Taking council

I think this is the post that I’m most trepidatious making. Spellcheck tells me that ‘trepidatious’ isn’t even a word – that’s how trepidatious I am – I’m making up pretentious words.

I’m doing that because, for the first time, I get the feeling my blog is being scrutinised. The short rant I posted on Facebook and subsequently here when people started telling me non-Facebook people would like to read it got far more hits, tweets, re-tweets, emails and new followers than anything I’ve talked about before.

I do want to talk about it more but want to stress that this is personal opinion based on personal experience and discussions I’ve had. This is not researched and I’m sure you could fire a barrage of facts and statistics at me to prove that the UK Film Council is a wonderful organization. A lot seems to have been said in recent days about  how profitable they are and how many significant films they have supported and that might well be true or spin (and I personally believe that their skills have always been far more evident in the talent of spinning rather than doing), what I offer here is my personal take. Even the people involved who I mention might refute what I say or object to how their circumstances are portrayed – they are welcome to use the comments section to do so.

A little bit about me to give you some idea of my perspective. I’m one of the legion of lower-rung film-makers in this country. You wouldn’t have heard of me or probably anything I’ve done but I’ve worked professionally on-and-off for the last 12 years and my story is probably truer to that of most film-makers than the ones you’ve heard of. Film school trained, high aspirations, failed to deliver on either the aspiration or the potential so is perfectly happy ‘jobbing’. I worked professionally for a while as a screenwriter, most notably (if that’s the right word) on the TV show LEXX, but I didn’t ever manage to bring one of my own projects to the screen. A lot of my friends – lifelong friendships from the film school days – are in the same predicament. Producers, editors, cameramen on things you might have kind of heard of but none of us have managed to become ‘known’. In fact, the only guy from my whole film school who has become ‘a name’ was the guy who got sectioned for trying to stab some girls – he now directs some of those horrible British ‘thug’ movies. I owned a couple of indie video shops for the last 8 years so haven’t depended on film work for my living but have been back working freelance since February (and am already having to sue a famous author, pulling my hair out about filming industrial plants in hard-to-reach areas of Europe and spending full days auditioning people trying to pull condoms over their heads). I’ve also spent the last three years independently making a feature documentary about the Oxford music scene – more about that later, no doubt, I shan’t be missing my chance to plug.

Since 2001, I’ve taught various courses at Oxford Film and Video Makers (OFVM) which is a non-profit film workshop which has been running since the sixties. In the late eighties and early nineties, they trained me to make films. By the time I was 18, I could load and operate a 16mm film camera and edit film on a flatbed machine. I could also, thanks to OFVM and a long-gone workshop called Oxford Independent Video, operate video cameras and edit tape. I don’t really need to teach at OFVM and often find it a frustrating experience but I like teaching there. The point of it is that anybody can wander in off the street and say they want to be a film-maker and it’s OFVM’s job to make that happen. I’ve taught various courses there but my heart has always been in teaching screenwriting. I consider it the ‘worthwhile’ part of my life, I get to see the difference I make and feel like I’m doing my bit to enhance British cinema. Film education standards in this country are generally, I think, pretty poor and in particular few seem to put much emphasis on teaching or learning good screenwriting skills.

I think it’s important to stress  that I am not a Tory since I’m worried that people might construe my support of their decision as an endorsement in some way. No, I basically hate them and can’t see myself ever voting for them.  I don’t affiliate myself to any party – they’re all pretty vile now – but traditionally have voted Labour or Lib-dem.

The reason I felt I had to make my original comment was I was shocked to see how many people I know and respect bemoaning the loss of the Film Council. They were using it as an example of Tory evil, and far be it from my to defend the evil bastards, but it was like watching a shoplifter being arrested for GBH. I don’t doubt that the shits will cut arts funding left, right and centre but they seem to be being upfront about the cuts they’re making and the abolition of the Film Council is not being presented as a cut in film funding but a necessary removal of an overly-bureaucratic institution which has been diverting a lot of film funds into the pockets of over-paid charlatans.

This is from an article in prospect magazine last year:

One area where Woodward has succeeded is in setting financial records for the quangocracy. A DCMS written reply this summer confirmed that four executives are earning more than a cabinet minister (that is, more than £144,520). Others argue that, if bonuses are included, the figure is actually seven. These figures bear no comparison to salaries in the industry itself: the head of development is on a cool £165,000 a year, at least three times the industry norm. Given these salaries, it is not surprising that the last four year’s accounts show overheads running at a staggering £8m—more than the total government funding for the bodies the UKFC replaced. The accounts also show that these overheads make up 25 per cent of the income that the Council derives from its lottery income. In 2008, for example, the UKFC received £29.7m in direct lottery grants and another £5.7m in recoupment from previous lottery investments. Besides spending £8m on itself, the UKFC put not one penny of its return from films back into film production, a feat it has managed every year that it has existed.

In fact, you should read the whole  article: http://www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/2009/12/breaking-the-british-movie-myth/ because it nicely sums up my feelings and suspicions but is journalism rather than opinion – which is what a blog will always be. Mine, at least. It was nice to see in print what I had always felt.

People are rallying like they did when the BBC announced it’s plans to shut down 6music. The Film Council is not a hallowed, wonderful institution – it is merely a flawed and, I feel, corrupt method of distributing lottery funding.

Here, in no particular order are my experiences and observations of the Film Council and Screen South – their agency in my region.

