Coming up in tonight’s episode of Britain’s Got Talent…

A two-year-old boy forced to watch Santa give chocolate to everybody but him competes with a ten-year-old girl who’s introduced to several ponies on the production line of a glue factory, an eighty-year-old man handcuffed to the rowing machine that’s powering his wife’s life-support machine, and the Youtube video of Tommy Cooper’s final performance.

 ::  Read on

Greetings card shops are great. Such a wonderful antidepressant.

If you’re in a bit of a grumpy mood, isn’t it cool to know there’s a place on your local high street or shopping mall that’s filled with pictures of kittens and funny jokes?

And you get to read them all for free!

I recently made the acquaintance of a chap who writes such cards, the jokey ones, for a living.

While I got the impression he didn’t find the job especially exciting, it struck me as something that should be immensely rewarding.

Some of this guy’s cards have sold millions of copies.

Think about that.

Let’s say a card sells a million copies. That means a million people have read your joke, smiled, and thought: “That’s good. I’ll pay two quid for that.”

Another million people have then opened the card, read your joke, and smiled.

You’ve just made two million people smile!

That’s more than anything on BBC Three ever did.

(because, you know, of the ratings, cough)

I was in a card shop the other day, looking for this guy’s copyright notice on the back of various jokey cards. Contribute my two quid to his kids’ shoe fund if I could.

After a few minutes, a shop assistant saw me looking.

“They all cost the same, you know,” she said.

Apparently I look like the kind of person who will only buy the very cheapest of birthday cards for his sister.

After I’d dirtylooked the assistant away, I noticed the card in my hand was a Hallmark card.

I noticed this because it had the Hallmark logo rather prominently on the front.

Why?

Let’s think about the logic of this for a second.

Companies put their logos on things because they spend a lot of money marketing their brands so you come to associate those brands with quality.

When you go into a shop, you see their brand on something and think: “Oh, it’s so-and-so brand. The TV told me this is good stuff, so I’ll buy it.”

This works with, say, a can of beans. You can’t open up a can of beans and start munching away in the supermarket to make sure it’s good stuff.

You just see the Heinz logo on the label and know it’s precisely the kind of sugary, flatulent, dayglo slop your toast is craving.

But with greetings cards, what possible value is there in having the Hallmark logo slapped prominently on the front of every card?

Has any human being ever purchased a greetings card based on who made it?

Do some people walk into a shop in such a hurry to buy a card that they cannot spare a moment to actually read it first?

“I’m simply too busy to read this card, what with the modern-day hectic lifestyle I keep reading about and iPhones and the internets and so forth, but I see the Hallmark logo and therefore I trust that the sentence written on the front and the sentence written on the inside will be of the highest possible quality.”

Or are there people out there with such a shocking lack of judgement that they cannot figure out whether a card is any good for themselves.

“Well, it looks like a joke greetings card, but unfortunately I am utterly incapable of determining whether it’s actually funny. There’s no laugh track or anything. But wait! Look! The Hallmark logo! I have erred, it surely must be a funny joke indeed.”

Or…

“Sure, it’s a picture of a kitten sniffing a puppy sniffing a duckling, but is it cute? Well, it does have an ugly Hallmark logo in the top corner, so I guess it must be.”

Are we really that fucking stupid Hallmark?! Is that what you’re telling us? That we’re a bunch of easily distracted cultural plebeians, incapable of making life choices disassociated from corporate branding?

Well!?

I’m all angry now.

Under normal circumstances I may have considered an antidepressant trip to the mall, but I’m not sure that it would work any more.

I may have spoiled it.

 ::  Read on

Noble thoughts from newly installed chief god botherer Vincent Nichols.

“Let us be a society in which we genuinely listen to each other, in which sincere disagreement is not made out to be insult or harassment, in which reasoned principles are not construed as prejudice.”

As much as I’d like to think he’s giving me carte blanche to call the Catholic Church a bunch of evil, ignorant, hypocritical bastards, I think it’s far more likely he’s trying to pre-emptively defend the next bunch of homophobic bullshit that comes out of his mouth, or the mouths of one of the closet nonces who work for him.

