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Another great Pointless workout today, thanks to my home exercise bike (which I have to say is not as comfortable as the ones at the gym). A 50 minute cycle, two Pointless answers (including one in the final round) and some dry and acerbic comments from the actual Richard Osman who got wind of what I was doing and chipped in as I live-tweeted my answers (and calorific expenditure). It’s not really possible to exercise at full pelt and play Pointless and tweet at the same time, but 50 minutes of constant (if fairly light) exercise a day would be enough to keep the nation fit in body and brain. Next time I go on the programme I might have to take the bike along to fully replicate the experience. I have to say it makes the game a lot harder.
Free video RHLSTP with Paul "Curious Orange" Putner and Trevor "Small-Faced Boy" Lock now up in the usual places
Unfortunately the proposed TMWRNJ DVD release is no longer going to happen due to reasons, but on the plus side it means we won’t be charging for the last RHLSTP of the series with Stewart Lee next week. I know a lot of you were looking forward to the DVDs and Chris Evans (not that one) worked very hard on trying to make it happen (but luckily he is Welsh so it’s not like he had anything else he could have been doing) and it’s a real shame it didn’t work out. But you can still watch it all illegally online and it’s probably best that we devote our time to creating new stuff instead of going over old ground. At least we got Fist of Fun out there. I am as gutted as many of you seem to be, and sorry for raising your hopes.
We had filmed a very few extras, including me, Paul and Trevor doing a version of the History of Alternative Comedy sketch, where we drank from SDP mugs and reminisced about how TMWRNJ was an amazing time for comedy. We will edit these together in the next few weeks and add them to the impressive library of cool extras on the secret channel for monthly subscribers - donate
a pound or more a month here and you’ll be sent the link and password. I am planning on making some other stuff for this as well as for my free youtube channel this year, and put some of that badge money into filming some one-off AIOTM sketches (and when we have enough money we’ll hopefully be able to put on a monthly full show version too).
With that in mind, I spent some time making some video bumpers for next week’s RHLSTP and trying to get better at working with iMovies. I managed to use titles and put links on screen and use a transition to go to a photo (though making the audio carry on under that was beyond my current skills). You can enjoy my cack-handed handiwork next week when the videos come out. It’ll be interesting to see what I can achieve online with a bit more commitment this year. Will it prove to be a fertile ground for me to create interesting new endeavours or I am just going to be an old man howling into the void and sometimes playing snooker with myself into the void? The whole of my future seems up in the air and I guess there’s not too much point in making plans until we’re hit by the lovely storm that we know is coming, yet which still does not feel real, however much the weatherman tells us it’s inevitable. We should probably ask for medical advice on it rather than trusting a meteorologist. Is it really going to take having a baby in my arms for me to understand what is happening? I think it will. And maybe not even then. I am incredibly stupid.
It's very confusing. Half of me thinks I should give up work entirely to devote my life to my child, but the other half knows that I have to work harder in order to provide the food and clothing that will keep it alive. This is one of the man dichotmies of being a parent. Can I justify spending half an hour a week locked in a basement playing snooker against myself for no money, when I could be teaching my child how to do basic calculus (I know, not in the first six months of its life - I am not unrealistic)? Can I justify spending two months relearning how to do calculus in order to teach my child how to do calculus? When the child is grown up will it write a memoir about how they never saw me because I was either playing snooker or learning calculus and they had to forage in dustbins for food?
But I hope to pass the self-playing snooker business down to the next generation so maybe that will be the only time we get together. I didn't start playing self-playing snooker until I was 14. Imagine how far a self-playing snooker player who starts self-playing from birth will get. Apparently it costs about £60,000 to see your kid through University at the moment and goodness knows how much that will be in 2033. I will teach my child at the University of self-playing snooker (with a back up of badly teaching them basic calculus when I have little or no understanding of what it is or what it's for, despite having two A levels in Maths). All will be fine.
This week’s Metro column tells a tale that you will be familiar with (though I was very pleased about “with friends like these†joke). Remarkably that’s my 150th column for the paper. I’ve held down the same job for three years, which I think might be some kind of record for me. I’ve already written next week’s column about falling down the stairs and have two in reserve in case events overtake my ability to write columns. So I am pretty sure we’ll get to column 153. But that’s the only more-or-less certainty about the unknowable future.
