Stand-up & Be Recounted: Paul Kerensa

The British Comedy Awards & 'Old' Underwear

Probably the only ITV show I set the video ('video'? ha! DVR, please...) for is the British Comedy Awards. Always a treat - whether it's Julian Clary suggesting he'd just fisted a cabinet minister, or Caroline Aherne heckling Nigel Hawthorne, or Michael Barrymore ripping out the autocue, or Spike Milligan calling Prince Charles a grovelling bastard, it's always ripe for scandal. The 2005 show seemed to be scandal-free, though it's now been unearthed as being the most scandalous of the lot, by doing one of these phone-rigging naughtinesses like naming the Blue Peter cat Mufty or whatever it was. Either way, it's been pulled this year. Seems an odd choice, since Blue Peter's still going on, and so's Ant & Dec's Saturday Night Takeaway, and so's GMTV, all of which were accused of greater scandals. But ITV see The British Comedy Awards as a one-night thing you can do without, so not only are they not showing it, but they've not allowed any other channel to show it either by clinging to their contract. This is a shame.

If you agree it's a shame, go here: http://www.petitiononline.com/chortle1. Go on. Support a beery backslap fest for comedians. You know you want to.

My other query today is a discussion with my other half, where it transpired that the oldest pair of briefs I still own are now celebrating their first decade since purchase. She didn't see it that way. She's of the mind you should bin all undergarments after a year of use. Well it's not a year solid of use, and I do wash them, so I see no problem with keeping a pair of boxer shorts for a few years. So if any blog-reader wishes to help my argument, and can claim to own underwear more than a couple of years old, please let me know. And if you can beat me record of ten years of pant-ownership, even better. Any takers?

Some film reviews

I feel qualified to give some film reviews, having seen 8 cinematic releases in 3 days. Anyone top that? Anyone want to? You probably have better things to do. I didn't, thanks to far-flung gigs. And I had my Cineworld Unlimited card (a must for any travelling film fan), and had worked blimin hard the last few weeks, so I've had myself a few weekend days, midweek.

So, in order of liking, they are: Stardust, Sicko, Eastern Promises, Ratatouille, The Kingdom, Razzle Dazzle, The Heartbreak Kid, Saw IV.

So, selected comments. Razzle Dazzle I was curious to see, as it's co-written by Robin Ince, who I know. And twas good fun, though probably the driest comedy I've seen in a cinema. I think it'll struggle to find an audience it's aimed at, cos it's about an Australian dance contest, but the tone is quite adult. I saw it in one of only two showings at that cinema that week, and it was me and two families with young daughters, who clearly came to see it because of the dancyness. But both families walked out about 15min in, when a line about gonorrhoea confirmed their suspicions that it wasn't a cutesy half-term movie after all. To those that know it, it's a slight Drop Dead Gorgeous rip-off, but still worth a punt.

My favourite film I've seen in ages was Stardust. It's just lovely. Maybe it caught me in the right mood. It's very feelgood. Maybe I just deliberately liked it to spite the barracking half-termites in the rows behind me who clearly were bored by it. But I suspect that my instincts are correct, and it is actually very good. It's a fairytale, for grown-ups as well as for kids (maybe moreso for grown-ups). It's very Princess Bridey, and also quite Terry Gilliam/Monty Python-y too. Great cast, great script, and it's directed by the guy behind Layer Cake and Lock Stock and X3, which is bizarre. I think one of the main things I liked was that I was caught out at least 3 times, plot-wise. And I liked that we saw a couple fall in love throughout the movie, from first meet to realisation between both of them, to save-the-day romantic ending. Aw. I'm an old softie it turns out.

...but a softie who's now hardened to the Saw franchise. Saw IV bored me. So what, you've got gore, whoop-de-doo, there's a bloke stuck in a room with a chain attached to a bit of him, and the other end to a machine on a timer for some reason. Do I want him to escape? Well you've painted him as a bit of a baddie who needs to be taught a lesson, but then if that lesson is that he has to gouge his own eyes out before his limbs get pulled off or his ribs split open before the timer goes off and the room seals with no visible means of... oh I can't be bothered any more.

Bread, Timothy West & Girlie Music

Every day's different. This was Monday:

BREAD: 1:30-6:30pm - An advertising company has run out of ideas for how to sell Hovis so paid for 4 comedians to sit in a pub for 5 hours and talk about bread in whatever funny or not-funny way we could think of. I know, I'm a sell-out. But if you're a sell-out, that involves the word 'sell', which means money, so you can see why people do it. And it wasn't a huge amount, but enough to buy my thoughts on bread, which aren't many. It largely consisted of things they got wrong with the Hovis ad with the boy walking up the hill. Thing is, I don't personally feel any artistic integrity is compromised when it's supporting something I like anyway. I like bread. If I was helping advertise a nuclear hairdryer or a new genocidal milkshake.