1. My friend Hank and I decided to write a short film and apply for funding. The script was a simple little film called Mugwump about a guy who hated his father but had to care for him since he’d had a stroke. It’s not as kitchen-sink as it might sound and was actually about the pair of them getting lost in the forest on a mission the father couldn’t convey to his son. It’s hard to be objective but it was a solid script. Honestly, I teach screenwriting, I’ve been through film school and I work as a script editor – it was a good script. We submitted it and got shortlisted. I was told that to progress to the next stage, I would have to attend a one-day workshop on screenwriting. I pointed out that I had been trained by the Film Council to teach their 22-week screenwriting course – which I was delivering twice a year – so, could I maybe sit this one out? They said no. I had to attend. I went and I behaved but was shocked to find that the lady teaching it had no professional experience as a screenwriter and was not teaching screenwriting in the official Film Council sanctioned manner. In fact, she didn’t really know what she was talking about. Why would they spend so much money creating a whole course, training tutors in how to deliver it and then not only not use those tutors or even the course basics to train applicants but hire a complete yahoo? We got onto the final shortlist for funding and had to attend a meeting in London. We were ushered into an expensive looking boardroom and faced about 8 or 9 people – who didn’t see fit to introduce themselves – who grilled us as to our project aggressively. One old man ranted at us about the film being ‘NOT FUNNY’ and ‘mocking the disabled’. Hank and I both spoke eloquently about how it was in no way mocking and how we thought it was funny (one lady actually really defended us on this score in the meeting) but humour is a very personal thing and a lot of the funnier moments are visual and maybe he didn’t pick up on them. The project got rejected. Two weeks later, I got a phone call from the person running the scheme offering me the choice of several of the chosen scripts to produce. I told them they were probably trying to get hold of Hank – he was the producer – but they said, no, they thought I should try producing a film. I told them that I was a writer and a director but not  producer and they explained to me that their remit was to ‘develop’ people and they saw huge potential in me as a producer. I agreed, purely because I wanted a look at the scripts that had been selected for production. The scripts were awful.

2. Hank went on to write a truly fantastic screenplay. it is genuinely one of – if not THE – best short screenplays I’ve ever read. Brilliantly, he got selected for funding. He was then given some kind of script editor who forced him through multiple re-drafts. I should state again (although it might start to sound braggy) that I work professionally as a script editor and this script – the first draft he submitted – was PERFECT. The changes she demanded were petty and ludicrous and her reports read to me like somebody who was just stirring the pot to prove they had made a contribution. I don’t know how much she was being paid but Hank followed her guidance and each draft lost more an more subtlety, character and nuance. They assigned the script to a director who really didn’t understand it and it appeared to me that Hank was under a lot of stress. He had written the script as a personal exercise. It was a personal story for him and I could see so much of him in there as a human being. Hank eventually withdrew the script from the scheme. Thank god. It would have been heartbreaking to see how his personal vision had ended up.  What should have happened? What would I have done? If I had been sent such a personal and obviously unique script, I would have told the screenwriter that he should think about directing it himself – since it was so obviously filled with meaning and raw talent. I would have funded him to go on a short course in directing, given him a modest budget and surrounded him with upcoming talented people who could help him realise the film and also learn and benefit from the experience themselves. I believe the budgets for films on this scheme are between 3k-10k. Add on top of that the cost of all the consultants and the marketing of the scheme and the films it produces and it sounds like a lot of money to produce a handful of short films by first-timers. I’ve made short films my whole life and know that you make them on the cheap. You call in favours, you muddle through. Give someone a budget of even 1k and they should be able to produce something spectacular. Especially since digital production has taken off. You do not inspire burgeoning talent by editing them and forcing restrictions on them. They learn through their own mistakes and if you really care about their development, you give them space and encouragement to make those mistakes and learn some lessons and produce some raw but excellent short films.

3. I had been teaching the OFVM screenwriting course for a year or so. It was a workshop-style discussion based practical course where I’d lead a class of four people at a time and, over 8 weeks, develop their screenplays. It was quite bespoke, and catered to their individual needs. Each week I would present relevant material to study for their specific projects and give focused advice. Then the Film Council talked to me about their plans to overhaul film education. I adored their vision. As I remember it, it was this simple; they were to create three big introductory courses. One in Screenwriting, another in Directing, a third in producing. These were to be 22-week long courses, taught by tutors trained by the Film Council themselves and delivered through all of their separate regional agencies. The idea being that if anybody said they wanted funding to develop as a film-maker – they would have to attend one of these courses (often on full bursaries) before applying for money. This would mean that everyone applying would be of a standard, have the backing of their tutors and somewhat trusted. it seemed like the perfect way of creating a solid film industry in this country – a clear progression route which would be fair and open to all who displayed commitment and graft. Talent would be recognised and rewarded.

The Film Council paid for me and the OFVM production co-ordinator to attend the training course. They put us up in hotel rooms and paid our expenses. The course was developed and explained to us by the excellent screenwriting academic Phil Parker and it was wonderful. There were about 25 other tutors there for the training and, at the end, Phil told us that we would reconvene after the first run of our courses in our regions to discuss and alter the course as needed. I believe only three of us in that room ever delivered the course at all. The Film Council never once asked for feedback from us and Phil later told me that they refused to fund any further development on the course or even pay him to chair a meeting to follow up on it. As far as I know, the directing and producing courses were never even designed.

Last year, I attended a day aptly entitled ‘Nobody Knows Anything’ at the London Film School where they invited screenwriting tutors, students and funders from around the country to have a supposed symposium on screenwriting education. It was just a bunch of keynote speakers uselessly pontificating and refusing to engage with an audience who could have put the whole issue right. It concluded with two women from the Film Council who just whinged about the amount of work they were put under to read scripts. I stood up and pointed out that they had a roomful of screenwriting tutors here who would – for free – tell them exactly which scripts to produce and which screenwriters to invest in developing. They didn’t like that. I pointed out that I was the only person in the country teaching their own screenwriting course. not only had they not thought to consult me but they didn’t even know of my existence. I was quickly silenced by the chair and they left the room hastily as he crowd seemed to demand proper answers.

4. My documentary. After years of being on and around the Oxford music scene, I decided it was time to tell it’s story. The story of the shared roots of Radiohead, Supergrass, Foals, The Young Knives, Ride, Swervedriver, Talulah Gosh, The Candyskins and many, many more bands – successful and not. All of the bands (except The Young Knives) supported the film and I got long, exclusive interviews with everyone. Talking about things they had never even been interviewed about. Radiohead in particular got enthusiastic about telling the story of this little music scene that went on to shape music globally but has never been credited as such. It’s filled with never-before-seen footage and photos of all of the bands involved and, frankly, it fucking rocks. OFVM gave me a bursary of free digital camera and light rental and some DV tapes. Good nepotism! I could have made it without, but this made it way easier and cheaper – since I was self-funding the whole film. I looked at some of the Film Council funding opportunities but the film was dependent on being filmed in a short period of time (between the closing of the independent club The Zodiac and it’s re-opening as a Carling (now 02) Academy and the volume of paperwork and hoops to be jumped through made it impractical. It took a couple of years, but I finished the film myself. It is edited, approved by those taking part and ready to be released. I have a distribution deal in America which is dependent on the two things that I can’t do by myself. I have completely made this film off my own back and brought it to the end of post-production but now I need money. I need about 10k to get the final sound mix and film online completed (not something I can do on my laptop) and about 30k to legally clear all of the music and footage used within it.

