Cowardly

Warming Up

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I had another crack at a Rich and Ally’s Craven Newsround today (the first pilot ep is only available to badgers and paid Substack subcribers). I have some excellent titles created by regular contributor Andy Bobbin and some lovely Newsround music composed by Mike “Devon” Cosgrave, but aside from that it’s all down to Ally and me and whichever other puppets feel like making another appearance.

The insane idea (which I don’t think will be workable) is do one of these every week day, to help keep you up with the REAL news, not the lies told to you by the Mainstream Media. Though it’s nice to be doing a new project, the bad news is that the powers-that-be have decided to cancel Twitch of Fun. They felt it just wasn’t hitting the 18-25 year old demographic that they were hoping for. Or the 0-18 demographic, 25-45 demographic or 47-120 year old demographic. There was a really big spike at the 46 year old demographic, because two of our viewers were that age, but apparently that is not enough to justify the show’s huge budget and the fact that it has made literally zero pence.

It’s heartbreaking to leave that show behind, especially given how close we got to doing 100 episodes, but we have to look forward, not backwards and I strongly feel that the short form Newsround format might be the thing that finally breaks me (and Ally I suppose) into the mainstream.

Obviously I don’t want that as I hate the mainstream media, but if it happens I will accept my fate and try and bring mainstream media down from the inside.

What I can promise you is that we will stay true to our vision and not tell you lies, like saying a film about stand-up is the most true to life one I’ve ever seen, and keep it REAL. Unless we’re offered a lot of money, in which case, obviously we’ll do what we’re told. But it’d have to be at least £250. That’s how committed to being real and anti-mainstream and anti-human rights I am.

Fingers crossed that this is the project that gets me back into the big time, so I can finally stop having to write blogs and can enjoy the celebrity lifestyle that has proven so happy and uncontroversial for so many of my comedy peers.

But let’s not get ahead of ourselves. There’s a chance (a small one admittedly) that a video of a man ad-libbing about the news with a terrifying antique and then occasionally talking to a puppet that is supposedly in another location, but clearly on his hand will not be as successful as Gavin and Stacey or Ant and Dec’s podcast. There’s also a chance (a small one admittedly) that I will do two episodes and then get bored or get a proper job that will mean I don’t have time.

C’mon Rich, please try and stay realistic here. I let myself get a bit carried away at the end there.

So it’s goodbye to Twitch of Fun, which I know really helped the UK and other parts of the world through the pandemic, but hello to something totally different and new.

I promise I will do some real work at some point.

We’ll be putting the audio of the shows on the Twitch of Fun stream here and maybe do a compilation ep that goes out once a week on the RHLSTP feed

And we’ll put the videos up on the youtube channel and instagram and maybe Substack too, who knows?

RHLSTP with the proudly two-bollocked Mathew Baynton (he is almost tauntingly delighted by them) is now up here.

We had to cut some pretty good bits of goss from this ep, so do make sure you come and see it live if you can. All upcoming dates here.