TIMOTHY WEST: 7:30-9pm - And other actors. But mainly Timothy West. It was the readthrough of the Xmas Special of Not Going Out, only finished at 4am that day. Timothy West, Shakespearean actOR and Henry VIII lookalike, is guesting as Tim Vine's dad. It all came together well, so we're about two more writing days away from the end of Not Going Out series 2. Been on it since January. The end is in sight. Recording the Xmas special next Wednesday, and still waiting for news on series 3... (And NGO series 1 is available now on DVD in all good stores and most bad ones.)

GIRLIE MUSIC: 9:30pm-11pm - Pen-To-Paper New Material Night in Ealing. It's an unusual night, in that rather than have 10-20min, you have up to 40min to bed in a new full-length show. Now it's a little early (October) for next Edinburgh (August). But I did have a half-thought-up idea from last year that I dropped in favour of doing a show on Genesis. So I went over some of that, and hey hey, some of it worked. It's all about music, and genres, and itunes, and playlists, and involves me surveying the audience for their favourite musical genres, and confessing my own guilty pleasures. And it turns out, my tastes in music are surprisingly girlie. I admitted to liking Love Machine by Girls Aloud and All I Want For Christmas Is You by Mariah Carey, and musicals, and hoped for a little more support than one woman at the back agreeing with me. Ah well. I'm sure there are more like me out there. I hope to find out over the next few months of working this show up.

(So in other words, no I'm not doing a show about Exodus next year at the Fringe. Though that decision is subject to change. Actually Tim Vine suggested a nice idea for an Exodus show - a column of reserved seats down the middle of the audience, and 'unreserve' them halfway through for the parting of the Red Sea...)

They can't sell The Doughnut!?!

I picked a great day to do the BBC's in-house gig. The day that it's announced they're looking at 2000 job cuts (but no one knows who) and also that they're going to sell off The Doughnut (aka Television Centre, aka one of the most famous workplace buildings in the country). London Lite says they're going to sell it either to a business (so Shepherd's Bush finally gets a Primark), or knock it down for housing. Urgh. I feel sick even writing that. It's a great building - a magical one - I still get the shivers walking in there, thinking of all the history of shows and talent that have made television there over the last century. Monty Python was filmed there, countless Comic Reliefs and Children In Needs, the Blue Peter garden is there, Roy Castle tapdanced around there... And by 2013 it's going to be a big Wetherspoons.

The BBC gig itself was fun tonight - I was compering, and baited them a little on the jobs front. Some of them even believed me when I said that, thanks to the unique way the BBC is funded, us comedians were paid by sacrificing their jobs. No one really knows who's safe. It looks like being news and factual (ie. Planet Earth and the like) who'll lose out the most. My suggestion was that, as BBC employees, they make a show like Job Swap or something just before the redundancies kick in, then just make sure the other job has more security. Swap with a Sky employee or something. Then what do you know - Sky worker comes to the beeb and gets sacked. Beeb worker carries on at Sky. Who loses? I should be Director General.

Stowe and the Amused Moose

The title sounds like a public school prank, like when Wellington pupils smuggled in 2 sheep to their dorms, labelling them 1 and 3 (both were caught by teachers straight away, but they spent all night looking for the elusive sheep marked 2, which of course didn't exist...)

But no, the title describes my last two gigs, both slightly different from the norm. The first was just me on my own performing to several hundred teenagers; the second was me performing on a bill with what seemed like several hundred teenagers.

Stowe School is a public school near Buckingham. It's very fancy. Richard Branson went there, and so did Prince Harry's girlfriend. They've got an arts festival on all week, so their chaplain booked me to do the Edinburgh show about the book of Genesis, instead of Sunday morning chapel. So it was my first 10am gig, and my first gig to several hundred public school teenagers. Playing to an audience who aren't there through choice is always more of a challenge, but they enjoyed it, laughed in most of the right places, and I had a great time with it. The bits that didn't hit the mark were things I couldn't plan for - I had a joke about the phrase "She didn't know him from Adam" (you can imagine the joke) which has never not worked before, but got nothing - I had no idea that kids didn't know that phrase. Now I think of it, I've only ever heard people like my parents say that. Never have I heard, "Bitch not know him from Adam, dya naa what I mean, innit, nuff said." The only bits I cut out the show were bits on onanism and a touch of sodomy. Didn't quite feel right for it...