So, I went to Screen South. I figured that an entirely indie finished feature documentary coming through one of their own centres (OFVM) about subject matter that promotes their own region with a clear commercial bent considering the volume of exclusive Radiohead, Supergrass and Foals content, might interest them. They gave me 12 minutes with their temporary head whilst he ate his lunch. He said it ‘sounds great’ and he’d love to see it. I sent him a DVD, he didn’t confirm receipt. He didn’t respond to phone calls. I sent him another one. Again I heard nothing. Hank, who had more dealings with Screen South (I’m resisting the temptation to abbreviate) tried to contact the man on the subject but to no avail. Yeah, I could have been more persistant and, if I wanted funding, should have filled in all of the paperwork and applied for every scheme. But shouldn’t they also have been trying to encourage me? I’m going to get the project out there in the next couple of months through crowd-funding (email me at info@scriptguru.co.uk if you want to know more about the film. Fuck you, I’m allowed to plug it, I’ve just written over 3,000 words about the fucking Film Council)

So. To end this. I always hated the Film Council. It has appeared to me to be inefficient and baseless. From the expensive ‘networking breakfasts’ they paid OFVM to host (which was just a free breakfast for their employees and a couple of randoms) to their shameless ‘buying on’ to any high-profile British film which is being made, I’ve sneered. But what I HATE is that this has been the least interesting decade for British cinema in film history. So few new voices coming through, so little quality, and with the advent of digital technology – there is no excuse why the cinemas and dvd shops aren’t filled with wonderful quirky raw little indie films. If you gave me 35.4 million quid to get British films made and promoted, I’d get that education programme up and running and then get groups of screenwriters/producers/directors who had graduated from it to show us what they can do with a 10k budget and free equipment hire. I bet we’d get a whole new generation of incredible film-makers who, in turn, would re-vitalise the industry.

And I wouldn’t expect a salary of 144k per year to do it.

My take on the abolition of the UK Film Council.

This is hastily written because I’ve had a long day, maybe later in the week I’ll rewrite it with less swearwords and more actual examples….

To everyone who’s bitching about the UK Film Council being abolished:

As someone who has been trained by, taught for, been through the funding process and had to attend seminars with the organisation, I’d just like to say this: THANK FUCK IT’S BEING SHITCANNED. It is without doubt the most ineffective, bureaucratic gravy train I have ever had the misfortune to witness. If you think that the organisation has been some kind of saviour for British film, you are HUGELY mistaken.

The UKFC was basically a place where a handful of people who didn’t seem to have had any obvious practical film-making experience lauded over all those who wanted to get interesting films made. For the best part of a decade, I’ve watched them waste money on lavish parties, regular ‘networking’ trips to L.A. and schemes which channeled money into the pockets of endless ‘experts’ and ‘consultants’ and not into films. Most of the films which have their name on it were actually independent productions which got off the ground completely independently and, at the point the film was looking like a sure bet, the UKFC would kick in a few thousand ‘completion money’ to get their name on the poster and justify their existence.

I’ve seen fantastic screenwriters have their scripts endlessly ‘workshopped’ until the script has no meaning on character and ends up not being made. I’ve seen huge amounts of money wasted on predominantly awful short films.

My main personal experience of them was that they spent a load of money training me to teach the screenwriting course – putting me up in hotels in London and paying my expenses, paying a guy to create and the course and train us to deliver it, then they never once asked for feedback. Not once. Not only this, they complained about having to spend money on script readers to find screenplays to produce but constantly ignored my offers to recommend to them excellent screenwriters who’d just spent 22 weeks doing their bloody course.

The times I have applied for funding have generally consisted of being sat in rooms with arrogant idiots spouting non-committal rubbish.

Back when film funding came through the Arts Council, they didn’t interfere. You applied, got some money, made your film warts n’all. That’s how we developed great filmmakers in this country.

In the decade that it has been operational, the ONLY filmmaker I can name who possibly owes their career to the UKFC is Andrea Arnold – director of Red Road and Fishtank. I don’t consider that much of an achievement.

The BBC today quoted Chris Atkins – director of the excellent doc Taking Liberties and Starsuckers as saying:

‘UK FILM COUNCIL ABOLISHED! Fabulous day! I wonder what 70 incompetent overpaid bureaucrats are going to do? I could use a couple of runners. [It had] far more misses than hits. Funded Sex Lives Of Potato Men, U2 3D, 4321, Rolling Stones, St Trinian’s, I could go on…’

I think you’ll find that to be the response from most actual film-makers.

I’m no Tory and I object to actual arts funding cuts but the UKFC was a gravy train for a bunch of arseholes and I’m absolutely chuffed to bits that it’s gone.

Credibility.

I teach screenwriting. I think I’m OK at it. Ach, that was false modesty, I totally rock at it. It was one of those things in life where you don’t even consider something as an option but when you stumble into it, you find you have an aptitude for it that you bitterly wish you had for the things you had chosen to do. In other words, I’m pretty sure I’m a better screenwriting teacher than I ever was a screenwriter.

