Enter to applause.
Good evening Ladies and Gentlemen, thank you very much that’s very kind, possibly excessively kind some might say, but I won’t say that as I’m aware that there are very few jokes in the next 60 minutes and I need to take all the ego-boosting possible to get through it. In a way I kind of wish you didn’t clap as I made my entry and instead spread it out over the course of the gig in order as to make me think, possibly mistakenly, that what I’m doing has some intrinsic value.
It also makes you wonder if we, as a nation put as much vigor into our work as our rapturous applause the country might be in a better situation, that said it did tail off a little towards the end so probably quite reflective of the state of the nation, that reaction of “who’s this, a man walking onstage with a beard, let’s clap mildred, clap long and hard, no wait, he looks like he could be a twat, stop let’s judge him”.
Also might have been nice to have had the odd cheer or two, I’ve seen the shows, Live at the Apollo and the like…
An odd cheer.
Bit late now though isn’t. I was saying on Live at the Apollo, people clap and woop, and usually the performer has to call time on the clapping cheering sections. Not here, minor applause and an asked for cheer. Nothing quite so condemning as receiving the asked for cheer… It’s like asking for sex, you think it’ll be good but ultimately makes you feel like a bit of a failure and even more suspicious that your partners noises of encouragement may quite possibly be snores.
So Bastards the lot of you and shame on you..
Now I’m going to talk for the best part of an hour maybe a bit more, maybe a bit less working from vaguely a script of ideas. You’ll probably have noticed that I’ve carried on a notepad, i shall be referring to it from time to time, but not excessively, essentially the show, like any good show has a reliance on remembering a series of numbers and it helps me get it correct, it helps with the facts. And I’ve always been correct and exacting when it comes to the facts. Particularly facts with bullet points and parts put in bold and formatted for ease of use. It turns me on, I live on the edge. Give me a highlighter, ruler and a way of organising information and I’m anyone’s. Let the party begin.
This started for me about a year ago when I had the burdening realisation that I despised facebook and almost everything about it. Not only that I also despised the very people who obsessively used it, I found them obnoxious, irritating, needy, fuck-wits of the highest order requiring constant reinforcement of their own importance from people they vaguely knew and didn’t care about it.
Those people who couldn’t go a single day without “liking” that “Susan had woken up” or commenting “yum” to “Daniel has eaten a curry, de-lish” or even, and this is the worst, changing their profile pictures constantly to attract attention and try and portray themselves in the correct light – Indie cool, looking up at the camera, the “one of the lads” shots saying “i have friends and can prove it” or indeed the “look at the suit – fancy a f**k” image.
I sadly and rather ashamedly was one of those people. In essence a self obsessed twat. That’s not to say that i’ve changed now, but I think I am at least aware of the fact rather that naively believing that everything I did on facebook was of genuine importance and value. And it’s that journey i’m going to tell tonight. So fasten your seatbelts and prepare for the real story, annotated an excessive amount with lies. And we begin. Properly this time. Not like the last starts, they were previews, the introductions to the book. The foreword, the foreplay, giving you a foresight into the next 50 minutes. Let’s go. So I begin. No more time wasting or hanging around. This is it!
(Part 2 coming soon)