My 9-5 Job: the diary of a man with no 9-5

I've been on Holiday...

2012-06-15T10:07:00.001-07:00

Apologies for another entry chasm. It almost seems now like all my entries are just me saying sorry for not doing enough entries. Maybe I should change the title to "the man with no 9-5 yet is too lazy to tell you about anything". My latest excuse is that I took a 10 day holiday to Marbella, which is essentially like going on holiday in a warmer version of Liverpool or Essex. "Spot the Spaniard" was a popular holiday game.

I will try to get back into the flow of writing these weekly but I've been concentrating on trying to write my Edinburgh Show. Which, if you haven't bought tickets for I thoroughly recommend you do. I think it will be a lot better than last year's show and will include entries from my dad's food diary. Then again I also thought that a potato counted as one of my 5 a day, so what the chuff do I know.

I'm currently sitting in a flat in Dublin on a Friday evening before I go say some jokes. Therefore, I'll give you a couple of little observations from my Irish visit. It's probably my favourite visit to Ireland; not because of anything that's happened but because I bought some serious hand luggage. Good luggage is ridiculously expensive but then againI now feel like a badboy as it's got 4 wheels and I can push it along size me like a plastic pet. I've also seen a homeless man in Dublin with a pet rabbit. I know the recession is bad but how hard up have you got to be when you can't find a free stray dog? maybe he's so munted that he thinks it's a puppy? Either way I wanted to take a photo but felt guilty so just did the standard awkward thing of ignoring him. Tomorrow I plan on buying him a hutch.

My final note about Ireland is that it's so friendly over here that when I went to use a toilet from the train between Galway and Dublin, I locked the door and a voiceover said "Thank You". Nice touch. Although, a bizarre thing to thank a human being for. I did not get thanked after finishing my business.

Right I'm off to go eat 5 potatoes. Edinburgh link is on my website.

Bye,bye, bye...bye

30 April- 11 May: Kiwi Catch Up

2012-05-17T13:59:00.001-07:00

When you’re in a new country having fun and eating loads of sushi it is hard to motivate yourself to sit down and write something, especially when there is lazer tag to be played. I’ll give you a run down of some fun things I ended up doing aside from telling jokes in NZ.

- Megazone aka lazer tag. I was top gun for my team but miles behind Jordan from Axis of Awesome. He is in fact too good at the game to the point of sad. I’d say I’m just the right amount of good at it.

- Jumped off the highest building in NZ. The Sky tower. I nearly did a shit out of my tits when I was standing at the top but the jump itself was a blast.

- Ate sushi

- Rented mopeds and drove around an island. Unlike the last time I went on a moped I didn’t drive this one into a restaurant.

- Went on a jet boat. Did some 360 spins, which mad me feel sick. Highlight of the trip was actually the driver trying to say a funny joke to a boat of comedians but got heckled by Gordon Southern.

- Ate sushi

- Ran on a beach

- Ate sushi

I also made some new friends, which I always love. Big shout outs to Bill Dawes, Frehd and Gordon Southern, Brendon Burns, Dead Cat Bounce. I also blagged free goodies on the plane back: Champagne, wash-bag, pajamas and seat with extra leg room. If I don’t get free stuff or an ugrade on every flight for the rest of my life I will jump out of one of the tiny windows.

Go to New Zealand, it’s really neat, (I should work for their tourist board)

23-27 April: …From a Land Down Under

2012-04-29T23:46:00.000-07:00

I made it to New Zealand without dying. Another country on my travels where prostitution is legal. It seems to be a new rule I have. I only gig in countries where you have it off with a prostie without getting banged up. Not for my pleasure but it’s just comforting to know that none of the men around me ever have to be alone at night if they’re feeling unloved.

After shamelessly blagging a cheeky upgrade to premium economy I spent all week being jet lagged. I’d say the worst thing about jet-lag isn’t the dreamlike dizziness and the fatigue but the fact that all you seem to talk about is how jet lagged you are. This boring repartee if anything just adds to your tiredness. Now that I’m typing about it, I can actually feel it creeping back into my system. However, it’s not all I did for the first few days here. I’m in New Zealand, the other side of the world with countless activities, so naturally I watched the first series of Game of Thrones in my serviced apartment (like a mixture between a hotel room and a flat; the best thing about it is that I get to tell everyone I’m staying in a serviced apartment). GOT, is incredible. I never thought I’d be so addicted to watching dwarfs, incest and Sean Bean being a proper Yorkshire bloke. Even if you don’t like fantasy/medieval stuff, I recommend you give it a go. The main thing that has stuck with me after watching it, is that our lives are so much cushier than back then because almost every week someone you love gets murdered or raped.
As the jet-lag subsided I managed to, shows aside, do something constructive. Me and a few other great men (Bill Dawes, Dead Cat Bounce & one third of Axis of Awesome) went on a cycling tour around the vineyards of Waihiki. Being disorganized comedians we messed up the timings and basically rode on a bike to one vineyard and got drunk. On an island of seven thousand inhabitants we somehow managed to meet a slightly anti-Semitic Ukrainian girl and British girl who grew up near me. I will not going into details about this as there is a lot of you had to be there moments but my quote of the week goes to Bill Dawes. The 50 year old ex-pat guy we rented the bikes of seemed really mean and weird so I said to Bill:

“Does the bike rental guy seem weird to you? I’ve no idea why he’s so rude”

Bill perfectly concise American response:

“Dude, he sells bikes…on an Island. Of course he’s weird”

On that brilliantly valid point. Toodles

April 2-21st: I’ve continued to be lazy.