At the time I started teaching, I was working as a screenwriter and had just moved back to Oxford after 7 years away, I knew 2 people and neither of them were ‘filmy’ so, hoping to expand my social circle, I went to the film workshop which had taught me how to make and edit films as a teenager and told them that if anyone was looking for free film crew, I was available. They grilled me as to my capabilities and on the spot offered me the job teaching their 16mm film production course. That’s how beautifully ramshackle the workshop was. I had never taught anybody anything and to this day have had no formal training but they were offering money and it seemed like a challenge. I loved it, I seemed to do a good job and I haven’t stopped since. I taught various courses there for the first couple of years but always jealously eyed up the screenwriting course they offered. The woman who ran it appeared to have no professional screenwriting credits and the course structure seemed a bit wrong to me – I never actually met her but I definitely resented her and was pretty forward with those running the workshop that really that course should be mine. In 2003, she dropped out and the course was mine, all mine. Teaching it became a bit of a passion. I knew what I was talking about, I’d lived it, I could answer any questions, explain any principle. It was like going on Mastermind with the specialist subject ‘Me and my life’, this knowledge I’d accumulated – consciously or sub – was of some value to people.

Within a couple of months, it all clarified in my mind. All those awful how-to magic formula books on screenwriting and one day courses I’d attended promising the secrets to screenwriting success had been bollocks. Empty, motivational, profiteering bollocks. There is no magic formula. It’s all about hard work, developing intelligent critical skills and understanding some basic technical principles. It’s a craft not an art. It’s something anybody can do and lack of experience is actually a bonus. Craft can be learned, it’s the life experiences, philosophies and perspectives you bring to it which make the writing unique.

I made a conscious decision to teach unprofessionally. My classes, although tightly structured on a fundamental basis,  are very informal, often descend into discussion and debate and I make no effort to project anything other than myself. I hate the hoity-toityness of most education. Especially film education. I spent my whole teens and twenties going to lectures, seminars, workshops and classes which endlessly showed me the work of ‘brilliant’ film-makers. I didn’t see the point. Why show me Hitchcock? I could never be as good as Hitchcock. Why show me Fellini? I could never be as good as Fellini. Or Tartovsky, Powell and Pressburger, Stanley Kubrick or the mighty Orson Welles. Their films are great but their shadows are hugely detrimental as many film-makers have wrongly forsaken their chance to show their own unique aspects in pursuit of aping ‘the greats’.

I show some awful, average, unknown and forgotten films in my classes but I never, ever show ‘classics’ because I want students to realise that the principles I’m talking about operate in even the most bog-standard of films. You don’t have to be Hitchcock to master the three-act-structure – it’s right there in Dude, Where’s My Car. You don’t have to be Truffaut to master montage – there it is in Office Space. Theme? You don’t have to be Kubrick, John Landis did a better job with An American Werewolf in London. If someone wants to learn to neatly paint a ceiling with a tub of Dulux, you don’t start by showing them the Sistine Chapel.

Students always grill me as to my personal tastes in film and often react with bemusement when I talk about the work I love because it doesn’t ever sound very highbrow. I don’t have ‘highbrow’ tastes, yet I am demanding.

The biggest look of confusion I can ever wrangle is when I talk about TV. Specifically when they ask me about my favourite TV shows. The general list doesn’t seem to bother people – Curb Your Enthusiasm, The West Wing, M*A*S*H, Doctor Who (no I haven’t watched The fucking Wire yet, now people are starting to shut up about it, I just might) – it’s when I name my favourite ever TV show that they get stumped. My favourite ever TV show is The Incredible Hulk. Yeah, the one from the seventies. Yes – the big green bodybuilder one. Yeah. Yep. Yes. That’s right. I know. Honestly. Yes. No, I’m not kidding.

So once that’s said, people assume that I’m just a very nostalgic person. Which I probably am, but i have to explain that I don’t just like it for nostalgic reasons – in fact, I get frustrated with how badly certain episodes have dated, but, no, I still genuinely watch it and like it and find it relevant, intelligent, human and hugely engaging.

Jaws swing open, eyebrows furrow. The truth is, hardly anyone i know or have met have ever sat down and watched an episode since it first ran and the most memorable parts of it will always cloud judgment. People remember Bill Bixby with his bouffant hair and flares, they remember the big silly man painted green shouting and they remember the syrupy music that played over the end titles. All of which are undeniably constituent parts of the show, but the infantile need to render everything not from this decade as cheesy, retro and kitsch can do a huge dis-service to things of actual quality.

I engaged with the show when it was first on British TV. I remember clearly watching it on Sundays with my dad at my grandmother’s house. I also remember not enjoying it. The way most people talk about watching Doctor Who as a kid – the behind the sofa syndrome. I really didn’t like the bits with the Hulk himself. The transformation was scary and he was scary, but it was compelling. I felt a kinship with him because for that period of my childhood, I was prone to unexpected, illogical and epic temper tantrums. I didn’t turn green but I did as much physical and emotional damage as a five year old was capable of and had no idea why (it turned out to be a reaction to Ribena). The show as cancelled in ’82, I was six. When I was 12, Central re-ran a handful of episodes on Saturday afternoons. I fell in love with the show. I was struck by how smart it was, how diverse it was – how the simple formula allowed for such a range of storytelling styles and situations.

I didn’t get to see it again until they finally released the first series on DVD when the lamentable Ang Lee film came out. I bought it nostalgically, expecting the cheesy, retro, kitsch childhood weekend vibe and was blown away to discover myself connecting with it even more deeply and unironically as I had as a child. It is amazingly nuanced and sophisticated, engaging and touching.

For the uninitiated, the show centres around Dr David Banner. His wife died in a car crash and he failed to rescue her before it exploded. He dedicated his work to finding out how, in times of extreme stress, human beings are capable of super-human feats. He makes the connection that all of his case studies had taken place in times of high gamma radiation from the sun. Getting ahead of himself, he decides to become his own guinea pig, exposing himself to gamma radiation, unfortunately the machine is badly calibrated and he blasts himself with far too much. This leads to him mutating into a primal creature whenever he is placed under huge stress. This works on a metaphorical level very nicely and I can’t help thinking that the show’s makers were really held back by the demand to paint him green (coming as the show did from a hugely iconic comic book which, despite having tried to love over the years, I’ve never been able to connect with).

