could take off the pot and claim I'd come as the Terminator. But the Terminator with robot alopecia. In a green shirt.

Look! Words!

So the South End gig went ahead and was fun. A decent crowd although smaller than usual according to the management. That's what promoters always say, although in this case I believe them. I look forward to returning when it's full.

On the way there I saw a brilliant billboard headline in the Evening Standard:

"Russian Bombers Head for Britain"

It looked like the kind of horror-headline people feared during the Cold War. What the headline failed to point out of course was that the bombers then turned around and went back to Russia without actually, you know, bombing anything.

It reminded me of the headlines you regularly see in tabloids such as the Daily Sport:

"Outrage Over Nude Britney Photos!"

The "outrage" being because the photos are fake. Doesn't stop them printing them though.

I suspect that what they really want to use as a headline is: "Look! Tits!" but I guess they've decided that would eventually get repetitive and lose its impact.

I think they might be overestimating their readers.

Not a real sports injury

I don't have a lot to report from the last few days. I've had a bad run of gigs, not in the sense that they've gone badly, but in the sense that the last three gigs I've been booked to do have been cancelled due to lack of audience. I think it's the worst run I've had in years.

It's a vexed issue, whether or not to go ahead with a gig with a small audience. When I was starting out, anything above 5 people was great, but now even the smaller gigs I do tend to have a "double figures at least" rule. Obviously you don't want to disappoint the people who did turn up, but trying to do comedy to what looks like a panel of judges is pretty dispiriting. The audience tends to feel uncomfortable too; laughter is a social response, and if there aren't enough people to laugh out loud, the gig will be very very quiet. Comedians stand at the back of rooms and mutter darkly about "smilers". When the lights are strong we can't see people smiling. As a response it's as useless as nodding on the radio.

So the gigs were cancelled. Whether it was because of the tube strike, the nice weather or lack of publicity, I don't know. Audiences for comedy are notoriously hard to predict. For example, is rain good for a gig, or bad? Every promoter has a different answer. What I do know is that having three gigs in a row cancelled is very annoying. Every time you build yourself up for the gig, think about the kind of stuff you're going to talk about, consider whether or not to do some new bits, and then there's a massive sense of deflation. Sometimes all the comedians hang around afterwards and have a drink together, which can bit a lot of fun, but not this week. I think everyone's tired from Edinburgh and just wanting to get home.

But tonight I have a last minute gig booked in South End. Gigs outside London tend to be more reliable in terms of audience, so let's hope it's fourth time lucky!

In other news, I have been playing Tiger Woods Golf on my Wii and have a sore arm.

Transport for Lateness

Yesterday I tried to access some information on a government-run website, only to be told that the website isn't "open" at the weekend. How unbelievably pointless is that? I thought the whole idea of a website was that it was available 24/7. What next? On-line banking that you can't access on bank holidays? It seems that the government has the idea that computer systems also need the weekend to rest, see the kids, do some DIY. It would be quite a sweet image if it wasn't completely bonkers.

I also saw a Transport for London poster at a bus stop yesterday which read: "Important Thing: The more you walk, the more you smile!", followed by a diagram showing an unhappy face next to the words "10 yards" and a big smiley face next to the words "1 mile".

The more you walk, the more you smile! I'm not sure that's entirely true. I'm not sure women in Africa would agree that walking an extra mile a day to collect water would make a massive grin break out on their faces. If anything, I think the reverse is probably true.

Even for people actually at the bus stop it seems a strange message. It implies that the bus may not be coming so you'd be better off walking. That way you might actually get to your destination, then presumably smile ruefully. It's odd. You wouldn't have posters at train stations saying: "Take the bus! You'll be much happier!" Although I suppose you might this week, as there's a tube strike on...

A trio of trivia

1. Spotted in the London Lite: Jamie Bell quoted as saying that he would never go nude on stage like Daniel Radcliffe did, because "he's got a lot more balls than I have". Which raises the question: does Jamie Bell have no balls? Or does Daniel Radcliffe have more than two? I didn't see the production so can't comment. Anyone?

2. The Bishop of London said that people should stop using the memory of Diana "to score points". I'm not sure what game he's talking about there, but it can't be Scrabble. "Diana" would be a rubbish word to play. It's mainly vowels. Even on a triple word score you could get a maximum of 18 points. Ironically, "Queen" is quite a good word to play.