The second gig, last night, was a showcase of comedians at the Arts Theatre in London - about 40 of us on the bill, doing between 60 seconds and 6 minutes. Lots of industry there, and a great chance to meet the future of comedy. I felt old. I'm only 28, but there's all these teenagers up-and-coming. Lots of fine gagsmiths among them. The future of comedy is in safe hands. I feel a little bit threatened. Must put off a few of them.

In fact myself and comic Stuart Goldsmith have decided after last night to set up our own new act competition, because we enjoy judging people, and we'll reward the 2nd place, but 1st place will get nothing. This is to encourage new comedians to be good, but not be that good.

Crete

Back from my hols. Crete. Lovely. An apartment ten metres from the sea and ten metres from the pool. And that was as tricky as the decisions got - working out which to do each day.

It's missing home comforts, granted. You can't put toilet paper in the toilet, for example - you have to bin it. I wasn't sure if we were meant to poo in the bin as well, so just to be safe...

Meals out were nice - though Greek cuisine isn't exactly my thing. But the Greek salads were nice, and in the main the tavernas were lovely. Although some of the places in the nearby town of Chania were a little dodgy. We went to one taverna, with a lovely atmosphere, out on a street in an old-fashioned, high-walled, pedestrian square, with a couple of guitarists playing acoustic Greek music. Only whenever we walked past it (we did the rounds, trying to see who had the best menu), a different waiter would be out front collaring us to lure us in, and all of them followed this pattern...

WAITER: Hey! You want to come look at our menu?
US: Er...
WAITER: Where you from?
US: London.
WAITER: No way! I worked in London for 7 years, at Bella Pasta on Leicester Square.

Every waiter in Crete seems to have worked in Bella Pasta in Leicester Square. I don't even know if there is a Bella Pasta on Leicester Square. It's clearly a ruse they have. And it's not the only one. Next up, when seated, we're asked if we prefer fish or meat. We answer individually, and are told what the special is of each. We'll even be brought the very fish we'll have cooked for us to approve it. We eventually have to prise a menu off the waiter, but by this stage he's made his mind up that we're having the fish special and chicken special he's just pitched to us, so pays no attention to us trying to order anything else from the menu. Something fishy and something chickeny just appear on our tables ten minutes later. Oh, and the uncooked fish we're promised we get to approve never arrives, not that that fish would be the one you get cooked anyway.

And to cap it all, the 'good price I give you' for the fish, of 11 euros, is somehow forgotten about when the bill comes, and it has suddenly changed to 32 euros. Luckily Zoe checked the bill and queried it. We didn't tip. They be swizzlers.

That aside, I wholly recommend Crete. A fine place. Just don't look in that bin next to the toilet.

The non-blog

It's 3am, and I need to be up at 6am to get to Gatwick Airport for my holiday. So I haven't got time to blog, which is a shame, because it was an unusual day. Alas though I have no time to mention my car breaking down because I ran out of petrol (I wondered only yesterday how big my reserve tank was - smaller than I thought, let me say that much). A nice RAC man got me going again. I say 'nice' - humourless is a better description. I even made a jolly mistake when I asked if I was okay to rejoin (the motorway), and I thought he meant rejoining the RAC, but not a smirk from him at that - just a scowl. It was cold I suppose. I found that out myself as I script-edited some sketches on my laptop in the woodland off the hard shoulder, in the pitch black, sat on a log waiting for him. It seemed frightfully middle class - using your laptop in a huddle of trees as cars raced past. Very odd.

I'm also not able to blog about the long long traffic jam I was in outside Northampton (on the way to Nottingham for a coupla gigs, including one at my old uni. Aw.), meaning that although I left at 2pm to get to Nottingham for 5pm and see a movie, catch up with some old friends, get some work done, and maybe watch a dvd on my laptop... instead of this course of events, I just sat in traffic for 7 painfully long hours. Painful not just in terms of boredom, but in terms of the fact that I was dying for a pee, and the services were just too far ahead to reach. My car was literally not moving, so I hate to say it... yes, blog-reader, I used a bottle. A 1 litre Tropicana orange juice bottle. I know it's wrong and technically I could have been done for exposure in a public place, but I was gasping for that pee-wee, so go I had to. No one noticed anyway. Although the guy behind seemed to be uncertain what I was doing when I seemed to pour a litre of perfectly good orange juice out of my car window. Oh, and that was a stupid idea. I did it cos I didn't want a car of stinky wee, but then forgot that I'd pour it out the window then sit immobile in traffic for 40 minutes, so instead I just had a smelly puddle outside of my car window for the best part of an hour. Charming.