2012-04-24T23:35:00.002-07:00

In my defence I’ve had lots of other things to write but bearing in mind this only takes a few minutes out of my week I should really have kept on top of it. Especially as one of the activities I participated in was having a swim and a sit in a Jacuzzi; although you can’t take your laptop into the swimming pool area of my gym for obvious reasons.

I’m now sitting in a café waiting to fly to New Zealand. So what I’ll do to make up for this big blog vaccum is write some extra interesting entries from down under. Either that or I’ll be too distracted and so forget for the next three weeks.

I just tried to blag a free upgrade on Qantas and failed miserably. I wore a shirt and everything. Shouting that at the check in girl doesn’t in fact aid your quest for an upgrade.

I’ll be in touch soon…or not.

P.S. I wrote this before my journey and am publishing it from NZ. In this time frame I did manage to get an upgrade on the first journey into Premium Economy. It's the closest thing to winning a trophy, I will ever achieve. Big thanks to Adam for helping me out.

12-30th March. I’ve been lazy.

2012-04-02T04:23:00.001-07:00

This is one of those entries where I’ve got behind on my blog so I will go through some of the highlights in one super-blog. By calling it that, I’ve made it sound way better than what it actually is: a shit, patched together collection of things.

I’ve been to exciting and far flung places I the last month: Zurich, Basle, Westfield (Shepherd’s Bush). You may think that is a joke but the latter is a very exciting place for me to go in a weekday afternoon due to the large number of comedians walking around it. I was there two afternoons in a row: one because I had to visit an ironically titled genius in the apple store and the other was to do some writing with a coupe of people. I managed to bump into most of the comedy circuit including Whitehall, Walsh, Connaty, Donnelly, Crosby, Beckett. If you want to stalk a comedian just hang around the cupcake shop of a shopping centre and you’ll be no more that 5 metres away from one. We are like rats…rats that carry shoulder bags.

I usually hate going into the Apple Store, although one man made the visit worthwhile. As I was waiting for some arsehole in a blue t-shirt to make me feel like a techno-tard, I overheard a man trying to barter for an Iphone. His was broken and so the guy brought out a replacement for £120. The man (wearing a Man U football shirt, smart trousers and black trainers) said “can’t you do me a different price?” He must have confused the Apple Store with a market in Thailand. Pretty understandable as they look so similar.

I should probably talk about Switzerland as it’san usual country. It’s unaffected by the recession, ridiculously clean and supposedly very boring. I disagree about the boring bit. Walking around the place I saw several old men in business suits traveling around on micro scooters. It’s almost like the older you get there the more childish the transport. I wonder if you get given a pogo stick when you retire? Also everyone there is fit. I saw one fat person in 3 days, and they were probably only fat because no one got them a micro-scooter for Christmas. Apparently Swiss people keep themselves to themselves but I didn’t meet any so I can’t confirm or deny this. Also the final thing I learnt is prostitution is legal but being too loud after 10pm is illegal. Therefore, If you have loud sex with a prostitute at 10:30pm the only thing you will get banged up for is being noisy.

I’m currently sitting on a train back to London from Newcastle. I’m in first class trying to cash in by continuously requesting free bottles of Harrogate Spring.

Laterz x

5-9th March: Northern Nomad

2012-03-11T14:57:00.001-07:00

Most of the time my job is cool. If I want to, I can just sit in my pants all day watching films and mosey around coffee shops staring at people (not in my pants). However, sometimes I have weeks where I’m predominantly in transit. Last week, for example, I spent most of my time knocking around Manchester and Sheffield before a brief return to London. It’s impossible to feel fully comfortable when you’re away from home. You can’t write properly, you can’t think properly, you can’t touch yourself properly (if you’re into that). Therefore, I have very few interesting incidents that I can remember from my trips that are worth writing down.

One thing I noticed about my time in Manchester is that the people are a lot friendlier to you than in London. Bus drivers don’t treat you like a man in a dirty mackintosh if you try to pay for a ticket with a note. If you try to give the driver cash in London they act like you’ve ruined their entire day. If I were a driver I’d probably find this the most exciting part of the day as you get to break up your routine of pressing the door buttons and driving. This is the reason I’m not a bus driver. The other bit of friendliness that occurred was when I was at a bar. I thought I was standing next to a comedian called Vince Atta, so naturally I said, “Hi mate” and shook his hand. He shook my hand back then walked off. Only ten minutes later did it dawn on me that it might not have been him. It was not him. It was just a different mixed race guy. The fact that I mistook a mixed race person for a different one means I’m only classified as half racist. I don’t know who this bloke is but I love the fact that he shook my hand without even questioning who I was and how I knew him. He must have just been a big fan of handshakes.

In Sheffield, due to me being a boring arsehole who isn’t really drinking at the moment, I have to amuse myself in my own way. Now I know this is technically after 5pm but I think it’s worth retelling so I’m breaking my own made up rules. I went to Wagamama on my own on the Friday after my gig. It was prime dinner time, therefore, the fact I was on my own on a Friday night was magnified. I might as well have been wearing a badge that said “Sad Twat” on it. I had a decent bit of conversation with the waitress as I was desperately trying to compensate for the fact I had no friends with me. The next day, I went into the same restaurant at the same time, wearing the same outfit (from my gig) and I was served by the same waitress. She came over and said “good to see you again”. I then went “again? I don’t know what you’re talking about.” She looked really confused and a bit taken aback. I then proceeded to order exactly the same thing as I did the night before. (chicken katsu and chicken gyoza). As she walked off I laughed to myself. I may well have got some free turd in my curry but it was worth it for the look on her face.

Now I can look forward to a week of lying in my own bed and getting treated like a terrorist by the London bus drivers. Bliss.

