Skip to main content

Barley My Dear.


I’m dog-and-cat-sitting for my mum this evening. 

It’s nice to have a quiet night in with the animals and ‘the wife’ (in that order), in a proper house, like a proper adult and everything. In some ways it’s unnerving, as my mum’s pets are massively out-sized compared to my cat and two budgies at home. Her retriever Barley could make a solid case for dwarfing Digby, while her cat Chaser is just too lengthy for his own good; he’s the feline Ford Cadillac to my cat Millie's Smart car model.

I’m enjoying the time away from work, having spent the afternoon holed up in the office, planning a set for a short spot I’m doing in London tomorrow. I feel my time there was wasted as, instead of running material that’s likely to end up in my show – which was the reason I took the gig in the first place – I found myself vaguely working up something to fit the theme for tomorrow’s gig, which appropriately for me, is ‘The Beatles’.

In reality, I could have just stuck in a gag or two in about the band as a token gesture, but instead, I’ve hastily cobbled a brand new set using a few of my Fab Four-related blog posts of the past as a starting point. Consequently, I only half-know it, plus it’s unlikely to be something I’ll use in my show, as it’s probably won’t sit comfortably in that context. Once again, I  lost sight of my priorities, spending too much time on a thing I'll probably never use again

That said, I’m going to see tomorrow as an experiment: trying out something for the sake of it and keeping it loose; seeing it less as stand-up and more as a gentle debate on a subject close to my heart. I could hardly turn down the chance to talk about my biggest obsession after all; if I can riff on anything, I can do it on The Beatles: they’re my proverbial Mastermind Specialist Subject.

Popular posts from this blog

Shakerpuppetmaker.

Have Parker from Thunderbirds and Noel Gallagher ever been seen in the same room? The resemblance is uncanny. So much so, I think something’s afoot. If my suspicions are correct, I've stumbled across a secret that will blow the music and puppet industry wide apart. In the mid-60s / mid-90s at least. It doesn’t take long to see the signposts. There’s the similarity between the name of Oasis’ first single, Supersonic, and Supermarianation, Gerry Anderson’s puppetry technique. The Gallagher brothers would often wear Parkas . Live Forever was clearly a reference to Captain Scarlet and Standing on the Shoulder of Giants to the size difference between Noel and his bandmates. The more you think about it, the more brazen it gets. It’s fishier than Area 51, Paul is Dead and JFK's assassination put together. The only glitch to the theory is scale . According to Wikipedia, Anderson’s marionettes were 1’10” and Gallagher is 5’8”. How does he maintain an illusion of avera...

'...I'm Gonna Look at You 'til My Eyes Go Blind."

Over the past week or two, I’ve been on a bit of a Sheryl Crow kick, largely thanks to rediscovering her cover of one of my most-liked Bob Dylan songs. She has one of my favourite female voices, yet despite this, I only own one CD and that’s just a single (her '97 release ‘Hard to Make a Stand’); on that basis, you can only imagine how much of her back catalogue I’d own if I hated her (it would fall into minus-figures). Dylan, conversely, takes up more of my collection than anyone else, save The Beatles and Paul McCartney’s solo work. He’s one of those artists who, when you get him, you really get him - and once I’d tuned into his style as a student, I'd time and again be blown away by his lyrics; he’ll have more jaw-dropping imagery in one track than other people fit in a whole career. These days, I mostly listen to music in the morning when getting ready, and more often than not, this will consist of a suggested YouTube playlist when I’m in the bath, r...

"Speaking Words of Wisdom, Let it Shine."

Tonight saw the second instalment of BBC1’s latest advertise-a-musical-for-months-and-then-cast-it-with-performers-too-inexperienced-to-do-it-a-thon ‘Let it S̶h̶i̶t̶e̶ Shine’ (or as I call it: ‘REAL AUDITIONS ARE NOTHING LIKE THIS’). I didn’t watch it (clearly), but being reminded of how angry seeing just five minutes of it made me last week caused me to mull over what I would call a musical based on the band’s songbook, if I was responsible for it. Here are a my suggestions: IDEAS FOR TITLE OF A TAKE THAT MUSICAL: Barlow! Dirty Fat-Dancing Orange! A Million Love-changes-everything Songs Owen! Howard's End Pray Misérables Mamma Marka! Babe (with a pig as the lead) …BUT MY FAVOURITE HAS TO BE: Jason & His Amazing Technicolour Dreamcoat. "It was Orange, Orange, Orange, Orange..." (TAKE) THAT’S ENOUGH OF (TAKE) THAT.