Sorry to disgust. Anyway, as I say, I haven't got time to blog about this, or the fact that when the traffic was still for an hour I put a dvd on in my car. Well I wasn't moving. And I figured even if it did, I could just listen to it and plug it into my tape adaptor so the sound came through the speakers. Only the film I had was the Spanish film Volver, so subtitled. So you kinda have to pay attention to it - difficult when hurtling down the motorway and it's on your passenger seat. But as I say, I was motionless, and enjoying the fact that I had prepared for this traffic jam by bringing such a thing. It's an odd journey when you can say that you've watched a film and had a piss, and haven't left your car once.

On that bombshell, I'm off on my hols for a week, so no blogs till then. You're probably glad, given the foul content of the above...

A weekend of recordings

Another atypical weekend...

Friday evening - Not Going Out recording at Teddington. A good ep I reckon - Dating. It'll be on in a fortnight. Ian Boldsworth does a fine job warming up the crowd, aided by the mad woman in front of me taking her bra off and passing it round the audience. I wouldn't mind, but he didn't even ask her to.

After the show, I whisk two chums back to the green room for a free bar and mingling with the actors, who are very warm and friendly to them - especial kudos to Lee Mack for coming over to say hello when I wasn't even with them, Tim Vine for still telling us jokes when it was just us at a table, and Miranda Hart for generally being a good egg. Still no word on series three, but fingers crossed.

Saturday afternoon - watch Charlie Brooker's Screenwipe and Flight of the Concords, recorded earlier in the week. Both excellent. Recommend everyone get freeview just for these shows.

Saturday evening - comedy gig at a speed-dating event in Liverpool St. Make several faux pases (faus pases? faux pas? faux pass? faux poxen?), including referring to the night by the name of one of their dating group rivals, calling it a speed-dating night (which I've now done again here - it's a singles group, not speed-dating), and saying to one of the singletons in the audience that she's probably got her babysitter at home waiting.

I stuck around for a drink after my slot, which was socially tricky because I hadn't mentioned that I'm attached during the set for the simple reason that I didn't want to rub it in to the 100 or so singletons. So then I had to (quite flatteringly) fend off some female attention afterwards, as they saw me as someone who was socially confident, so there was a little bit of polite mentioning of my girlfriend, normally followed by the respective girl making her excuses and leaving the conversation about 5 seconds later, ie. not wasting valuable date-event minutes talking to an attached man.

Karaoke followed my comedy set, so I did a quick Mack The Knife then buggered off home. That was the first time I've ever done karaoke after doing a stand-up set, which is slightly odd. It's like giving yourself your own encore.

Sunday daytime - sat on the panel for auditions for a new musical that I'm co-writing, called Rubbish! I saw myself as a kind of Louis Walsh figure. I'd even watched The x Factor the night before as research. We had maybe 20 or so singers come in and do their stuff, and I was very impressed. It was a five-person panel - me, the choreographer, the producer, the director and the singing tutor - and we all had a score sheet to make notes on voice, movement, stage presence, additional notes etc. But I'm no singing expert, or dance expert. So everyone else on the panel wrote down "Top A-flat, good belt" etc etc. I just put a tick under 'Dance' if they walked in using two legs.

Sunday evening - After You've Gone recording at BBC TV Centre. Last of the series - aw. Well, Christmas special, so a slightly longer recording, with a party after. Woo. Was given a lovely bottle of champagne (plus champagne cooler) by Rosemary the producer, and a bag of posh sweets by Celia Imrie. Take note, Not Going Out people. After You've Gone rewards their writers with presents at the end of the series. You've got till October 31st (the last recording of Not Going Out) to get me something nice.

Nicholas Lyndhurst offered his thanks for work on the series, and aired his grievance (and ours) about the new habit of the BBC of plugging the next show with a giant bar across the screen during the last minute of the previous show. As a result we lost a visual joke last week on After You've Gone cos the Beeb was plugging A Bucket of French of Saunders up next. None of us from writer to producer to director has the power to stop this, but Nick Lyndhurst is what we call a star. He's got oomph. So apparently he's made his feelings on this irritating promotional method known to the head of the channel, and is confident that by next week's show, it will have changed. I'll be tuning in if only to see just how much sway he really has...

So that's my weekend. Full, really, with a full week to follow now. But in a week's time I'm on my holidays in Crete, so I shall do weekend things like read the paper and sleep late and pretend to do some exercise then.