27th Feb- 2nd March: Mean Women and Nice Guys

2012-03-04T10:00:00.001-08:00

I may have mentioned this on here before but just to re-iterate: if you want to witness a bust-up in the day time, get your argument-loving ass down to the parking permit renewal shop. Normally you get some irate middle-aged man shouting at the jobsworth behind the counter. This time, however, there was a vile lady (I think) who managed to make a whole room of strangers hate her within seconds. From the moment she opened her toilet of a mouth you could feel everyone else think “please have an aneurism right now”.

She walked in with her kid, took one look at the queue and said, “Come on man. This queue is stupid. I don’t even want to be here. I’m here for my neighbour, innit. No one minds if I go to the front do they?” Everyone minded. No one said anything. This is because we all suffer from the crippling illness that is being a polite Brit. Eventually a man in his sixties at the front piped up, “I do actually mind”
“Why? You’re well old. You’ve got nothing else to do. I don’t want to be here”
The big geezer in front of me rightly said, “None of us want to be here”
I’m nodding along…in my head. On the outside I showed no sign of siding with anyone. As soon as she left the room to go and be racist to a parking warden who had the audacity to give her a ticket for being parked on a double yellow, I was the bravest man on the planet. I was saying, “who does she think she is?” Then the geezer in front of me earned a virtual high five by saying, “she’s a fucking donkey”. I’ve never heard this used as an insult but I liked it and I wanted to become friends with this man. She then returned and loudly called us all mean and grumpy on the phone to her mum. People like this make me so angry. She clearly has some bad things happening in her life but to subject us all to her deep rooted anger is selfish. I think when someone like this enters a public room you should legally be allowed to tranquilise them. Everyone should be given a blow pipe and ketamin filled dart, which then becomes as essential to any excursion as a mobile phone and keys. As soon as you get a bully ruining the vibe of a queue, then “bosh”: society will be much better for it.

On the other hand I think all shops should be legally made to hire a nice person to walk around making you feel good about yourself. I went to buy some sushi on the same day and a really friendly man standing next to me cheered me up. Firstly he made me laugh by asking where a certain road in Wimbledon was and when I had no idea, he went “It’s ok I’ll just check my Google maps.” This whole question was therefore so pointless it made me laugh and convinced me that he was an angel sent down by god to make my day. He then complimented me on my sushi selection and bantered about how the owners were Korean not Japanese. I don’t know anything about this man. All I know is his aura gave my soul a semi. He made me want to commute to the same shop at the same time just to see him.

So there you have it. If you vote for me as Prime Minister I promise you all blow darts full of ketamin and shops full of nice guys. I’m off to find my new best pal.

20-24 Feb: Growing Up & Then Back Down Again

2012-03-02T11:32:00.000-08:00

Do you ever think you’re maturing at an alarming rate? You start worrying about taxes, savings and get excited by purchasing a new selection of plates for your house. All these things have been happening to me recently. On Wednesday I did a couple of bit of behaviour that really pushed my maturity level up to a disturbingly high number. I bought my dad a Blackberry as a birthday present, followed by a piece of art for myself. Get the Pampers ready because I’m speedily moving towards old age and becoming a senile man with a stick.

If you thought buying a phone was tedious; try doing it with your eccentric dad. When you don’t happen to know about the latest technology the people that work in phone shops look at you like you just asked them to sniff the bit of your arm under your watch strap. Add into this already precarious situation a man who says phrases such as: “what does that do?”, “Do I get a charger?”, “how do I get my email?”, “what’s an email?” & my personal favourite “I don’t want the pink cover because I’m not a gay”, then you’re sure to be on the receiving end of some exceptionally rude customer service.

After struggling through this process I then went to trendy East London to buy a print from Ellah Sadkin (Google her, she’s very good). I know literally nothing about art, which made this an even more exciting experience. I really should have brought an art expert with me but instead brought Benny Boot, who is an expert in…making me laugh and forgetting stuff. Not an ideal art buying companion but I found a piece that I liked (it’s colourful and doesn’t contain any scary babies). She also agreed to paint a zombie version on Benny, so it wasn’t a completely wasted trip for him: the fact he already has the lips of a zombie will no doubt make the job easier for her. As I returned home that evening thinking I’d turned to a new mature chapter in my life, I spent most of Thursday…
…winding up a squirrel in my garden by hiding his nut. I would love to tell you the whole story but this is now a bit of material in my set. If you want to see it you’ll have to watch me live.

So if you thought I was going to start regularly writing about politics and economics, you thought wrong.

13-17th Feb: Just floating along

2012-02-24T06:36:00.001-08:00

“Love is in the air”, as well as on the floor, the shop windows, the restaurants, the street, the public toilets; it was everywhere due to the vastly over-rated Valentines day being at the start of the week. I could come across as a bit of a curmudgeon due to me being single but even people in relationships dislike the day. Everyone I know seems to celebrate it the day before or after, to avoid paying excessive money for average food and to avoid being surrounded by creepily in love people. This is alright in theory, however, if this is what everyone’s doing then presumably you then get surrounded by all these people on the 13th and 15th. If this is the case then the restaurants should keep their prices high for a three day period. I may well be over-thinking it. Something far more noteworthy happened during the week, which I need to tell you about…

….I went for a Friday lunch with my friend Kai Humphries (Google him and you’ll probably see a picture of his tattooed white arse), who was in town for the weekend with some friends. We went to this very nice but over-priced American diner type place where they actively encourage children to be there and the chef says stuff like “I suggest the chicken pie”; to me this always implies that everything else he cooked, is a bit shit.