1 comment  ::  Read on

I’m writing a sitcom pilot for the BBC at the moment.

Well, that’s a lie, obviously. I’m writing this blog at the moment.

(I’m learning that prolonged periods of agonising procrastination are virtually a prerequisite for people who write things with deadlines later than a few hours from present.)

But I am writing a sitcom pilot. And the BBC are paying me to do it.

Don’t laugh, those are true facts.

Admittedly, the cheque will be of a value more suitable for framing than cashing.

It would barely pay the porn bill. I could make more money in an afternoon’s freelance.

But it will be a real cheque. From the BBC. To write something.

There’s a vanishingly small probability that what I’m writing will ever get on the telly.

I assume that’s true, anyway. I’ll have a better idea when I’m actually more than halfway finished writing the fucking thing.

A few months ago, I sent 12 pages of a sitcom pilot to the Beeb.

Mainly arse jokes, truth be told. I count seven anal insertions in those pages.

Somehow, those 12 pages allowed me to join eight other wannabe sitcom and sketch show writers, many of whom seem to have been hacking away at this kind of thing for far longer than I, onto a thing called “Northern Laughs”.

I say “thing” because I’m not entirely certain what the word for whatever it is is

But what it means is that for the next few months I get notes on my draft scripts from some BBC comedy producer types and comedy writer Ian La Frenais.

(You may never have heard of him unless you’re seriously into British comedy, so make sure you check out his IMDB page, just to get an idea of how impressive this is and how much praise you should be lauding upon me.

Seriously, him and his mate wrote The Commitments, for real.)

I met him in London last week, where he generously tried not to gloat too badly that Newcastle beat Middlesbrough in a crucial relegation derby the night before, before tearing my script a new arsehole. In the nicest possible way.

It only lasted thirty minutes, but as is the case for so many things that only last thirty minutes, it was a beautiful experience.

I’m obviously no stranger to the blue pen, but having one of the guys who wrote Porridge giving me pointers on a comedy script what I wrote… I felt like I should be paying them.

At the very least, following our first encounter my script has a new arsehole into which I can insert things. With hilarious consequences.

2 comments  ::  Read on

Michael Martin is going and Ladbrokes is currently offering odds on 1000-1 on Joanna Lumley becoming the next Speaker.

Judging from the hyperbole about urgent constitutional reform spilling out of the TV news all day, I’d say all bets are off. Anything could happen.

Personally, I’m in favour of a rolling “Guest Speaker” position, rather like what they did when Angus Deayton got kicked off Have I Got News For You for snorting coke off a hooker’s tits.

Think about it. Could be fun.

And now on BBC News 24, over to Prime Minister’s Questions, hosted this week by Brian Blessed…

ORDERRR! {manic cackle}

 ::  Read on

Mark Thomas brings in the lawyers.

Fraudulent benefit claimants are not allowed to form committees comprised of benefit claimants to investigate their misdemeanours. Nor can exposed tax cheats offer to pay back money because they are ‘concerned about how it looks to the outside world’ and then walk away with no repercussion.

If I need to go to court I will be making a public appeal to cover the legal costs of the case, which I’m sure will have overwhelming support!

I haven’t paid tax in the UK for almost a decade, but if Thomas wants a tenner to help bring those thieving motherfuckers to justice, I’m in.

 ::  Read on

Overheard in the lobby of the BBC’s Broadcasting House yesterday:

Man: Is this place mainly for TV, or is it radio?

Woman: Dunno.

Man: Oh, look, there’s Steve Punt!

Woman: Hmmm… so not TV then.

Man: No.

 ::  Read on

Demonstrating uncharacteristic humility, I have nominated this blog for Best Geek Blog over at the Blogger’s Choice Awards.

I don’t expect to win, or even come close.

What I really want to do, purely for the entertainment value, is to get more votes than my old boss Jason, who nominated himself in the same category earlier this week.

