So
podcast 42 was recorded this lunchtime and (perhaps too late) we've decided to follow the example of Andy McNab and conceal our identities. There was an article in the Sun with him appearing at some military awards ceremony, but in
the picture his face was concealed behind a black strip. Surely it would have been easier for him not to be in the photo at all. Maybe someone will recognise him from his shoulder.
I was pretty sure that everyone knew what Andy McNab looked like now, but apparently his face is still a secret. We looked him up on
google image search, but seemingly most of the images are also hidden. There's one photo of a white haired, balding man, but that doesn't seem to match with the bit of brown hair that you can see in the Sun photo.
Oh hold on, isn't
this him? (actually it seems that might be Chris Ryan). Waterstones don't seem to care about revealing his identity. Luckily enemies of the SAS don't like bookshops so will never find him. The genie is out of the bottle Mcnab! But maybe he's taken to just walking around everywhere with that black bit of card over his face. Now we know what he looks like it's the only way to protect his identity. And good luck to him. I'm not going to take the piss. He could do me some serious damage.
Enjoyably I was also able to take Collings to task for being a racist when he mistook sporting hero Dame Kelly Holmes for sporting hero Denise Lewis. Of course in reality Collings was merely demonstrating his lack of knowledge about sport, but I wasn't going to let that stop me challenging his woolly liberal credentials. Why do you think he really likes the Mitford sisters so much?
We also had a quick look at the video podcast - exclusively available on
my new DVD (have I mentioned that?). It's rather nice having a filmed version and the gofasterstripe boys have done an excellent job at cutting it all together. You can listen with the sound from Andrew's computer as well, if the idea of it sounding deep and crisp and even offends you. I then spent the rest of the afternoon watching the extras, which are pretty impressive if I say so myself! As a comedy fan myself I always appreciate it if a DVD puts some effort into providing reasonable extras and apparently there's nearly 4 hours of extras on this double DVD, not forgetting the 92 minute show. So that should get you through the most boring Christmas Day. Not bad, when
other more successful and popular comedians put out their DVD extras with no actual proper DVD attached and charge a RRP of £21.99. Spike Milligan and Alan Bennett would never have done that. Which is why the public hate them so much. They love to be ripped off.
And just a reminder that if you want to be entered into the draw for the "Free Hot Dog" T shirt then you have to buy both my DVD and my book before the end of Friday.
After watching myself on DVD all afternoon I headed over to Brighton to headline at the extraordinary
Brian Gittins' club. I found myself doing the hokey cokey with five men dressed in strange masks (whilst only my face remained uncovered) to a record that kept sticking so we had to keep putting our right arm in and out for what felt like an infinite amount of time. The man to my left had a penguin mask on and as the record again became stuck at "oh-oh the hokey cokey" I watched him moving up and down. So impressive was the mask that my mind half believed that an actual gigantic penguin with human hands was dancing beside me. I think that we could genuinely call this surreal - a much overused term which is appropriate in this case. I should have filmed it - would have been a great extra for the next DVD - but maybe it's best that it just remains a memory, that might easily be confused with a dream. What a wonderful and lucky life I lead.