I went for a pre-meal trip to the toilet. Despite always being packed they have the rather awkward, one toilet for men and women system. As someone was inside the cubicle and I’m not a weirdo, I waited just outside for them to finish. This does, however, mean you have a two second uncomfortable stare off with the producer of the smell you’re about to walk into. There was now a queue system where a woman was waiting to go in after me, so I was fully primed to be extra quick so there could be no ambiguity about my deployment of a number one. The person that exited before me was a very sheepish looking eight year old girl. Why was she looking so sheepish I hear you ask? Probably something to do with the massive floater she’d left in there for me.

As I stared at this chunky heap of regret, it dawned on me that the woman after me would definitely think this was my handy work. Therefore, I urinated as hard as humanly possible onto this briquette, to break it up: to no avail. I had one saving grace, the flush: no luck. Then instinct took over and I’ve no idea why out of all my options I thought this was the best one: I wrapped toilet paper around my hand, picked it up and threw it in the bin. Feel free to vomit on your keyboard. I then used up all the soap that has ever existed on the planet washing my hands. This cleaning process took so long that the woman behind me probably thought I had in fact crimped one out.

When I returned to the table and told the story about how I had no other option but to do what I did after being stuck between a cronk and hard place. Kai replied simply with “why didn’t you just put paper on top of it? It would have then flushed away”. I did not know you could do this. I wish I had already known this. I wasn’t particularly hungry thanks to the eight year old girl that tried to frame me for leaving a dead body in the toilet. If you’re reading this little girl, thanks for ruining my chicken pie.

6-10 Feb: Slovenly Slovenia

2012-02-11T07:13:00.000-08:00

Highlight of this week was that I got to have less than a day in Slovenia to tell some jokes to the locals. By less than a day, I was in the country for 19 hours. It’s the first time I’d performed to a crowd where english isn’t their first language. It turns out they understood and found amusing almost everything. I say ‘almost’ because they didn’t know who Jensen Button was, which meant one of my jokes was greeted by 600 people just staring at me like I’d wiped my jaffas on their doormat.

Flying to a country on your own feels eerily soulless. Whenever I get on a plane it seems like it should be with at least one other person about to embark on an adventure whilst drinking pints in a J.D. Wetherpoons at 6:00am and eating copious amounts of Burger King. It just doesn’t feel right when I’m merely using it as a means to get to work and all I’m consuming is green tea and sushi. I feel like I’m breaking unwritten airport rules. Although, if I was on my own getting MC Hammered whist shoving a whopper in my face at 3:30pm on a Wednesday it might have raised a few more eyebrows. The plastic bag for your liquids still continues to baffle me and now riles me as you have to spend £1 on purchasing 4 bags from a glorified arcade machine. Ironically, the fact I had to buy these bags meant I actually had an urge to blow up my plane. All I’m saying is, don’t be surprised if there is increase in terrorism from prudent jet-setters.

If none of you have been to Slovenia, specifically Ljunljana, I’ll give you a few little things I noticed in the 3 minutes I had to look around the place:

It is very small

the architecture is lovely

it is very cold

the people are friendly

If anyone reading this works for The Lonely Planet, I'd like to offer my services as a travel writer.

zbogom

30 Jan- 3rd Feb: New House, Same Old Shit

2012-02-07T14:26:00.000-08:00

I managed to accidentally arrange my diary so that I was in Bristol on the day we had to move house. My co-habiters, therefore, kindly moved all my stuff into the new pad. I like to use the term ‘pad’ because it makes it sound like it’s constantly full of babes whereas in actual fact it’s riddled with mice. They unfortunately didn’t go one step further and unpack all my belongings into various closets and drawers. This may also have been because there were no drawers in my room just mice.

Now don’t get me wrong, the “pad” is cracking, it’s just tempered somewhat by the fact I’m on the ground floor and after seeing a mouse run across the floor I’m now terrified I’m going to wake up with my face gnawed off. I’m not normally scared of mice; I mean I’ve once battered one to death with a bog brush holder (true story). Once, however, you see one in your bedroom, it’s a different story. It’s a story that results in my struggling to sleep and confirming my hatred of cheese. Despite me and Jerry becoming far too well acquainted this house is so much better than my last “pad”. Here are a list of things that are better:

-There is a kitchen on the ground floor and not the second floor

-There are no trains going past my bedroom window

-I can’t hear my housemates bonking

-There is an actual fire place for burning wood and chucking a photo of an ex-lover in (if I was in rom com)

Now I’ll leave you with that list and the cheery thought of my face being bitten to shit. Having said that the maintenance man, Peter, is going to lay some traps down where the mice will stick to a “pad” (not the house), then get destroyed (not by a bog brush holder).

23-27 Jan: Me over the Mersey

2012-02-06T02:42:00.000-08:00

I spent all week in Liverpool getting up at normal adult times to go to work. This is because I was doing a cheeky bit of filming. Not sure I can disclose what I was filming yet but it wasn’t amateur pornography and it wasn’t part of a reconstruction for Crimewatch so it was something that was enjoyable to be in and will hopefully be a hoot to watch.

My own stupidity unpleasantly surprised me again. Even though I was filming in Liverpool I stayed with my friend in Manchester because I thought they were just down the road from one another. In fairness on a map they’re about a thumbnail apart but apparently that equates to about an hour on the train. I’m an arsehole. I’d never really seen Liverpool properly before and despite my cliched southern reservations about the place I have to say it’s pretty nice on the eyes. Around the centre there is a lot of nice buildings and less tracksuit clad people than I thought. I managed to win an award for being the most southern man in the world by ordering a Capri-Sun in a pub. In my defence, I haven’t ordered one since I was at my school tuck shop, so it was more of a nostalgic order than a pathetic one (still quite pathetic). The rumours about scousers always trying to be funny are most definitely true. I had one cab driver who thought he was the funniest man on the planet. He managed to coat off everyone from footballers to Hollyokes actors in the space of a 15 minute journey. I’m pretty sure he would have a couple of one liners about his own mother if she walked past us. If you haven’t been to Liverpool before I recommend going but be prepared to have the piss ripped out of you by a complete stranger.

