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how I learned to stop worrying and love u2 (a bit)

Saturday 28th February 2009

I just sat through a lengthy Culture Show about the return of U2, who seem to be pushing the promotional boat out rather further in respect of their new album than you'd think would be entirely necessary for The Biggest Band In The World.  Still, it's nice to see they're not taking us for granted.

Back in the 80s, there were two bands I could never relax and get into; one was The Smiths and the other was U2. In both cases it wasn't the band themselves who were putting me off, it was the fans. 

My thoughts on Smiths fans are a matter of record (well, of CD anyway); with U2 fans it was the disturbing apostolic fervour they seemed to inspire.  It wasn't enough just to buy the records and wear the T-shirts, they had to embrace Bono as their lord and saviour.  Of course Bono himself, while still given to the occasional Joan Of Arc Moment, is at heart a mischievous little bollicks from Dublin and I always suspected he was having a laugh, perhaps even at his fans' expense (Morrissey definitely was).  But you couldn't say that to the fans, they would get a distinctly gas-chamberish glint in their eye and you'd feel compelled to change the subject for everyone's sake.

As such, it was an immense relief at the turn of the 90s when U2 released Achtung Baby - still one of my favourite albums of all time - and embarked on the Zoo TV tour, a vast ironic send-up of itself and of rock in general.  I saw the tour (in its "Zooropa" incarnation) in Glasgow in 1993, and I'm very glad I did.  It's one of the few pivotal rock events I've been alive and more or less the right age for.

Meanwhile, The Smiths had imploded in '87 while still at the height of taking-themselves-a-bit-too-seriously-ness, and as such their fans were never given the opportunity to to get over themselves. Many still haven't.

Since I learned to relax and enjoy U2 it's been fun watching them sustain "it", whatever "it" is, beyond all reason and expectation.  I certainly don't know of any other band who've lasted so long with no line-up changes, no splits-and-reunions, and no genuinely rubbish phases. They've still never quite matched Achtung as far as I'm concerned, although All You Can't Leave Behind was pretty damn good if only because for the first time, it felt like there was no agenda at work.  They weren't on a mission of artistic re-invention, awareness-raising or cultural exploration, they'd just written a bunch of good songs.

Mind you, apart from Vertigo (and possibly All Because Of You) I wasn't that keen on the last album; the songs were all full of ideas but they didn't seem to gel into anything particularly coherent; there wasn't much to "get into" on a gut level.  And I've got to say, so far I'm not sure about the new stuff; the new single, again, full of ideas but I'm not sure they add up to much. 

Having said that, a lot of U2's best tracks are "growers".  The first time I heard The Fly back in '91 I thought it was a right mess; now I think it's one of the best - and bravest - singles of the decade.   So we'll see if Get On Your Boots (great title) works the same way.  Killer riff, certainly.

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mostly armless

Thursday 26th February 2009

I seem to be cursed with whatever that power was that Richard Burton had in that film to cause disasters by thinking about it in whatever that film was called in which Richard Burton played a bloke who had the power to cause disasters by thinking about it. 

The other morning I was sat in front of CBeebies with Greta & Astrid (where I seem to spend oh, about 95% of my waking hours) and I remarked on Twitter that it was encouraging that the new presenter Cerrie's disability (she's only got one arm) didn't seem to have caused any controversy.  THAT VERY DAY, articles started to appear in the press and ont' interweb about how "concerned parents" (Gods preserve us from them) had been complaining to the BBC that the sight of Cerrie's admittedly fascinating slightly pre-hensile stump (it moves and she can sort of hold things with it) had been giving their kids nightmares and asking for her to be removed, or at least required to put some sort of disguising prosthetic on over the offending not-quite-extremity.

I'm pleased to say that these "protests" have a. turned out on closer inspection to have been muted in the extreme (nine - count 'em - nine phone calls) and b. greeted with a resounding Oh F--k Off And Get Over Yourselves throughout the media (and, one would hope, by the BBC Complaints Department).

Here's the thing, folks, and apologies to my Twitter "followers" (I love calling them that) who heard me come out with all this a day or so ago, but...  My Dad has a glass eye. When I was little I saw him take it out, clean it and put it back in, I saw him first thing in the morning when he hadn't put it in yet, and never gave it a second thought cos it was just my Dad's eye.  I was aware that most people DIDN'T have eyes that could be popped in and out, I knew he'd lost the real one in a childhood accident which I'm sure was horribly traumatic at the time but which he was well and truly over by the time I was born 25 years later, and I was also aware from the age of five or so onwards that the idea of someone with a glass eye - or, moreover, the idea of someone who has a glass eye but isn't wearing it just now - is a source of alarm and revulsion among those who HAVEN'T had such a thing as an everyday part of their lives from birth onwards, but that I wasn't subject to such feelings because it was JUST MY DAD'S EYE.  I'd been exposed to this thing for as long as I could think back and it was no big deal to me at all.