3. At Oxford Circus station last night the fire alarm went off and a recorded voice began to repeat on a loop the announcement: "Will Inspector Sands please go to the operations room immediately". I was amazed that they're still using that name. Surely we all know what it means by now? It's been used for years as a "code" for a fire alarm, so as not to frighten the public. The fact that the fire alarm was going off at the same time was also a bit of a give away.

I think they should bring the system up to date, use a few different names. How about Morse or Wexford? That would make everyone feel safe. Or even better: Gadget. "There might be a fire, but it's about to be put out by an idiotic half-robot-half-man-thing, albeit in an amusingly haphazard way, and really because his clever niece knows how to use a fire-extinguisher!"

Yes, they looked a bit like goths

On the tube back from a gig in Camden. I was sharing a carriage with a man and a woman having quite a heated discussion. The man seemed bored of the conversation when I sat down, and said with a sigh:

"The thing about brain death is that you can't recover from it." The woman tried to interrupt, but he ploughed on: "Once the higher brain functions have gone, that's it."

Impressive, I thought. An unconventional topic of conversation, but anyone who can use the phrase "higher brain functions" at 11pm, and sound like they know what it means, deserves some respect.

Then it became clear that the woman was arguing that she had once been brain dead. Quite recently in fact.

"I was definitely brain dead. I couldn't see or move!" she said. But when pressed by the man she admitted that she could see a bit, although it was all blurry. And she could also move, just not very easily.

I think she might have confused "being brain dead" with "having a hangover".

When I got off the tube a few stops later, the discussion was still in full flow, and I was beginning to feel a little brain dead myself.

Making friends through comedy

Heckling is an occupational hazard as a stand up. It's actually quite rare, particularly at small gigs, but you have to be ready for it at all times. However, that readiness can sometimes lead to problems when you take it off stage...

A few weeks ago I was compèring a small gig and it was going well. I was doing the usual chat to the audience to warm the room up a bit before bringing on the first act. I noticed that a couple of women in the middle of the audience were ignoring me and chatting to each other and I said hello to them and asked them what their names were. One of them replied: “I'm not telling you. We’ve been working all week and have come here for you to make us laugh. So tell us some jokes.” Fair point, perhaps, but it was a very aggressive way to react considering the fact that it was a friendly room and I'd already got a few laughs from banter.

I reacted in mock horror and said something like “God, you remind me of my mother!” Not exactly comedy gold, but it worked in the circumstances. However, the woman seemed really offended by that and continued to heckle. I managed to shut her up eventually, but I felt like I'd lost my authority with the audience and the atmosphere had been soured. It slowly turned into a difficult gig and for the rest of the night I didn’t really enjoy it.

Unfortunately the two women hung around at the end of the show. The one I had spoken to came over to me as I was packing away the stage equipment and started complaining about what I'd said to her at the beginning. By now I was tired and just wanted to go home, but she was quite drunk and aggressive and wouldn't stop berating me. Then she said the following sentence:

“You were lucky how I reacted! You were lucky I took it on the chin!”

And I couldn’t resist. I just shot back:

“Which one?”

Now. She wasn’t fat. I don't think I'd have said that if she had been. I’m not sure if that makes me better or worse. But she was obviously not happy.

That was the moment I remembered that I wasn’t a comedian on stage any more, but just a man standing in front of a woman being rude about her appearance.

If I'm honest, the main thing I regret is that she didn’t say that to me during the gig, because then my response would almost certainly have got a big laugh and I would have regained my authority. As it was, she was slightly stunned, and I was slightly embarrassed, although pleased that I'd finally managed to get her back for ruining the gig for me.

I also got away without being attacked, which I thought was quite a result.

The Happyslap Hypothesis

I find myself increasingly irritated by some of the terminology used in the media. One example is the phrase "friendly fire". It's a horrible mix of euphemism and oxymoron; we wouldn't say "lovely murder" or "chummy rape", at least not in mixed company.

It's strange how these phrases get lodged in the national consciousness. Even when most people would agree that they are offensive or even nonsensical, they survive. Do we secretly enjoy the tension created by using them? Is there a clever irony at work? Or is it, more likely, because newspaper editors prefer alliteration and assonance to accuracy?

I also saw a sign saying "Slow Children" but I can't think of anything funny about that.