There isn't really much else to tell as filming stuff mainly involves sitting around talking nonsense with actors. The highlight was meeting a guy called Phillip who was in the same scenes as me. He was one of those guys who managed to link anything you said to story about someone he'd had sex with. When the Welsh accent came up in conversation he'd just drift off and go "ahhhh, Newport girls are amazing...it reminds me of a time when I bedded this chick". He literally linked anything. You could talk about the death of a family member and he'd go "talking of funerals...I once met a girl"

People like Phillip are important to keeping you sane when you have to sit around for long periods of time. Thanks to Phil and Liverpool for looking after me and my juice loving tendencies.

Jan 16th-20th: The Utter “Shame”

2012-01-26T15:07:00.000-08:00

Trying to find a new house to reside in, is such a tedious and frustrating process I will not pollute your eyes and brains by writing about it. All I will say on the matter is, never try and rent a house of a woman called Anna in the NW London area because she is a massive arsehole.

I did one of my regular day-time cinema visits, which I always look forward to and enjoy but this week was different due to the film I watched. I went to watch “Shame”, starring Michael Fassbender, with my friend Damian Clark (a very funny man you should watch do stand up). Thank God’s arsehole I didn’t go alone! If you’ve seen the movie,you will know that it is not only a excellent movie with brilliant acting and directing but also quite shocking. It depicts sex addiction in a whole new light. I have always thought of it as a some sort of Mickey Mouse made up nonsense but after watching this I can see what a serious affliction it can be. It makes the idea of having sex and watching pornography repulsive. I walked out of the cinema in such a daze that I left my bag there (this bag did not contain a selection of hideously graphic pictures before anyone makes that gag). I don’t want to ruin the film in anyway but he is so warped by this addiction he has to regularly tease one out at work. Unlike me he works in an office therefore the logistics of this are pretty tricky. If I was in the adjacent cubicle I’d be horrified. More than anything this film has reinforced my decision not to have a nine to five job. I’ll be honest it wasn’t one of my early reasons for it but it’s now pretty high up my list: “The constant fear of hearing a colleague cracking one out”.

This film dominated my thoughts for the whole of the week, therefore it is only right it dominates this blog.

p.s. If you’re at work, please keep it in your pants!

9-13th January: Trending Twat

2012-01-15T07:27:00.000-08:00

Not drinking definitely has it’s advantages: Not feeling terrible for an entire day, not entertaining the company of people who are in fact tedious arseholes, not passing out in front of Babestation in an upright position. There is however one serious downside: you become very boring (especially when the only thing you tell people is that you are not drinking). This should mean that I’m living each day to the max and being ultra constructive but all it really means is I have even more of the day to try and kill without the excuse of feeling groggy.

This week I lived in the gym. Not because I want to become massive but because there is only so much staring at the wall/internet/phone you can do before wanting to place your head on a laptop keyboard and continually slam the screen down. I’ve essentially become a bored housewife. I go to the gym, do hardly any work, sit in the cafe & then let the most muscly instructor try and do me in the sauna. I know I’m in there for all the wrong reasons as I spend twenty minutes on the running machine trying to get the audio channel for the TV playing, “Catwoman” to work. If I’d got it to work, I’m pretty sure I would have run for the entire duration of that appalling motion picture. Some people get motivated by fast trance music or the desire to look aesthetically pleasing whilst I’m buoyed on by a dodgy story line and and woman in a PVC catsuit.

The one completely pointless thing that occurred from a combination of boredom and my love of films was my top twitter trend. Watching “Payback” bored on Wednesday night I tweeted, “movie thing to do before I die: pretend to bump into someone by accident so I can steal wallet from breast pocket”. This then spiraled into a hashtag (which I normally thing are total horse shit) #moviethingstodobeforeIdie set up by one of my followers, @chrisnumber9. I then got obsessed with trying to write silly and subtle observations from movies. I went to bed at 2am with my brain filled with scenes from movies and when I woke up it was the worldwide top twitter trend. Now although I started this after 5pm on a Wednesday it ended up taking over my whole Thursday, therefore I think it’s worth mentioning in this word soup. It turns out I’d created a monster and the more popular and mainstream it became the further away it drifted from my vision. It seems a lot of people had started to put really obvious movie cliches or in some cases just describe a scene from a specific movie. I guess that is the nature of the beast and ultimately who actually gives a donkey’s dick about starting a twitter trend (I would like this achievement to be written on my gravestone). It was a ll a bit of fun that sort of ruined my life for a day so now I will share with you some of my favourite tweets. Enjoy:

@carldonnelly: Punch a Locker

@carldonnelly: have a barman shout “phone call for you” across a busy bar

@dannymccomic: Emerge from a sewer via manhole cover only to be nearly run over by a bus

@dannymccomic: Get punched in the face, touch my lip, look at my hand, spit, then smile

@georgiedonnelly: meet someone in an empty football stadium...a row apart

@DrsevenG: buy a large paper bag of groceries with green leafy veg peaking out of the top

@truphtooph: Run over a traffic cone while learning to drive

@Bennyboot: Walk out of my house early morning, say hi to Bob; pick up newspaper, get wet by a sprinkler suddenly turned on

@joeWHSG: Drive a limousine with an electric shutter to reveal my identity/view a hottie in the back

@chinafoot: carry a watermelon

@johnfromsoho: Have a barbecue with work colleagues by my pool

@danielclancy: Arrange a date with someone for “tonight” but don’t clarify when or where to meet

There were loads more great ones but those were a select sample of goods ones. If you have 40000 hours to kill look at my timeline @chrismcomedy for some of the dumb ones I concocted. Next week I want to blow up the internet.

