I was walking down the Tottenham Court Road this afternoon when I saw Justin Lee Collins walking towards me. JLC on the TCR as bold as you like. If only he'd been with Goldie Looking Chain playing Total Control Racing (do you remember that game?) against the Greater London Council it would have been perfect. JLC on the TCR with GLC playing the GLC at TCR, watching by the guy from RHLSTP.
It was odd to see him out and about in public so soon after the verdict from the court case. Admirable or stupid - I am not sure. I suspect he would get quite a few heckles and people waving Pukka pads at him and offering up their sexual histories and maybe even the odd punch. He might have been more sensible to lay low for a while. Or at least just cut his hair and shaved off his beard. So much of him is hair that if he got rid of it all he could probably start a new life with nobody having any idea who he is. Either way he might be the only person in the country who was delighted that the Jimmy Savile story became public this week - it took a bit of the heat off of him.
I have only met him once before and don't know him very well, but I didn't really want to catch his eye, but then again I didn't want to turn my back on him and provoke a furious tirade of anger. You see, it's just too easy to joke about it.
I don't know why, but there's a part of me that feels a little bit sorry for him. I think it's fair to say that he was never a favourite of mine and that like many comedians I was perhaps a little surprised that he rose to the heights he got to (though I did admire his enthusiasm and commitment when I saw the show in which he tried to win the ten pin bowling world championship). But he's clearly troubled and needs help and though I think his punishment is very light, he does get this extra punishment of not being able to work down the street without people reacting in the very way I did and telling the jokes that I have also told. Sometimes couples get together who should never be together, rub each other up the wrong way and seem incapable of realising they should get the fuck away from each other as soon as possible. I've experienced this in a much less extreme way both acting shittily to other people and having people acting shittily to me. I am not excusing anything, just trying to work out where my almost inexplicable smidgen of JLC sympathy comes from. And given I immediately gleefully tweeted about not turning my back on him I guess that sympathy only goes so far (in this case maybe ten metres).
Having said all this,
this heartfelt and on the button article from fleetstreetfox perhaps demonstrates why our sympathies should be elsewhere. Celebrity, as we're seeing quite a lot at the moments does very odd things to people. Or maybe very odd people are attracted to the idea of celebrity.
I'd still be interested to know how sales of Pukka pads have gone this last couple of weeks. They may be the only winners from this whole thing.
I had a lovely chat with Mark Radcliffe and Stuart Maconie this afternoon. You can hear it
herr for the next few days. It's about 1.37 in.
And in a worrying development Me1 vs Me2 snooker super fan/hater Mike Stoner has set up an unofficial webpage about the podcast. This is in no way authorised by me, or me 1 or me 2 (though me 2 quite likes it) and to be honest I think anyone this devoted to a podcast based on a man playing himself at snooker must be a bit strange (and I am talking as a man who plays himself at snooker). It contains graphs and stats (and thus spoilers) but if you want to keep up to date with all that's going on in the world of my mental breakdown
here's your one-stop shop.
By the way - did any of you videotape the kids series Fraggle Rock in the 1980s? Apparently a lot of the tapes of the UK version of the series were wiped. It's a show you might assume would not have been subject to such archaic practices, so if you have an old VHS tape knocking around do let me know and I'll pass on the info to the man who informed me of this awful vandalism of our childhoods.