So, what you have is a man cursed by his own behaviour. Each week sees him arrive in a new town, get a new blue collar job, try to stay anonymous and slowly go about his long quest to find a cure for his condition but, inevitably (and usually through his basic human decency), finds himself in a stressful situation which will be both exacerbated and ultimately sorted by his terrifying alter-ego and see him back on the road by the end credits. This gives the show a strong, epic spine – a cursed man looking for a cure and a unique freshness – each episode is completely different to the others. Always a new town, a new industry, a new style, a new problem.I just discovered an episode called ‘Interview With The Hulk’ in which a down-at-heel tabloid journalist solves the mystery of the Hulk’s identity and corners Banner into spilling the beans but in the course of the interviews, connects with Banner’s motives (having been ineffectual in saving his own child from cancer) and ultimately aids his escape and destroys the tapes. It isn’t an episode about the Hulk smashing shit up, it’s about how our own experiences connect us to the emotions of others.

Playing Banner is Bill Bixby an actor who I’d like to say never got to deliver on his incredible abilities but know that anyone who watched the series knows that he did. He just didn’t get to shine in the world outside of the Hulk. His character is charismatic, decent, dark, thoughtful, resourceful and terribly sad. He has taken this ridiculous premise and imbued it with such intelligence and truth that it elevates into something brilliant.Bixby himself was a tragic figure, whilst he was making the show he was going through a tough divorce but cast his actress wife as co-lead in an episode to show their son that they could still get on. Their six year old son died unexpectedly and Bixby’s wife committed suicide shortly after. You can see this all in his performance as the show progresses. The longer his exile, the darker he becomes.

Lou Ferrigno plays the Hulk. He should be ridiculous. I mean, really. I think when you see photos of him in the role, it actually does just look silly with his ludicrous green wig and ripped jeans. His perfomance, however is actually fantastic. Like Bixby, he transcends the ridiculous by committing to it 100%. When he’s angry, he looks ANGRY. The show’s creator was clever in insisting that he always be filmed with an over-cranked camera, meaning that the Hulk is always moving in slow motion to give him more power and intensity. He brings a physicality to the role far above shouting and punching. In his performance, you can see the confusion and tenderness of Bixby’s Banner.

The show was created, produced and occasionally directed by a chap called Kenneth Johnson. Johnson was also responsible for a series in the 80′s called V which allegorically looked at the varied human responses and behaviour that had been displayed during the Holocaust. It was, on first appraisal, a show about a race of lizards disguised as humans taking over the Earth (hello, David Icke!) but my dad took the time to explain to me what was really going on with it. Johnson, in the early 90′s also created the Alien Nation TV series which, set in a near-future LA where a huge peaceful alien race had landed and, after a quarantine period, been allowed to integrate with society, explored issues of all forms of racism.

Johnson did that best, he was capable of using science fiction conceits to actually explore human behaviour. Which is exactly what storytelling is -  a way of exploring our own humanity. It strikes me fantastic that a thirty year old show about a 7ft tall green man can do that better than so much of the crap we’re subjected to now.

Suityman

Here’s a film I made a few years ago.

Suityman.

Not Worthy.

Here, in no particular order is a list of things I don’t like;

Drunk people

Stoned people

Loud people

Extroverted people

Smelly people

Public toilets

Having my sleep disturbed

Going to gigs that are so big you can’t actually see the band’s faces

Fake spiritulaism

Real spiritualism

Sunburn

Mud

Blokes walking around with their tops off (regardless of their physical state)

Enforced jollity

Anything corporate

Veggie Burgers

So, it will come as little surprise that the arrival of ‘festival season’ fills me with little more than a certain snide ambivalence. It may come as a surprise to those who know me (although not to those who know me well) that I have actually NEVER been to a music festival. If at some point I lied to you and pretended that I had as a younger man, all I can do is apologise and explain that I probably just didn’t have the energy at the time to explain to you why I think the idea of a music festival is less attractive than the idea of a Tizer colonic and, rather than seem like an enormous square, it was probably easier to just nod along with whatever crap you were drivelling about Nirvana at Reading or Radiohead at Glastonbury with an insincere ‘Oh, I missed them that year, don’t know what happened…’ implying that I was both there and having a wilder time than you. I wasn’t and I wasn’t.

I use this blog as catharsis for my burgeoning grumpiness, I write this so that I don’t have to be a total cunt in conversation. I like and respect the vast majority of people I converse with (converse is different to meet, by the way. The vast majority of people that I meet are dunderheaded meatbots) and have the social capabilities to know not to just let my odious distaste for things they like or say bubble over. You can like a person without liking their views. But whenever anybody wants to talk to me about music festivals, I just want to change the damn subject. I find it hard to not want to slap their most fervent advocates.

I should start with a caveat – I do annually attend the Truck Festival here in Oxfordshire which is, technically, a music festival BUT to me it feels more like the world’s best village fete – it’s a short drive from my house and a short trot from the car park to the field, it’s very small, full of people I know, rather than just strangers, and I don’t have to stay there any longer than I want to. I might add that as much as I rather adore Truck, I spend any unattended minutes wanting to strangle drunk teenagers and ridiculous hipsters for the crime of, well,  having fun. The twats. I’ve never done more than one day of Truck, I pick my day carefully. Also, I love the thought behind Truck, I love the anti-corporate stance, I love the community aspect, I love the organisers, but mostly I love my ability to leave when I feel like doing so.  I want to exempt them from the following rant but I know I’ll probably be unsuccessful in doing so entirely convincingly.

So, I fucking hate festivals.

Here’s how I see it…

There was one great music festival. Once. Just the one. The big one. Woodstock. Which is not to say there were not music festivals before it, but it seems like that was The One. It was a legitimate ‘happening’, Michael Wadleigh’s seminal film documents a truly unique experience – the summer of love, the post-war babies grown up into the modern world’s first free-thinking, liberated, culturally progressive generation and, in America, all the lines seemed to converge on this one dairy farm in New York state. Expecting it to be a relatively small 3 days of music and ‘peace’, the businessmen behind it (oh yes) realised that the volume of people descending upon the site meant that they had better take down the fences and abandon any hope of ticketing. And a happening it was, the greatest bands of a generation all on one bill, endless drugs, booze and shagging but not in the nihilistic way all of those things have subsequently become. It was joyous, beautiful, naive, innocent, unexpected, spontaneous and entirely unique. It strikes me that every festival since has been about trying to recapture that spirit and failing miserably.