I'm always on the look out for odd things to put in my stand up routine. I think that in some ways I'm an observational comedian, but only in a very specific and personal sense. Instead of saying "have you ever noticed that..." I tend to say something like "I noticed something weird..." or "something weird happened to me". I like to tell a little story instead of referring to a general truth. Some audiences, particularly in big clubs, prefer to be told about things they already know - hence the tendency towards "hack" or cliched subjects. These can be boring and repetitive if you go to lots of comedy but seem completely original if it's your first time. Many times I've heard the same joke from several comedians, and I don't think any of them stole it - it's just a pretty obvious idea based on a common observation.

Anyway. Here are three signs I saw recently which I thought were quite funny:

1. "AAA Balloons - For All Your Decorating Needs!"

Presumably as long as those needs only involve balloons. I saw this on a billboard next to the pitch at Wivenhoe Football Club, when I was there for the lovely Wivenhoe Funny Farm gig. Brilliantly, I also saw two other adverts for local balloon companies whilst I was there. There's obviously not a lot else to do in Essex.

2. "Please don't open windows too far as birds may fly into toilets."

This sign is in the toilets at the offices of The Spotlight, where I was for an casting. It really made me want to open the window just to see what happened. I imagined the conversation later in the office: "Another bird got in the toilet! That's the third this week! Perhaps the sign is being counter-productive?"

3. This one needs a bit of context - I was filming some scenes for a TV show in the reception of a magistrates court when I noticed several big notices saying:

"ARE YOU GUILTY? If so, tell us now!"

Is it just an attempt to trick stupid criminals into admitting it? If so, it's a bit lacking in subtlety, along the lines of Baldrick's "Are you a German spy?" interrogation technique, or the US Immigration forms that ask "Are you a terrorist?" I flew to America for the first time earlier this year, and, although I'd heard many jokes on the subject, I still found the forms hilarious. However, I wasn't tempted to express this hilarity to the Immigration officers. My quest for comedic originality doesn't extend that far.

Next week: fluffy bunnies must die!

Good to see that Germaine Greer has finally found a target truly worthy of attack. What has she gone after this time? Muslim fundamentalism? Nah. American imperialism? Nope. Men in general? Not this time. No, Germaine has focussed all of her considerable powers of invective on...cuddly toys.

Now, I know that newspaper columnists have to earn a living too, but I can't help thinking that this piece might be a little counter-productive. I can just imagine the Daily Mail headline: "Fanatical feminist trashes toys". But then again, Germaine lost any intellectual credibility she once had when she flounced out of the Celebrity Big Brother house a couple of years ago, complaining that house mates were "bullied" and had "an agenda", two revelations that were hardly a surprise. I mean, even my teddy bear could have told her that.

'king apologies

I read recently that the Danish minister of culture has apologised for the Viking raids that occurred 1200 years ago. At last! Better late than never, eh? I bet he's glad he got that off his chest. 1200 years is a long time to feel guilty about something. It's the latest in a long line of recent bizarre apologies, from the Fijian tribe who have apologised for their ancestors' amusingly direct form of theological argument with missionaries (eating them) to Tony Blair's apology for slavery. The one thing that links all of these apologies is that the apologiser had nothing personally to do with what he is apologising for. It's at best a cynical political statement and at worst a pointless PR exercise. I'm just waiting for Jonathan Sacks to go on Thought for the Day next week and say "Ok, yes, I admit it, we did kill Jesus. Sorry!"

The mention of Viking raids takes me back to my school days, when I was a huge fan of history and Vikings in particular. My family regularly visited the Yorvik Viking Centre, distinguished from all other local museums by the "authentic" smell of shit that pervaded all of the exhibits. At the time I found this delightful. With the benefit of hindsight I wonder if they just built it next to a sewage treatment works. The exhibits I remember include some slightly shoddy waxworks, some bored actors pretending to be Scandinavian but sounding suspiciously Yorkshire, and a machine that could convert modern currency into Viking currency, essentially by flattening it and making it smell slightly of shit.

I also read a lot of books about Vikings, and remember clearly a children's history book that contained the sentence: "The Vikings raped and pillaged their way across Northern Europe". However, being a children's book, it failed to explain what those key words meant, so I had to try to work it out from the context. As a naive ten year old I assumed they meant something like "hiked and explored". That was fine, until the following year when my school went on a trip to the Yorkshire Dales and I inadvertently made some pretty inappropriate suggestions for what we could do whilst we were there...