Skip to main content

Out of Gas.


I’m finding it difficult to source the energy to be creative at the moment.

The root of the cause, put simply, is it’s been a difficult few months, which have yet to become significantly less challenging. This, combined with a truckload of extra Mostly Comedys (including our shows in St Albans, which kick off this week) have made it hard to devote the requisite headspace to get on with any writing. There's also no-one to chivvy me along or tell me when I’m doing well, which makes it hard to approach what I’m doing with enthusiasm and confidence; that’s not to say I haven’t got a few bits on the back-burner that show promise (and no-one wants to burn their back-bits) though my brain’s so frazzled, I can only work for a few minutes at a time before I’m spent.

I feel like a student who’s behind on his coursework, yet can’t be bothered to get on with it, except it’s not so much a case of not being bothered as feeling no-one else cares about what I do. This hasn’t been helped by a spate of customer queries and cancellations related to my comedy club that have conspired to make me feel undervalued there too; I never set out to deal with the public, yet have somehow wound up in that position via the backdoor, and all for minimal payment for an event whose output quality vastly outweighs the cost to book.

I could do with a break, but that's not an option right now. All I can do is try to approach what I do with self-kindness and not be overwhelmed by it. I’d love a holiday, but I can’t see that happening until my deadlines have been and gone; maybe Reggie Perrin had it right after all.

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.