Oh, let me add one more thing to my list of dislikes. This is perhaps my biggest dislike in the world.. it’s T-shirts which are designed to look like they’ve come from a fictional ‘cool’ place. You see them in places like Top Man and Sainsburys and they’re worn by provincial idiots. Some examples: ‘CRAZY TONY’S SURF SHACK, VENICE BEACH 1972′ ‘BIG BEACH ROCK FESTIVAL 1973 (no bands listed, no actual location listed) ‘OLD DUKE’S BBQ GRILL N BAR, MISSISSIPPI’, you can add these to any legion of made up universities, sports teams and events that get cynically designed, manufactured in sweat shops and flood the British high streets every summer. It’s this bizarre modern affectation that we want to be seen to be the kind of people to have done something unique, whilst resolutely avoiding ever actually being a part of anything even remotely unique. I think in a lot of dull people’s heads, the partaking of a music festival equates doing something counterculture and wild. Being a part of something real. And it’s exactly the idea of being stuck in a field in the middle of nowhere with a town-sized crowd of these people which makes me despise the very notion of such things.

I look at the TV coverage of these events and it looks like every Kasabian-loving office worker from middle England has bought an ounce of weed and a comedy hat and converged upon a heavily fenced and policed field with every clueless teenager and in-denial-almost-pensioner in the country to take part in their annual group delusion that they are in some way interesting people having a unique experience.

And that’s just Glastonbury. The good festival. In other parts of the country, the truly lowest of the low think they are part of some cultural zeitgesit by showing up to advertising swamped sporting grounds to see the Stereophonics and Kaiser Chiefs trudge through their back catalogues with perfunctory bonhomie, earning their audience’s average yearly salary for a tightly scheduled 72 minutes of dross hackery.

Let me try to define the festival experience, as I see it… You drive a long way to sit in traffic to get onto the site. once there, you trek a few miles to set your tent up which might, or might not get robbed. And by robbed I, of course, mean not just the contents – the tent itself. You get drunk and lose your friends. You have several stages to choose from. The one which has the bands you really want to see is at the end of a very very big field which is very very full of horrible people. The smaller stages have bands you’d quite like to see, but they’re all scheduled against each other and hours are spent hiking between them – these hikes leaving you open to, dependent on the weather, sun burn, exposure or trench foot. There is some kind of cabaret field where pretentious show-offs will show-off pretentiously. There is also some kind of ‘healing field’ where everyone in the country who most deserve an insouciant slap gather to convince themselves and some accounts clerks from Northampton that there is some kind of ‘oneness’ between them and the earth. The irony that escapes them being that this will only happen when they finally shut up and die.  Within hours, the portaloos are overflowing with the collective poo born of every mediocre idiot’s service station Burger King Whoppers from the journey down. You spend three days exposed to the elements, drugged up dullards, pretentious fatheads and catching only the most uninteresting bands who you will never hear of again, you eat curry from buckets which gives you the shits, you lose your tent, you get sleep deprivation, robbed, make best friends with someone you will never see again (and thank god because he is every bit the feckless wanker that you are) and finally spend five minutes trying to work out the upside of the experience and create a way of telling everyone back home what happened that makes it sound good.

My friend Rich seems to go to Glastonbury every year. When I see him on the day he returns, he has the look of a man who has been drugged, slapped, dipped in shit and presented to Coldplay, then tied to a pole and left to either bake in extreme sunshine or marinade in the feces, menstrual blood and urinated value cider of a small country for three arduous days.

All that said, I fully appreciate the televising of such events. So, to all those of you at Worthy Farm this weekend, I raise a glass of reasonably priced beverage of my choice from my nice cold fridge and wish you well as I watch BBC 3′s excellent HD, multi-camera coverage of the bands I want to see, when I want to see them (thank you, iplayer) with occasional luxurious toilet breaks and the promise of a great night’s sleep. Oh, and I live in the countryside anyway so I’m perfectly at one with nature but also blissfully at one with clean clothes, showers, decent food, shelter and a complete absence of half-naked sweaty buffoons on E trying to give me a cuddle.

Chin chin.

Sit Down 6

Well, regular readers will be relieved to hear… read… that I am back on the comedy horse.

After the gig I detailed in my last ‘Sit Down’ post, I decided to radically re-think what I was doing. To be honest, I wasn’t sure if I wanted to bother doing comedy again. At that point I hated the audience and hated the promoter and still hadn’t found the material that I felt best suited me. Really all I was enjoying was the camaraderie. Getting to spend some time with the little group I consider my contemporaries. So, essentially, it was like going to the pub with your mates but encouraging everyone else in the building to sit down and judge you for 10 minutes halfway through the evening.

The fall out from the last gig was awful. Despite the guilt and self-loathing, I got blacklisted by two of Oxford’s three comedy promoters and one of them – who had been a good friend for years – decided to end our friendship based not just on my decision to mock her during my disastrous set but because in the blog I wrote I afterwards, I called her shit at promoting. I edited it straight out of there but she decided it was unforgivable. So, since I’m doing the time, I might as well do the crime. So to speak. I shouldn’t have said she was *shit* at promoting -because that is mean and impulsive but there’s a point to be made about how these gigs are put together and the effect they have and although I take full blame for my set having died so miserably, there is something to be said for promoters and comedians working together.

So, I’m hardly a seasoned pro here but let me describe the Open Mic scene I’m coming out of; a promoter books a small venue – a room in a pub or a bar – they let it be known that comedians can come along and do their sets (usually 5 to 15 minutes) and first-timers can just get up and have a go. They charge admission to the audience and usually get the venue for free based on the principle that the customers will spend a bunch at the bar. The promoter has to market the event -although this is increasingly easy through facebook, Twitter and the like. potentially they can make some OK cash and definitely create a great night.

I don’t want to say anything more that could seem pointed at that particular promoter because I will always be extremely thankful to her for giving me my first gigs and actually encouraging me to try stand-up at all. What I will say – generally – is that since the promoter is not paying the comedians or the venue and is taking all of the door money, the one responsibility they have is to promote. Is to work their asses off to get a good crowd – a big crowd, the right crowd. It’s unfair on the comedians who are traveling some distance to the gig or working up material specifically for it to put them in front of a small and random crowd. A comedian should fail or succeed on their act and performing to an empty/disinterested room is incredibly difficult.