He’s managed to rack up an impressive 2 votes so far, one of which is his good self.

I have one vote. Me. I only need two of you to vote for me to take the lead. More would be nice, obviously. I know there’s about a hundred of you reading this.

Click the graphic below, or here, to go vote. You’ll need to sign up, but it only takes a minute and you can use your spam trap email address if needs be.

6 comments  ::  Read on

If you watch the local news the night before a major protest march in San Francisco, you can almost guarantee to hear something along the lines of:

“Lesbians For The Metric System have vowed to march naked in protest of…”

“Asian Chicks Against The Fur Trade have said they will hold a naked demonstration…”

“The Marin Knitting Circle will protest naked on Market Street…”

I can’t count the number of times I’ve heard those words coming out of the mouth of a lying, stinking, lazy TV hack.

It’s all bullshit.

Protest groups press release their female nudity a couple of days in advance of any major protest, in order to draw a bigger crowd.

Any drooling blokes who turn up to get an eyeful will be sorely disappointed. They will, however, be added to the headcount when the march is later reported in the papers.

I know this because I showed up for every… damn… one… of those things. Didn’t see so much as a single pube.

I was reminded of those wasted afternoons today because I was toying with the idea of buying a ticket to see Lucy Porter at my local arts centre next week.

Then I read this advertorial piffle in the listings page of my local free rag:

FUNNY girl Lucy Porter’s latest show “The Bare Necessities” comes to Darlington next week.

In her seventh solo show, Lucy brings a stripped-down performance of nakedly funny stand-up comedy…

In a show that provides a unique evening of entertainment featuring everything from nudity and xylophone playing…

Emphases mine, though the article couldn’t have been any more obvious if it had bolded all the bits I did.

One could be forgiven reading this for thinking that Lucy’s going to, at the very least, get out her rather incredible breasts. For the lads.




She’s not, of course. If there’s one thing I’ve learned about stand-up comedy is that comedians rarely undress on stage.

But, damn, if there’s even a 1% chance of Lucy Porter’s spectacular naked breasts and my own eyes sharing the same room… surely that’s worth £12?

Damn, now I’ve fallen for her publicity machine! Her PR people have taken control of my testes and are using them to manipulate my wallet!

Surely I should want to see her act because she’s funny.

Is she funny? I recall she’s been not bad on Mock The Week, but MTW is a very laddish, hypercompetitive affair, and she never really gets a chance to shine.

Let’s see what her fans have to say about her show, over on her web site’s guest book.

Subject: Quick bit of info [ REPLY ]
Posted by: Robert Bopkins on 16:16 23/Apr/09

I once came on Lucy’s tits.

Okay…

Let’s try another.

Subject: Are women funny? [ REPLY ]
Posted by: Steve-Oh on 22:04 11/Apr/09

Dear Lucy, I was at the Lowry, Manchester, last month and picked up a flyer for your show – the one where you’re lying over a bear skin naked – with the intention of booking seats for my mate and I – We’re both sad middle-aged men. Anyway I’ve seen some of your stuff on YouTube and, I’m sorry to say, I’m not impressed…

Good luck with the career and if you ever fancy a night out in Manchester with a sad middle-aged bloke then give me a call! PS: I’ve kept the flyer of you lying naked on a bear skin.

Hmm… What about…

Subject: Butt. [ REPLY ]
Posted by: Guy Incognito on 07:37 26/Mar/09

Saw you at Hemel – yoou were excellent! Possibly you need smaller jeans as you were displaying half an inch of builder’s butt. Not a bad thing tbh! Hope Bouncy Nora is well.

In fact, reading the first few pages of her guest book, fuck me if 90% of the comments aren’t people making reference to how cute or sexy she is, women critiquing her look, or tragic blokes making overt sexual overtures.

I suddenly feel very sorry for Lucy Porter.

Maybe I’ll buy a ticket, just to show some feminist solidarity.

Yeah. Solidarity. Nothing to do with her tits.

Where’s my credit card…

 ::  Read on