The earlier kids are exposed to something 'unusual' the easier they find it to deal with, and let's cut to the chase here folks... to say Cerrie shouldn't be on CBeebies because of her unusual arm is to say all disabled or disfigured people should stay indoors with the curtains closed at all times, so as not to upset "normal' people.  Go ahead, try writing THAT to the Telegraph and see how good you feel about yourselves.

As it is, I'm actually NOT that happy about Cerrie's appointment, but only because she and her fellow new presenter Alex are a bit stiff and insipid compared to their illustrious predecessors Chris and Pui, especially Chris who has to be one of the most manically gifted entertainers I've ever seen.  Oh well, give Cerrie and Alex time and they'll loosen up a bit I'm sure, and reading Chris's Wikipedia page it appears he and Pui are working on a new show, so everything's okay.

 

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still here

Tuesday 24th February 2009

Sorry folks, I'm at my parents' place in Liverpool; regular readers will know that there is indeed broadband here but this is the first chance I've had to use it.

My Mum is now doing Weight Watchers herself, so I've been if anything far MORE dilligent diet-wise while I've been here (not what one usually stays at one's Mum's for, but hey).  We had contemplated sneaking me along to her meeting this evening (as in Monday; as ever I'm doing this in the wee small hours just to confuse you) so I could use their industrial-strength scales, but trying her own scales this morning I got 21 st 7, which given it's almost exactly what I got last week is probably near enough.

In any event, before leaving for Liverpool I ordered a new WW points calculator and a whole batch of their various low-fat nibbles.

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well whaddya know

Saturday 21st February 2009

Whinging works

Yesterday I was trying to content myself with my 300 and change "followers" list on Twitter; now, about twenty-four hours later, I have 530 followers.  Cool...

I can see how this might be a perfect model of exponentiality; the more lists I'm on, the more people see me on other people's lists and decide to add me, so the more lists I'm on, and I spread like a big hairy virus until all the internet is mine, mine I tell you, bwa ha ha ha haaaa...  Or it could be a blip and/or total coincidence.

 

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marvellous - not miraculous

Friday 20th February 2009

Quite enjoying Twitter, but I find it has two drawbacks when you're such a minor celeb as myself... Firstly, as you read the real-time updates of everybody's lives, there's a pretty glaring and rather disheartening contrast between what the slebs are doing and what the plebs are doing. Consecutive entries tell of lunches with Hollywood agents and of dismal rain-soaked commutes; of showbiz functions attended and of baby food scraped off wallpaper...  It's the only place I've seen these lifestyles so roughly juxtaposed and it's making it all the more apparent how much more I have in common with, well, the common.  I don't mind this at all except for the fact that I often get the feeling that people are a bit disappointed when they find out how exciting and glamorous my life isn't.  Don't like to let them down, but I'm not about to start making stuff up.

The other minor pitfall is that the visibilty of all Twitterers' "followers" totals is providing perhaps too vivid a picture of how we media types all measure up against each other in terms of popularity.  I'm content with my 300-something list so far, 'cos I only just got here, so to speak, but one can't help but cast an envious eye at those with "followings" into five figures...

 

Meanwhile, I've just been watching the documentary Miracle Of The Hudson Plane Crash, and while it was pretty gripping and fascinating stuff I'm seriously annoyed by the use of the word "miracle" in this context.  What happened on that day was NOT a miracle.  There was some extreme good fortune to be had, certainly, but to call the escape of all the passengers and crew a "miracle", to ascribe the whole thing to Divine Intercession is to belittle the extraordinary HUMAN acts which saved the day.  From Capt. Sullenberger's superhuman sang-froid in the face of almost certain death, to his execution of possibly the single best bit of flying in the history of commercial aviation, to the calm and professionalism of the flight crew, to the grit and resolve of the passengers to the swift and selfless response of the people and emergency services of New York City, it was PEOPLE, people at their best, who turned what should have been a catastrophe into a triumph.

If we're going to ponder the role of The Almighty in that day's events, who put all those bloody geese in the way of the plane in the first place?

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those who can do...

Thursday 19th February 2009

... and sometimes try to teach as well

So I was in Broadcasting House this afternoon, recording some voice-overs for BBC7 to be played with my song Not Everybody Has To Imagine, which as I said last entry, is the BBC7 Comic Relief feem toon this year. On my way in, I bumped into Milton Jones, who has also been doing his bit for BBC7's Red Nose-related efforts - he's been "mentoring" Libby Purves in a Radio 4 presenter stand-up comedy competition...  