2-6th January: The Year of the Admin

2012-01-08T04:08:00.000-08:00

Having had fourteen days of excess there was something nice about returning to normality. So much so, the first thing I did on January the 1st when I woke up was to renew my tax disc: ladies form a queue because in 2012 I’m going to be pretty dangerous.

Along with 99% of all the other adults in the Western World I’ve taken the month off drinking. A week in, very little has changed for me except that I feel ready for bed at about 10pm. Not drinking makes you act like a pensioner whereas I guess drinking makes you act like a horny child. The non-boozing meant I spent a lot of my week meeting pals in the day time, which is refreshing because you remember it all and at no point do you get made to drink a Jaeger-Bomb by someone you don’t really know or like.

Carl Donnelly and I spent three hours on one of the afternoons playing darts in a pub drinking orange juice and soda water (a drink I had to excuse to the barmen by pretending that we were both driving). As Carl got a dartboard for Christmas and I received a scarf there a no prizes for guessing who won. However, it’s the taking part that counts as well as the enjoyment in shouting phrases like "and the first leg..." or “Carl you require, 67”.

To continue the theme of me turning into a old man, tardiness has really started to nestle on my tits. I arranged a lunch with some people for 1pm. Now when you arrange a lunch, you have to be on time because unlike a dinner, the middle meal of the day is the one where your belly needs food in it immediately. Carl and I arrived bang on time and two of the other three were 30 minutes late, whilst one was still in bed till 2pm. That is the behaviour of stoned student not of a fully grown woman. The result of all this is we ate at 1pm and then watched two other people eat there lunch. It’s like we got to compete in the semi-finals of an event but didn’t make it through, so had to watch the finals. The moral of this story, is don’t be late or you’ll get slagged off by a coward like me on a blog rather than to your face. Right I’ve got to go as I’m 10 min late for Sunday lunch.

This may have been the most boring blog I've ever written but hopefully next week my detox will go off the rails and I'll be able to talk about getting munted and punching a fox. Toodles

19th Dec- 30th Dec

2012-01-03T03:28:00.000-08:00

These 2 weeks can be very concisely summed up with:

Ate too much

Drunk too much

Watched too many action films

12-16th Dec: Nap Attack!

2011-12-19T04:04:00.000-08:00

This week was the start of me feeling Christmassy. Not because I sat on a sex offender’s lap, who uses the guise of Santa to get his creepy kicks in December, or that every shop I go into has a bellend behind a till wearing a 1.99 red hat but because I’d started eating way too much and sleeping in the afternoon. By the end of the previous week I’d had three Christmas meals over the space of four days but cannot tell you anything about them because they were not between nine and five. You can probably guess that they involved Turkey, someone getting too drunk, someone getting too emotional and bargain basement gubbins otherwise known as “Secret Santa”. It’s hilarious to see someone receive a £10 gift that has a had a bit of thought put into it juxtaposed with someone receiving one with no thought behind it. The recipient has to put on a brave face and pretend they really like it, but 3 hours later once they’re absolutely Prince Naseem Hammered they have to tell everyone near them how crap it is. Luckily between friends this is all harmless and amusing; I’m delighted I don’t work in an office where people who don’t really like each other buy each other useless crap. I saw a hilarious Ebay listing last week where some bloke hadn’t opened any of his presents and titles it “6 unopened & unwrapped Secret Santa presents given to me by female co-workers”. Ungrateful genius.

This excess of food combined with journeys to Edinburgh and back meant that I napped everyday of the week. The best example of me wasting a day was when I arrived in this lovely boutique hotel in Edinburgh at 1pm, where you get a 4 poster Tudor style bed and an x-box, I went to sleep, woke up, did my gig then went back to bed. The owners thought I was mental as it must have seemed like I’d travelled all the way to Scotland to have an expensive kip. When I arrived the woman at reception asked, “will your other half be joining you later?”. Being single at this time of year can be depressing in itself but when a stranger acts like you’d be mental to stay in a nice hotel alone, it rubs seriously coarse rock salt into your open puss-filled wounds. It made my already shameful hotel masturbation session even more pathetic and pretty much forced me into a mid December crank (crying & wanking). I don’t work in a hotel but if I did I would suggest that you never assume someone has another half otherwise you will cause them to desecrate your lovely 4 poster beds; I may or may not have done this.

Let’s hope next week involves less sleeping and more human company.

5-9th Dec: Hand me the Nurofen

2011-12-14T05:42:00.000-08:00

I’ve been ill several times in my life but this is one of the most frustrating occasions because I’m pretty sure I know exactly how I contracted my illness. At the end of the previous week I left my flat at the same time as my neighbour, Roberto (not Alessandro as I thought for several months). He spent the 5 minute walk towards the station with me explaining that he’d been ill for days, then as we parted ways he shook my hand. Now, I’ve never been overly OCD but knowing someone’s flu covered hand has touched mine, made me extremely paranoid. So paranoid in fact, I diverted my route to the station to go via the pharmacy to purchase some of that hand sanitizer gel. I did so petrified of letting my hand touch any other part of my body, so was wafting it around like it was covered in dick sick. After this panic buy, I still contracted flu, which makes me think either that hand gel is a gimmick for idiots like myself or Roberto’s flu virus was quicker working than a 5 year old ADD sufferer on speed. I got ill in the least cool way ever; the cool ways being from snogging someone or playing paintball in the winter in old a t-shirt and shorts.

