My Journalist Has No Nose

Warming Up

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I still haven’t found my knob. Where is my knob?

Gratified to hear many stories of other people cooking or breaking theirs. No one else’s has mysteriously vanished though. Will the mystery ever be solved?

I’ve been advised by Sunstack reader Whisperedlnk to pray to St Anthony and assured that will work. So I’ve just sincerely done that. I hope Tony succeeds where all others have failed. I don’t have a timeframe on how long he takes to get round to it. If it works though it’s going to be life changing for me. I wonder if he stops helping if you ask too much.

Shit, he’s found it. That baby is wearing it as a hat.

I can’t count how many people have asked me what I think about the Riyadh Comedy Festival, because it is zero, but everyone else is chipping so I thought I’d have a go as not much else is going on in my life.

It’s pretty easy to get on a moral high horse when you haven’t been asked to take part and I think it was me who said “Judge Not, Lest Ye Be Judged”. Most of the comedians going are not particularly political and I suspect most of them just saw it as another (very well-paid) gig and didn’t think about it too much beyond that. Maybe some of them thought that it might look bad if it got out they were doing it, but probably thought no one would find out about it. Some may have justified it as taking their comedy to an audience that wouldn’t usually get to hear their stuff and hoped that they could slip in some subversive stuff (and latest news seems to indicate that rules of what couldn’t be talked about have been relaxed).

I think whatever the justification, in the most part they are doing it for the money. And if you’re not being offered the payday of six or seven figures it’s very easy to say that you wouldn’t have done it if offered. I haven’t been offered it and I wouldn’t have done it if offered.

See, I told you it was easy.

I wouldn’t have done it though. Even if I ignored my own ethical concerns, with a business head on, it would be a gig that might have (at my paygrade) given me one of the lower amounts. I might have made £100,000 (in this imaginary world where Saudi princes wanted me to do comedy for them). I would definitely have lost that in future earnings from people who thought I’d been a dick and didn’t want to see my stuff any more.

Is Jimmy Carr’s audience going to care and boycott him? Of course not. So it’s annoying to me that my audience are more moral and are stopping me getting an imaginary payday.

I doubt it will affect the comedians involved too much though. They might lose a bit of respect from their fellow comedians and a few punters may decide they won’t go to see them (Catie noticed that Pete Davidson is doing London soon and I really like him, but his involvement in this festival makes me think I don’t want to go - looks like he’s sold about 90% of his tickets already so I don’t think he’ll notice).

Losing the respect of the comedy community in general (as they have done, at least in the short term) might hurt comedians more. Do all comedians have to uphold some moral code that means they always have to do the right thing? If so then nearly all of them are failing. Some of the sanctimonious ones more than anyone.

I have been lucky in my career to mainly only do things that I really want to and get paid for half of them. Ten years ago I would have said (and did say) that I didn’t want ads on my podcasts. I changed my mind on that and did so because of the money. It seemed fair that the people working on the shows should get paid, I liked the idea that Sky (or whoever) would be giving me money which I could use to finance ideas that Sky would never have one and also I had done a lot of work for free and have a family and it seems reasonable that I get paid something for it.

Ultimately I have to admit. I do sponsorship reads not because I always love the company (sometimes though, probably yours if you’re one of the sponsors) but because I am paid.

I certainly did a couple of TV projects for the money, not because I thought they were worthy ideas. No one seems to have seen Best Man’s Speech, but that was a job I took to pay the bills when I did need the money.

I don’t think the Riyadh Comedy Festival would be a job I’d take, even if I found that they were offering me one of the higher million dollar plus fees. Those fees are only going to people who can earn a million dollars in a weekend of gigging anyway. They don’t need another million pounds, which suggests that they either really just love accruing money or (maybe more likely if you’re being honest) really love performing to different audiences.

Or maybe have just been conditioned in their early days to know that they are in a precarious profession and that they have to make cash whilst they can in case it all goes wrong. Or possibly just because working that hard was what got them where they are and they have just accepted that’s what needs to be done and haven’t stopped to do the maths and realise they can take a bit of time to themselves now. I often wonder when Jimmy Carr spends his money, because he works ALL THE TIME.

