4739/17398
Good to see the BBC website attempting to emotionally scar a generation of children with this headline “The skull of the “real†Winnie goes on displayâ€. Piglet's severed tiny corkscrew penis is also on display in the museum as is Roo, in a jar of formaldehyde plus Christopher Robin’s ashes, which will be blown in your face as you leave.
I was back gigging at the Albert Hall tonight, and after the events of last week I confess the idea of a terrorist attack on the place crossed my mind. It’s not only got a huge capacity, but would also be a symbolic target. I doubted that any terrorists would make straight for the Elgar Rooms, which so far hasn’t exactly been packed, when the main auditorium offered a body count of more than 12, but my nerves still mildly jangled. But we can’t let terrorism beat us and in any case I needed the fee to pay for my stupid baby, so I carried on as usual. When I got to the door I usually go in by I was told that I couldn’t come in without a security bracelet. I argued that I’d been in without one every other week. “It’s a new security procedure†I was blankly told and I stopped arguing and went to the stage door as instructed. Though once there I just said my name and a woman gave me the little paper band to wrap around my wrist without checking that I was who I said I was or searching me. I am not sure the terrorists are so easily put off from their attacks. “You can’t come in without a security bracelet."
“Oh, OK, I’m sorry. We’ll take our Kalashnikovs home then."
After having to walk round the building almost twice to get in, I realised that this is actually not a great terrorist target. There are at least 16 entrances to the place, so it would take an awful lot of effort and manpower to stop the audience escaping. I discussed this with Mike Wozniak and we agreed that terrorists were too lazy to got to that much effort. They like things easy for their cowardly attacks.
Weirdly in the main hall there was a jingoistic night of classic classical music, with a crowd waving Union flags and even more bizarrely a section where (we were pre-warned) cannons would be going off. It was lucky we knew about this, because when it happened the building shook and it went on for so long that I thought that perhaps terrorists had timed their attack to go along with the noise. I am glad that had that been the case my response was to be sniggering with Mike Wozniak.
You’d think they might have dropped the cannon fire this week, just in case some passerby got the wrong idea, but it’s awfully British that they didn’t.
When chatting to the audience a man in the front row told me he was a software engineer and I said that that he must be a fan of mine and he revealed he was. I asked him what software he had engineered this week and he told me he was on holiday. It turned out he was from India, which kind of blew my mind, even though it shouldn’t. The internet goes everywhere, but it’s always a surprise to find out that people listen anywhere else (or even in the UK if I am honest). I joked about him travelling over especially to see me, but when I quizzed him about what else he was doing he didn’t seem to have any answers. So maybe my allure is that strong.
Anyway take that Cheddar Valley Gazette. I am an INTERnationally known comedian. Suck on that.
Got home, a bit too wired to sleep and ended up watching a bit of “Adventure of a Taxi Driverâ€, an incredibly 70s piece of entertainment in the Confessions of a Window Cleaner mode, in which the teacher from Mind Your Language drove around London, getting off with every woman he sees, whilst commentating to camera about how all females want him. If you took away the funny sound effects and comedy acting it’s pretty much a film about a deluded predatory rapist, pretending to be a nice guy and carry boxes into ladies’ houses so that he can then have his way with them. It’s almost worth a re-edit to make this point, but in a sense it doesn’t need it. It’s an extraordinary document of men’s attitude to women just forty years ago. And there’s a dead-eyed unpleasantness in nearly all the actors’ eyes, as if they know what they’re doing is horrific, rather than bawdy fun. It’s basically the same as a fat old man in a pub saying “She wants it†about every woman he sees.
The sad truth is that the repressed nation watching this film were so unliberated that the flashes of boob that come in every other scene were as sexy as their lives got.
There are some big stars in the film, including Robert Lindsay who overacts terribly and I ended up going to wikipedia to see who was alive and who was dead and what happened to some of the less familiar stars. Barry Evans (who I had loved as a kid in Mind Your Language) ended up driving minicabs in real life and was killed by a blow to the head when he was 53. Angela Scoular, (who Evans romps with in a bath in particularly joyless scene, in which he husband inevitably returns to the house), suffered form depression and anorexia and eventually killed herself after ingesting acid drain cleaner. It all added a new horrendous layer of tragedy to the already desperate and unpleasant film. So as well as editing in sinister music you could add graphics to the film explaining what became of all the actors and really point up the bleakness of both this squalid little film and of human life. "Barry Evans, died at age of 53, open verdict as to cause of death†“Angela Scowler - drank acid drain cleaner†“Robert Lindsay - appeared in 120 episodes of My Familyâ€. “The 1970s - propagated the idea that women were nothing more than sexual vessels for men, all of them gagging for sexâ€. “Ian Harris, one of the men who watched this in a dark cinema, found this brief glimpse of blurred nipple to be the most sexually exciting thing that ever happened to him in his life."
Even the actors who aren’t yet dead and didn’t have any personal tragedy are now all old and their breasts, bottoms and ballsacks are drooping and smelly. So with just a tiny amount of judicious editing this film could become the greatest work of art of all time.
I went to bed quite depressed.