Milton was saying how the hardest aspect of tutoring someone in the art of stand-up is trying to articulate things which you know very well, but you've never had to put into words before; attempting to explain verbally those feelings and instincts which we "pros" have spent years developing on a gut level.  I can see what he means; "humour" and "comedy" are such nebulous concepts that trying to analyse them on any level can do your head in - analysing them to the point at which you could then convey that analysis to someone else strikes me as near as damn it impossible. 

I'm sure Milton will have given it a good go anyway; he's a very intelligent and conscientious guy.  He organises regular benefit gigs for his children's school; I've played a couple of them.  I've always said that all of us comics with offspring of school-going age (as I will be myself in about eighteen months' time, he reflected with a shudder) should set one of those gigs up for our own kids' schools; we could get a sort of reciprocal circuit on the go and all play each other's.

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young and old and other relative terms

Wednesday 18th February 2009

Just back in from a great gig at Southampton Uni; I seem to have a bit of a following there and judging by the shouted requests for Now Show songs I could barely remember having written, it seems to be a largely Radio 4-related following.

I'm sure the notion of a Radio 4-listening student crowd will come as a bit of a surprise to some people; certainly it flies in the face of the received wisdom vis-à-vis Radio 4's listenership; to wit, that it's the exclusive province of the middle-aged and middle class.  Apparently this is backed up by statistics; I recall hearing that some survey or other had defined Radio 4's listeners as almost entirely white and comfortably-off with an average age of 55.

I don't know how many exceptions it takes to DISprove a rule, but I'm aware of many exceptions to this one.  I was one myself: back when I were a lad I would listen to Just A Minute and (especially) I'm Sorry I Haven't A Clue with my parents, and as a teenager in the 80s I had my "own" Radio 4 comedies which I listened to on my own account - I was a huge fan of Radio Active, The Wow Show (yes, Wow), Son Of Cliché, In One Ear...  sometimes BBC7 is like re-winding my own memory.

And even if I accept that the home audience's age averages out in the mid-50s (and I'm not entirely sure I do), the people who actually come to the recordings of the Now Show et al are much more youthful; we have a lot of grey heads in the house at any given time but there are also plenty of students and 20-somethings. 

And in any case, the "middle-aged" aren't who they used to be.  There's still a weird notion prevailing in British broadcasting that the minute someone's over 50 it's pipe & slippers time, like it's still the 60s or something, like the second you get a couple of grey hairs all you can listen to is Sing Something Simple and The Organist Entertains.  It's worth bearing in mind just how long rock n' roll's been around...  Elvis would have turned 74 in January had he lived, Cliff Richard's 70 next year, the hippies are turning 60, the punks are in their 50s, even my generation - the 90s Britpoppers - are all turning 40 if they haven't already.  My old man's 72 and he was a teddy boy. 

I'm sorry, I seem to have drifted off-topic a bit, but it's all food for thought, I suppose.  I think the point I was trying to make is that Radio 4's audience isn't as old, or as "old", as everyone thinks. Could have just written that; I'd have been in bed half an hour ago.

Oh yeah - on the subject of BBC7, my song Not Everybody Has To Imagine has been adopted as BBC7's official Comic Relief song, so expect to hear a bit of it in the coming weeks.  Might even be worth putting something about that on the news page.  I'll go do that now.

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practising my scales

Monday 16th February 2009

My Mum's been calling every day or so for the past week and a half to check if "the parcel" she sent had arrived yet.  Her evident concern that it might have gone astray gave rise to a good deal of anticipation and speculation on my part as to what wonders The Parcel might hold.  So I wasn't quite sure how to feel when it turned up on Saturday and turned out to contain Yet Another Set Of Scales.  On the one hand, I'm very grateful to Mum for reding about my travails with bouncy and otherwise unreliable weighing appliances and for springing to my aid in this fashion...  on the other hand, I was kinda hoping it'd be something fun.  Bah.

Anyway... these scales are digital again, they reckon they can handle up to 27 stone something and they give BMI readings and all that mullarkey.  Today has been spent entertaining my very dear friend Fiona and her new husband Vincent; Fiona is an old University flatmate who has been living in China for nearly twelve years so I don't see that much of her anymore; she's recently married Vincent (who is Chinese, and only called Vincent when he's speaking English, which he does very well) and came over here for a blessing to which all her British pals were invited and which I, to my extreme regret, couldn't go as it clashed with the band's gig in Leicester of a couple of Saturdays ago.  Clara's currently giving them a lift back to Fi's parents' place in Croydon so I've only now had a chance to weigh myself.

The Bad News is these scales say I'm 21st 6.  The Good News is that they say that every time I step on them, so I may finally have an accurate reading.  The fact that it's a few pounds higher than previous estimates may be a little disheartening but it doesn't of course mean I've put weight on this week... for all I know I was 21 st 10 seven days ago.