I was only a bit sick. The worst type of sick. If you’re fully ill, where you can’t eat or move then you can lie on a sofa watching action movies and masturbating without any sense of guilt. When you’re only under the weather you flit between wanting to be pro-active and wanting to do zero things. It’s the human equivalent of a semi-erect penis (if you catch my drift): if you had to get the job done you could, but you wouldn’t enjoy it or think you’ve done your best. Apologies for this slightly crass blog but I’ve been ill so leave me alone and bring me some soup.

I also made my first ever chicken soup that week. It tasted mainly of chicken stock.

Nov 28th- 2nd Dec. Bye, Bye, sex offender!

2011-12-07T03:42:00.001-08:00

The moustache finally had to go. I was briefly tempted to keep it on my face but when whipped cream from a seriously tasty hot chocolate got stuck in it, I knew it was time to remove the top lip bush. I think it almost reached the level where people started to think I was wise. I nearly made the mo leap when people go from changing direction when they see you in the street to asking for directions from you. Now, I’m back to having just an all over crap beard which suits me fine. We managed to raise over 2k as comedians, which is pretty damn good: hopefully enough to contribute to preventing a few cases of dick and ball cancer.

Despite this good deed, it was generally a sad week for sport and comedy. The passing away of Gary Speed, Socrates and Patrice O’Neal (Youtube him now) all happened in the space of a few days. Although I didn’t know any of them personally, they were all exceptional in their fields and they should be remembered for bringing joy to the people that watched them. I find it intriguing how in this day and age all tributes are essentially done online. It’s rare now that people will write a card and leave flowers. Instead people will tweet “RIP”, followed by a tweet about what they ate for breakfast. This used to annoy me but I guess this is the way the world is changing. In 20 years when someone else famous dies I suspect no one will even bother writing “RIP” but instead just think it in their minds and then this gets scrawled on a robot re-incarnation of the body. Due to the inherently selfish nature of humans, when something like this happens to others you think about it happening to you. I’ve decided that if and when I play Connect 4 with Diana in the sky, whether you tweet or not about it please do not go on my Facebook and click “like” button under, “Chris Martin is dead”.

21-25th Trucking and Clucking

2011-11-30T02:35:00.001-08:00

The worst thing about this job by an urban mile is having to do long car journeys on your own. Unlike the train, it’s generally frowned upon to watch an action movie whilst in transit. Therefore you have to spend most of your time listening to average radio, where you are guaranteed to hear one David Guetta or N-Dubz song every 15 minutes.

I had a drive to Leeds to do on a Friday. This meant I spent the whole week stressing about the prospect of sitting in my car in traffic trying to leave London. I was losing sleep over the whole debacle. Despite me panicking to the extent that I set off from London at 10:45am so I could not only dodge a jam and check into my hotel early, to get maximum value from my stay, I still got stuck in an hour’s worth of tossing traffic.

A couple of things I noticed from a long journey are: why do we ration out toilet stops? Why do people get shout outs on the radio? The former is utterly ridiculous. Despite needing to urinate when I’m 1 mile from a services I’ll try and last till the next service station 44 miles away in some sort of piss based endurance game where best case scenario my journey takes the just as long and worst case scenario I write off a perfectly good pair of pants. It literally makes no difference to your travel time, but for some reason once you get into a metal moving thing, you’re loath to stop and get out too soon. The latter also makes no sense. Radio 1 is just loads of shout-outs. Why are we fascinated with getting a person who has a little bit of notoriety reading out on the radio “shout out to Carey in Chigwell who’s stuck indoors revising today”? It’s not like that will make them work harder:
“why did you do so well on your GCSEs?”
“Fern Cotton said my name out loud at 11:30am”

It’s not like anyone else cares or will remember it 3 seconds later. I’ve never arrived at party and gone, “guys, have you heard the news? It’s Mark from Braintree’s birthday today!” For some reason we seem obsessed to the point where we will get terrible DJs in horrendous clubs to give shout-outs. Maybe, if those nutters in the streets shouting about God did shout outs they’d become more popular.

If you’re wondering why there is clucking in the title, it’s because I once again ate Nandos on my own. I’m living the Per-Peri dream.

Before I sign off just want to give a shout out to my friend Gary Smilehat, who became a dad today.
Toodles

Nov 14-18th: Watching War Crimes in Nandos

2011-11-23T03:47:00.000-08:00

I really can’t remember much about the week, apart from trying to write amusing things and playing football. The only aspect that is engrained in my head is my end of the week travels. I travelled from Cheltenham to Nottingham after spending the night in a hotel, which had curtains made of bath mats. (photo attached).

The invention of the laptop really has made train journeys quite enjoyable. If it’s just over 2 hours then you can easily squeeze in 1 feature film or 2 and a half episodes of an American box set (if the episodes are 45 minutes long: yes you’re correct, I am amazing at maths). For some reason my timings were off and started watching the 2 hour movie “Rescue Dawn”, where Christian Bale is a prisoner of war in Laos., but only got half way through it. I worked out the reason for my delay was that the person sitting opposite me on a train subconsciously influences me. I was initially sitting opposite quite an attractive female, so tried to act important and cool by reading a book and writing in mine; as soon as she got off, I wacked on a film about war and started picking my nose. I’m now convinced if you ever want to get anything constructive done in your life you need to get a model to sit within a 3-metre radius of you. A cure for HIV would be found inside a month if the lab was in the centre of a Swedish nightclub dance floor.

