Episode Six: Ediburghinings

In this episode: Edinburgh, The Dark Knight, cockiness, a quick plug for Funergy, News of the World readers, Latitude, my cock, music of Black Origin, vomit, lucozade, Brendan’s cock, jumping the shark, a smackdown for Rollins.

Welcome to a belated episode six of my Readable Podcast. Here are a few things that have happened to me in the past few weeks, starting with this week…

I have arrived in Edinburgh for Pappy’s third year at the Festival. Last night we decided to go and see The Dark Knight and so sent out a message to other friends who might be in town and might want to relax on the last night before the festival begins. 100% of replies told us that the recipient could not join us as they were working on their show. At first this made me feel like the school kids who laugh off important study leave time for days in the park. Should we be working on our show? It was only after the 7^th or 8^th message to the same effect came in that I realised that, rather than being the hip kids who don’t care, we were actually the annoying swots who’d done their homework on Friday night. I only hope that our genuine request for company at the cinema didn’t come across as a arrogant declaration: “Our show’s ready, we’re partying! What’s that? Still working the night before the big day?” Besides, I’m not even sure our show is ready. We’ll soon find out. The show goes up in three and a half hours.

By the way, if you are in Edinburgh, please come and see our show. It’s called Funergy. Tickets and all the information you need is available through our website.

Mediocre Travel Story of the Week
We did an exhausting tour of the UK and Ireland that resulting in both sickness and the neglect of this Readable Podcast. Just before Latitude we flew to Galway for a show at the Roisin Dubh. As I was waiting in WH Smiths at Bristol Airport, a man in his twenties approached the newspaper stand muttering loudly, “News of the World? News of the World? News of the World?” After circling the stand twice a great revelation came over him, “It’s not Sunday, is it?” It was Wednesday. I’ve never seen a truer archetype of that paper’s readership.

After Galway was the Latitude Festival, which brings us to Sophie’s comment:

Please tell us your latitude tales. (I think you should focus on the final night, eh? eh? know what i mean?)

Of course I know what she means, and of course she knows that I know what she means. She’s referring to the moment when I drunkenly exposed myself to a packed literary arena, by arriving onstage to sing a song from our show wearing a tutu, a blonde wig and no underwear. It was a mistake. Let’s all move on. Thank God for facebook as it now allows anyone who wasn’t there to enjoy the moment from about 15 different camera angles.

Generally, it was a wonderful weekend. We performed our show at 1am which should have been a shitstorm but wasn’t. We must have been at a perfect drunken equilibrium to the festival or the audience or the universe. You know the way that you often bowl better on the third pint than you do on the first? That was what happened that night. And you know how you often bowl horribly when you’re on your sixth or seventh pint? That was what happened on the last night.

Black Kids played and were great, prompting Tom and I to consider putting on our own Black Fest. Only bands with Black in their name can play. Black Kids, Keys, Lips, Flag, Eyed Peas, Francis. It wouldn’t be a bad line up. Highlight of the festival musically was Grinderman. Lowlight musically was a cobbled together Book Club band playing a version of Sweet Child O’ Mine. Tom from Pappy’s danced onto the stage, drunk as a lord, and decided it would be funny to pretend to collapse. What he didn’t realise was that the song had about eight more verses to go. With a Stanislavski-like commitment to the role, he lay motionless onstage for the remainder of the song.

The only downside of the festival was that my girlfriend got sick and spent Saturday in the tent, throwing up into a bag. When I went to throw the bag away the next day I found that, in the interests of recycling, all bins were manned by a steward to ensure that we threw each item into the correct receptacles. It was with some shame that I had to answer her question of, “What’s in the bag?” with a vague and sheepish, “Someone threw up.” Landfill, apparently.

Speaking of throwing up, I rode to Latitude in the car with Ben and Brendan. By the way, this story maybe NSFW. As we travelled the conversation turned to the thorny subject of ethnicity in pornography. Ben professed to a penchant for Asian ladies but not so much for black women. Facetiously (and, I should add, mainly for humour) asked if he liked little white girls who loved big black cocks. He replied to the affirmative. Suddenly and without warning, Brendan leaned forward from the backseat and very quietly said, “I’ve got a black cock.” This caused me to suck the gulp of lucozade I had just taken right into my lungs, which in turned caused me to throw up orange bile all over the front of Ben’s car. The dashboard, front windscreen, glove compartment and my clothes were all dripping with flurescent liquid as my still-filled lungs screamed and grasped for air. I was drowning. It was like a scene from a Wilfred Owen poem. If Owen had drunk lucozade and chatted about porn. Brendan, still laughing at both his quip and the fact that it was in the process of killing me, smacked me on the back and Ben contemplated pulling over. Eventually, after making the noise the Alien makes when it gets burned for about three minutes, I managed to get my breath back. On the many occasions I’ve imagined my death it’s never involved lucozade and Brendan’s black cock. Often one, never both.

A weird tangent has cropped up in the comments sections courtesy of regular commenter, Matthew, who said...

I remember seeing a website which was just a list of opinions of when tv shows, bands etc 'jumped the shark'. For example, a lot of people thought my beloved Cheers jumped the shark when they replaced Dianne with Rebecca. Farcical stuff.

Any ideas where the phrase comes from?

Quick as a flash, The Sound of The Ladies, shot back with basically the correct answer [it was water-skis]...

Someone told me the phrase comes from an episode of "Happy Days" where The Fonz actually jumps over a shark on a surfboard [insert music-hall joke here]. Although that show figuratively jumped the shark on the first day it aired.

Basically, there’s a website called JumpTheShark.com that is devoted to picking moments went a TV show went off the boil. “When Ted Danson rips the shirt, Curb Your Enthusiasm really jumped the shark.” Apparently, according to Tom, Ralph Little’s character in Two Pints of Lager replicated the moment from Happy Days and died in the process. There’s loads of examples on Wikipedia. “When Pappy’s cockily suggested we go and see the Dark Knight on the night before their first show, I knew they’d jumped the shark.”

Finally, I walked around the Pleasance this morning and found that they’d put up some articles to preview shows that are happing during the Festival; including an interview I had done with Edinburgh Festivals magazine. In it I had said how I had been inspired by the work ethic of the band Black Flag and tried to reflect it in our own gigging schedule. The journalist had focussed on this suggesting that I had said that Pappy’s were like Black Flag and had added that it was ironic that Henry Rollins (lead singer of the Flag and a hero of mine), who is also performing at the Festival, wasn’t doing as many shows as Pappy’s. Basically, the way it appeared to read was that I had said that Pappy’s were tougher or harder-working than Black Flag. It’s the first time I have, albeit unwittingly, slammed someone in the press. You heard me right, Rollins you puss! Bring it on!

No photo of me recording this one as I don’t know how to make them go from my phone to my computer (Helen Saucepan usually does that). Anyway, thanks for reading despite the lack of eye candy.