So on the tentative assumption that these scales don't go haywire in due course, this at least gives me something concrete to start with.  I can't seem to find my little Weight Watchers points calculator anywhere; I guess I'd better get a new one (NB. Mum, that's not a hint).

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haven't seen that face for a while...

Monday 16th February 2009

I've shaved my beard off.  The last time I saw this face it was 30.  It's now 39 and it doesn't seem to have changed much, I'm relieved to say.  Greta is fascinated by Daddy's huge new pink face and Clara has been going on all day about how young I look, which is nice, because it's a nice thing to hear anyway and because "young" wasn't the first adjective which sprang to my mind on seeing what lay beneath.  Astrid, meanwhile, just stares at me.

I've shaved it off for a putative project I'm working on, about which I really can't say anything just yet, and that's the last time I'm going to mention it until it either happens or doesn't.  I'm not going through the whole Bonzos incident again (see blog entries from September to December 2007 to re-live that particular agony).

As I said, this is the first time I've had no beard in about nine years, but this is also the first time I've seen myself with a clean shaven face and short hair since 1994...  I still have the big sideburns, mind you, which combined with the tufty cropped hair and the newly prominent chin means that I now resemble no-one so much as Harold Steptoe.

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well that sucked

Sunday 15th February 2009

I'm normally pretty UNcynical about things like Valentine's Day; I rather think of it the same way I think about Christmas...  sure, it's primarily sustained and promoted as a way of guilt-tripping people into spending money, but if by spending that money they make their loved ones happier for a day or so then it's all good as far as I'm concerned. 

So it's perhaps more galling to me than it might be to someone who genuinely didn't give a stuff about Valentine's Day, to reflect upon what I complete hash I just made of this year's.

I'm not going to bore you with the petty details of what a foul mood I was in when I woke up this morning, or the extraordinary ill grace with which I got up with the kiddies in order to give C a bit of a lie-in (it's not MY bloody fault Astrid kept her awake all night with teething pains, and it's not like she needs these teeth anyway, all she eats is slop and they're all gonna fall out in a few years so what's the point, quite frankly), or the way C has been making vaguely grumpy references all day to not getting any chocolates when I'd been under STRICT INSTRUCTIONS not to get her any 'cos she'd have no opportunity to get me anything, or the fact that everyone's been almost-but-not-exactly giving me a hard time about the fact I had two gigs on Valentine's Day evening (I can't help it if VD - as it shall henceforth be known - happened to fall on one of the two nights a week I genuinely have to go out and earn money or we'll all starve), 'cos none of that's especially relevant. It's just a bit of background.

No, the thing I did which REALLY blew a hole in Valentine's Day was leave C and the kids at her Mum's in Richmond (where we'd been having dinner with a friend of C's family visiting from Germany - again, not relevant , but good background, read on) drive all the way to Forest Hill (home of the interestingly titled EDC Comedy Club - so called because for years it was at the East Dulwich Tavern, and is still generally regarded as the East Dulwich Comedy Club despite having shifted a mile or so east) in the Smart, leaving the Mulitpla in Richmond for C and the girls to get home in.  The problem was that the one thing I HADN'T left in Richmond was the key to the Multipla. That was in my pocket.  In my trousers. On my legs, beneath the ass I'd just hauled all the way to Forest Hill.

I was made aware of my error by C, over the phone, as I pulled into Forest Hill station car park (thoughtfully situated opposite the gig), in a tone of voice which conveyed exhaustion, condescension, forgiveness and menace all at once.  Sort of Oh-You-Big-Silly-Sausage with I-Am-Actually-Going-To-Kill-You undertones. 

I could envisage the scene; getting the brood ready for the road is a bit of a mission at the best of times  - you've got to round up all the various bits of crap you've brought with you, get everybody's coat on, strap a probably mutinous Astrid into her little ejector seat, persuade Greta to go for a final wee, say protracted goodbyes to everybody...  the thought of going through all that and then discovering that thanks to the absent Captain Stupid you were in fact going nowhere, made me feel extremely ovine indeed (look it up).

But I'm nothing if not resourceful, and guilt is a great motivator.  There's a minicab stand in front of Forest Hill Station; I found a driver, got a price for Richmond, paid him up front, gave him the Multipla key in an envelope with Clara's Mum's address and Clara's mobile number written on it, and sent him off.  Mindful of the fact that I'd just given a total stranger my car key and a pretty good clue as to where to find that car, I also took a photo of his number plate with my phone, and made sure he saw me do this.  I'm going to give him the benefit of the doubt and assume he would have delivered the key safely anyway.

So that wasn't so bad in the end.  Valentine's is on a Sunday next year.  I don't often work on a Sunday night so I'll have to find another way to screw things up.

 

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