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Mainly working on AIOTM today, but I did get a little time off to play with my daughter. And as she gets older play is getting a lot more fun. She has just been given a Play Dough Cookie Creation set and is obsessed with it, to the point of mini-tantrum if it's taken away from her. And I can appreciate that, because I was also a huge fan of Play Dough as a child and am delighted to be getting a second chance at playing with it now. The smell of it has not changed, though I think there might be new colours now and back in our day we just had to get on with making stuff with our hands and didn’t have all the extra paraphernalia (maybe it existed, but we didn’t get it given to us, because back in my day we had to make do with playing with a stick and only got a satsuma for Christmas). I am pretty sure that I was given play dough at one of my early visits to Santa’s Grotto (I was 28 years old obviously) and like my daughter I loved the colour the texture and the thrilling anarchy of mixing colours together and knowing that the mixture could never be undone. Did it eventually turn to a uniform brown colour, or was that just Plasticene? And then the horror of leaving off the lid and coming back to dry, cracked and useless Play Dough. It’s amazing how evocative a little tub of colourful gunk can be. At least I was allowed play dough. There was a similar thing called, I think, “Slime” that was green and gunny and which wasn’t educational because it was all about the disgusting feel of it and it couldn’t be used to make stuff. So I wasn’t allowed to have that.
It’s still great fun to play with 45 years on though. There a little piping device which is extremely satisfying to use, given you’re just pushing play dough through a slightly serrated tube. But it feels like magic the way it splurges out. And made us both laugh a lot.
If only I’d been normal and had kids in my 20s I could have had another extra go at playing with Play dough and now be playing with it with my grand kids. But maybe there’s more value in having left it so long and having your sense yanked back so very far.
But then back to trying to find some jokes in this month’s news.
Go Faster Stripe are an amazing independent DVD production company that allow nice comedians to record their shows. They usually run at a loss on these, but do it for love, not money. If you can support them by buying a couple of DVDs then everyone will be a winner! Some great Christmas presents for comedy nerds or yourself (tautology).
If you're into more mainstream stuff then they do have some Stewart Lee DVDS
They also have a brilliant sale on where you can get (amongst other things) cut price copies of the multi-disc Fist of Fun series - the rights revert to the BBC imminently, so if you haven't got these yet, then buy them now.
Also my DVD Happy Now? should be out on Wednesday! If you order on the first day you will be entered into a draw to win the "Grand Children Spoilt Here" door mat that I used in the show.