And yes it’s funny that the acts who go on about free speech and saying the unsayable are prepared to not say the unsayable if the fee is high enough. Though again, every comedian does that at certain gigs. Though usually because there’s kids in the audience or the boss of a company is a bit touchy about his baldness being mocked, not because journalists might have been cut up by the booker or some 9/11s were carried out.

As much as I am disappointed that more comics didn’t turn this one down (and that I didn’t get the opportunity to turn it down or to take it and become rich) there’s still a part of me that doesn’t enjoy the moral policing that goes on with stuff like this these days.

I doubt I will hold a lifelong grudge against anyone involved in this, or bring it up every time it gets mentioned or criticise anyone who books these acts or goes to see them in 15 years time.

Is it OK to hate everyone involved in this, as long as I hate myself the most.

Never let me forget about Best Man’s Speech. Never. It was worse than anything the Saudis have come up with.

Retro RHLSTP with Eleanor Morton is up on youtube in FULL for FREE

Or listen here.

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Oh St Anthony. Why hast thou forsaken me?

We seem to be getting invited to quite a few screenings and opening nights, occasionally just a little bit too close to the day it’s happening, like my name is on a list of substitute celebrities that you can call upon if the proper ones aren’t going to show up.

We were invited to The Importance of Being Earnest ages ago (sorry to the people doing The Producers who invited us to tonight’s press night two days ago) and it’s very nice to get a free date night (if you ignore the cost of the babysitter - but I’d rather they got the money than the theatre fatcats) so we happily accepted.

I took Catie out to a lovely restaurant round the corner called Pret a Manger (French! fancy!) and then headed to the Noel Coward theatre. We got there unfashionably early and the paps were able to warm up their cameras and practice for the proper celebs by taking some photos that will be used by nobody except me in this blog.

Pret a manger in his beard, short legs, uneven trouser cuffs. HOLD THE FRONT PAGE.

We did spot some proper famous people while we were there. Neil from the Inbetweeners was in the bar standing near the free water tap. Catie went up to get some water and I think he thought she was coming to ask for a selfie. But she wasn’t. Though ironically she really wanted one as her friend is a big fan of the show.

I also bumped into Ed Gamble in the interval and saw Ian Mckellen talking to David Tennant and best of all passed Christopher Biggins on the stairs.

I am not 100% into the work of Oscar Wilde - which he won’t mind me saying because there’s only one thing worse than being talked about and that’s not being talked about. Plus he is dead - and his wit can be a bit much, as pointed out by this Monty Python sketch.

But come on, it still holds up after over 100 years there’s some great lines in this play (maybe not two hours twenty worth - ooh look at me, what an Oscar Wilde) and this production is a lot of fun, playing with the text and the sexuality of the characters (all seemingly desirous of heterosexual marriage, whilst desperate to get off with characters of the same sex as them) and Stephen Fry is unbeatable as Lady Bracknell - (”the part he was born to play” Ed Gamble if you want a quote for the poster). I was caught up in the silliness and pantomime and the farcical conceit of the play (hopefully for Ernie the name is as much as an aphrodisiac as Wilde seems to think it is) and the sets and costumes and actors are all first rate.

Hayley Carmichael pretty much stole the show, playing a pair of very different servants and when the standing ovation came at the end, it was she who got everyone to their feet.

We were too tired and live too far away to go to the after show party with Vanessa Feltz, Zandra Rhodes (who I thought was dead, but not on today’s evidence) and Archie from Balamory, but I suspect that like the play it was a flamboyant affair.

We got the train home. Thanks to the internet I never travel without my diary, though it’s generally pretty dull because it’s written by a man who’d rather to home to bed than get drunk and accuse Zandra Rhodes of pretending to be alive.

Go and see it. You’ll have fun.

And guest announcement for RHLSTP - sorry it’s a bit late, the last few tickets went very fast - Paul F Tompkins is my other guest on 3rd November.

Join the waiting list (and get cheap tickets for 18th November - aiming for another top line-up). All dates here.