My last set died not just because of the tiny crowd but also because I was running before I could walk. the point of the material was valid and it would have been funny if I’d been more experienced at actually performing. Maybe at some point in the future, I’ll look at it again but I’d need to be way longer in the tooth and know I had a sympathetic audience who ‘got’ me already, otherwise it could just be nasty. So, I’ve spent the last month or so developing an entirely new set. I wanted it to contain the same kind of anger my material seems to veer towards but I wanted to be able to deliver it in a more friendly way. Not that I want the audience to like me, I just don’t want them to actually loathe me. The huge decline in quality TV programming has been bothering me increasingly and I thought it’d be good to construct a set around that. I’ve only recently bought a TV after 6 years without and that seemed a good angle to be coming from – someone who hasn’t seen TV in 6 years reacting to what he was faced with. So, it was accessible for an audience – it had pop culture references – and it allowed me to talk honestly and hopefully amusingly about a subject I do actually feel passionately about.

I was very nervous before my gig on Thursday night. Not just because it was 100% new material, but also because it was my first ‘pro’ gig. One of our little stable of local comedians – the stunning Matt Richardson – decided to try his hand at promoting and booked Ava Vidal to headline his first gig, giving support slots to myself and Alex Clissold-Jones and also a ‘circuit’ comedian – meaning he’s won some competitions and can headline small shows.

Matt is an incredible guy. He’s 18 years old and has thrown himself into comedy fearlessly. and I do mean fearlessly, Matt will happily do gong shows, take on rowdy audiences, he seems to gig constantly and he does it joyously. I’ve seen his set go down incredibly well and I’ve seen it go down less well but he never gives it less than 100% He loves hecklers and slams them mercilessly. I mean, he is cold. But he is also the sweetest guy imaginable. He booked me for the gig telling me that he wanted to restore my faith in gigs! And BOY did he do that. The venue he booked was beautiful – the Unicorn Theatre in Abingdon, it’s a converted abbey, beautiful medieval building with an Elizabethan style theatre built into it. He sold the gig out. He worked so hard – and this is his first gig and – at the risk of sounding patronising – HE’S 18!!! He sold it out. 80 seats. When I arrived, a guy dashed up to me, asked me if I was Jon and whisked me to the performers’ area. We had our own little cottage with an ice bucket full of bottles of water and the offer of whatever beers we wanted. Alex and I were both nervous – playing on an actual stage to a full house rather than a half-empty pub room is a new dynamic and having an actual pro headliner was a bit intimidating.

Matt compered the night and did a great job, obviously he had a lot of friends in the audience but he totally owned that room. He was having a great time. The circuit comedian went on first. He was a nice chap. When I first heard he’d been booked, I looked him up on-line, finding a clip of him on youtube which was pretty funny. The clip was 3 years old and he performed a virtually identical set. I can see why people would do that but… well… I can’t see why people would do that. As I see it, half the fun of comedy is the generating of material and – as I found out that night – seeing where the audience takes you. I can’t imagine ever coming up with material that I could or would use 3 years later. I’d be bored of it by then. As it stands, I’ve only ever once repeated material.

The traditional method seems to be that you work up a solid 10 – 15 minute set to try to build a career, as you advance, you build on that and change it. You’ll find that most pros generate a one hour set each year. They test the material at smaller gigs, usually get it ready to premiere at the Edinburgh Fringe, then tour it for a year (with the bigger ones releasing it as a DVD in time for xmas). That makes sense to me. I feel cheated when I see a comedian repeating material from a previous tour, or especially a DVD. The worst offender for this is Omid Djalili who I find very funny but all of his DVDs seem to contain the same material – one of them even has early performance footage from 10 years previous where he is essentially performing the same set.

I was on next. Alex was waiting behind the curtains and was so supportive, knowing that I was bricking it. As Matt was doing his five minutes of material before introducing me, I realised he was telling the audience all about the fat people he’d had confrontations with at gigs. For those of you that don’t know me personally, I’m a big guy – I’m a portly fellow and I was just dreading that he was building up to some kind of ‘fat’ introduction of me. He eventually didn’t, he introduced me as one of his ‘great friends’. I psyched myself up (it’s very different appearing through a curtain rather than just stepping on from the side of the stage), stormed out there and impulsively ad-libbed ‘he calls me a great mate but he introduces me with 5 minutes of fat jokes’ Which went down brilliantly. A big, instant laugh. Still on the Matt subject, I (on his advice, I might add) re-used the one good line from my previous failed set about Matt looking like what would happen if the PG-Tips chimps decided to parody the TV show ‘Skins’ – another good laugh. I liked this audience. I launched into my new set and it went down well. I felt comfortable enough with the audience to tailor it to them, to involve them a bit. I found myself completely ad-libbing a bit of material that I had never even thought about. I had mentioned something which got an audience cheer, so said ‘You people will cheer anything! DERRICK BIRD!’ that got some laughs and some ‘ooooooohs’ ‘OK – Harold Shipman!’ some cheers ‘Fred west?’ some more cheers ‘there we go – the comedy statute of limitations, it’s OK to laugh about them once their victims have been buried!’ I wish I’d finished it off with Myra Hindley ‘no? not until they find the last one?’. I had actually prepared a bit about Derrick Bird which I’d been unsure whether to use and I’m glad I didn’t. It was quite a provincial crowd and I can’t see that it would have been a clever road to go down. I’m so glad i didn’t say ‘cunt’ once – when Ava said it later in the evening, it got gasps. So, yeah, the set went down well, I ended up completely improvising the ending – telling an anecdote about something that had actually happened to me that day and it was good. I got a lovely response and left the stage happy. Alex later told me that he and Matt were stood behind the curtain and were jumping up and down, punching the air for me when I’d opened with three strong laughs.

Alex was next on and was great. I went and watched him from the balcony and he really came into his own. He’s a wonderful compere and that means he’s one of those guys who can very easily get the measure of a crowd and respond appropriately with his material. He was very funny, I laughed a lot.