This awful time management led to me heading for lunch in Nottingham with my head in a Laos but my body in a shopping centre in the Midlands. So rather than eating rice and worms, I headed for Nandos, a place where the service is not that dissimilar to a POW camp. Eating on your own in a restaurant is depressing enough but I decided to whip out the laptop and continue watching the movie. I’m pretty sure this is frowned upon, but when you’ve got earphones lodged in you head, the rest of the world seems arbitrary. I thoroughly recommend watching films in restaurants and trying to see how classy a joint you can get away with this. My new ambition in life is to try and watch the Lord of the Ring’s trilogy in The Ivy.

Right, now I need to pay my taxes. Rock n Roll!!!!

7-11th Nov: Perv Burgers

2011-11-15T04:27:00.000-08:00

As part of Movember or Mexicanrapistlook-a-like-ember, one of the accidental perks I was unaware of is you get some treats for raising over a certain amount of cash. Me and Carl Donnelly became eligible for free burgers at the meat patty joint, Byron. For my money the best Burger chain in town (if you don’t live in a town then move to one as they’re way better than the countryside). The offer was available between the hours of 3-6pm, so basically meant only comedians and unemployed people would be able to take full advantage of it.

When we arrived, we saw a table of 4 tached up men and gave them a knowing nod. Rather than unemployed, they looked like businessmen who’d taken an exceptionally late lunch to save themselves a few quid. As well as raising money for charity, the other great thing about Movember is I feel part of a brotherhood. You give other men donning the bit tickler a knowing nod or a rye smile. I don’t think I’m in any way exaggerating when I say that if I saw another moustache wearer getting attacked, me and any other top lip townie would step in and help our hairy brother.

After taking down these complimentary tasty treats, we went to the cinema and due to the fact there was nothing on, saw Tintin. It has got a lot of good reviews, so I’ll give my no nonsense appraisal of it. Visually it’s excellent but after about 30 minutes, I realised I was watching a well spoken bellend with a crap quiff take his dog for a really long and tedious walk. I had absolutely no vested interested in any of the characters. So if you’re going to go to see it, bring an ipod.

Right, I’m off to scare some children.

Oct 31st- 4th Nov: Growing me a bit tickler

2011-11-07T08:54:00.001-08:00

This is a week where traditionally most people dress up to look scary and watch over-rated explosions in the sky; it’s now become a period where womene dress like prosties and men grow silly facial hair for dick cancer. I’m doing the latter. As far as the former goes, I’m all for a seeing a good costume but when I went to gym on Monday, all the staff were in fancy dress. Getting told what to do by the gym staff is annoying enough as it, let alone when one of them is dressed as a wolf.

I managed to wrack up somewhere in the region of 300000 miles in 5 days for various gigs I was performing at, so spent almost all my daytime hours sitting on trains and desperately trying to find bread-free food due to my new “I’m a massive tosser” diet. Long story short, I ended up eating cooked chicken with my barehands whilst aimlessly walking through the streets of Ipswich. That sounds like a start to the world’s crappest poem.

So in reality, all I did was will my moustache to grow out to an acceptable length. By acceptable, I mean past the point of looking like a sex bandit. It has not grown past that point yet. Essentially I don’t think I can smile at kids for the rest of the month without getting vilifying stares from parents. I think they should rename Movember, “Sexbanitember”, however, I doubt it would be such a popular cause.

Please sponsor me and my bit tickler: http://mobro.co/chrismocomedy

Oct 24-28th: The Big Issues: Getting a Haircut

2011-10-30T08:58:00.000-07:00

The blog is back: bigger, blacker and badder than ever. As always it’s been on holiday due to me being busy (watching a lot of “Breaking Bad”).

I’d been in the market for a new hairdresser ever since my one moved to Australia. I know she’s gone there to enjoy weather and build a new life but all in all it’s pretty selfish because it meant I was going to have to find someone as good as her for the same money. Baring in mind she only charged me half price as she was my friend James’s sister, this was a pretty tricky task. The first one I got was about 6 weeks ago at a local salon; not only did it cost £25 (£7 more) but it took 90 minutes. Now although I would rather someone take their time and ensure they did a good job, my hair should not take the duration of a football match to cut. You may be thinking this is a good thing as it significantly eats into my vacuous daytime but it was far too long a stint for me to maintain benal chit-chat. Once you start asking how old they were when they decided to become a hairdresser, it’s pretty much time to run out the salon without paying. She also did it too short, I’d say 90% of men would agree that their hair is always too short for the first 2 weeks. If any hairdressers read this, word of advice: longer is better (insert really obvious, terrible penis based joke here in your potty minds).

The one I got this week was top notch. Turns out if you ring Headmasters (wanky salon) on the day, you can get a hair cut by one of their most experienced hairdressers for only £18. You know it’s a classy joint because rather than calling their hairdressers, “hairdressers” they have ridiculously grand titles like, “hair technician”, “colour craftsman”, “weave magician”. I also got a head massage with some sort of mint shampoo. Now if you’ve ever put mint shower gel on your body, you will know it’s like giving your pores an orgasm; add a head massage into the equation and you will spend the next 30 minutes trying to find your mind…which you just lost. I also got a free pot of tea. I’m pretty sure mint shower products, a massage and a lovely cup of breakfast tea could bring peace to the Middle East and solve any financial crisis in Europe in an instant.

So there you go, after a few months off, my blog has returned and now is less about comedy and more about getting a hair cut. Unfortunately, that was the most exciting thing I did between 9-5 and this blog is a slave to my daytime activities. Hopefully next week I’ll have some top recommendations for nail salons. I hope you all had a good Halloween weekend, where you either got in a fight or had to do a walk of shame dressed as Mr T.

August 8th-Sept 2nd

2011-09-06T02:11:00.000-07:00

My Dad has started harassing me about not updating my blog. Getting told off as an adult about something you do for no particular reason apart from enjoyment has to be a world's first.

So to appease John Martin:

EDINBURGH WAS FUN