And then Ava went on and she was fantastic. Talk about handling a crowd, she was so good. I’d say that that was probably not ‘her’ crowd, as I said, they seemed a bit provincial and a strong, black female comedian could have been a bit much for them but she hand them in the palm of her hand. She seemed so comfortable on that stage and her delivery was just effortless, she was really funny. When you actually perform at these gigs, it’s easy to spend the whole thing being nervous or picking apart the other performers and forget that it’s all about entertainment. it was so nice to just sit back and have a really good laugh.

After the show, Alex and I had a really nice chat with Ava and she gave me some great advice. I’ve had some shitty comedians give me arrogant advice before but she was actually apologetic about offering it and it was genuinely helpful. She told me that I should think about not walking about so much and spend more time making actual eye contact with the audience. She said she liked my material but I had to face the crowd and really sell it. That’s the first, simple constructive criticism I’ve ever received and I’m absolutely using it. I’m really excited for my next set now, I want to really work this new material. Especially since the Edinburgh Fringe programme has just been published and our show is in it!

I’m so excited. A ten day run of shows with my best comedy friends – Alex, Tom Greeves and Paul Fung – and young Mat will be there too! I love the idea of being able to perfect it night after night and to just be around so many other people doing the same thing.

BRING IT!

What a ‘con’ 2 – Con Harder.

So, those of you who read my original ‘con’ post would probably have assumed I would never attend such a thing again. But you clearly don’t know the depths of masochism I’m willing to stoop to. In fairness, I didn’t know myself so today can serve as a learning experience for both of us. You see, I’ve been to some wretched nerdfests in my time. But today, I discovered a nerdfest that was not just cruel on the soul, not just cruel on the wallet, but also cruel on the body.

As you know, my shops are no more. Videosyncratic is dead. The reason I previously went to these nerdfests was to get signed photos from cult cinema icons dedicated to VS. It was a fun thing that the customers (and, if I’m honest, myself and the staff too) really dug. But before VS died, much like Spock at the end of Wrath of Khan, we imparted a little bit of ourselves into our Cowley Road Dr McCoy – our friends Atomic Burger. Of course, when I say we imparted a little bit of ourselves, what I mean is that poofy-haired poseur/resteraunteur Martin Bunce stole our fucking idea after I took him to his first nerdfest and they started getting and putting up signed photos too. I was furious with that 1980′s bastard for just nicking our gimmick but forgave him once VS went out of business (not least because he took a whole day/night off from Atomic and came and worked as a doorman for us on our last night. I feel a little bad for calling him poofy-haired now) it’s rather nice to see the tradition continue. As it is to see our famous lifesized Gremlin rehoused in their window.

Anyway, Martin’s business partner James wanted to get more signed piccies at todays event in Milton Keynes, so we went together. I hadn’t planned to get anything… well, maybe one thing, but we’ll get to that. I was essentially tagging along.

The Milton Keynes event is called Collectormania. Run by a company called Showmasters. I don’t like Showmasters. Over the years I’ve had a lot of experiences of them and I have to say, I think they’re fucking idiots. I’ve never understood why they choose to make their own events so horrible but I have to say that today they exceeded themselves. They have raised the bar on how wretched an event can be. I was actually impressed! Shall I catalogue their awfulness for you?

In no particular order:

- They announce guests months in advance then, once punters have booked transport/hotels, they cancel them. The cancellations usually start about 4 days before the event and a good percentage – I’d say maybe 15 – 20% of the significant guests will cancel in this period. This doesn’t happen with other event-runners. Maybe the odd guest cancels last minute for a good, unexpected reason, but with Showmasters, you can GUARANTEE that there will be a huge drop off. I assume they have them on very loose non-binding contracts but they go on to advertise huge names and only mention the cancellations at the last minute and only on their web-forum. This must be horribly disappointing for people unaware of the forum who have spent a lot of money to travel to this horrible place for no reason. Not just this, but it seems obvious they wait for the last minute to sneak out cancellations as often the guests have confirmed on their own websites their non-attendance weeks or months earlier. This is Showmasters’ standard practice. I think that makes them dicks.

- Their London Film and Comic Con is almost a human-rights infringement demonstration. One year I went and they had no chairs. There was nowhere for anybody to sit down. it was one of the hottest days of the year, too. There was no air conditioning. Well, it looked like there was, but it wasn’t on. I saw the bloke who played Chewbacca having what looked like a heat-exhaustion respiratory attack at that one.

- They are staffed almost entirely by  young volunteers. As I understand it from the ones I’ve talked to at these events, they’re completely unpaid and worked really hard. It’s real dogsbody work and there is no excuse not to pay them other than you’re exploiting the goodwill and excitement of a bunch of teenagers. Just because they’re prepared to work for free, that doesn’t make it conscionable.

- They choose unsuitable venues. The London venue, at Earls Court, is too big. Sometimes insanely big. I booked a stall at one and found my stand alone in an entire corridor. Hidden from anything, fortunate to have people stumble randomly upon us. When I turned our promotional dvd volume up to catch people’s attention, one of the organisers came and scalded me as if I were a naughty schoolboy rather than a client who had paid a lot of money to be dumped somewhere untroubled by customers. Collectormania was originally held in a shopping centre. In the middle of a mall, during a busy weekend. Meaning not only were there a lot of nerds squashed into a small atrium but also the slack-jawed dull-eyed shoppers of Milton Keynes clogging up every available space with pushchairs and shopping bags. The shopping centre was almost comical in it’s inappropriateness but if that raised a giggle, their new venue raises a mighty guffaw….

I had read before heading off this morning that the new venue was the MK Dons’ stadium but had hilariously assumed that there was some kind of venue or covered area within the complex. No. It is an open-air, uncovered sports stadium. The guests were lined up at tables around the concourse. The concourse is the bit that circles the stadium that sits between the seats you walk down to and the seats you walk up to. It was completely open to the elements. I mean… that’s ridiculous. It was freezing cold! Despite the temperature being fairly cold in MK today anyway, the stadium creates it’s own little weather system, conjuring up icy blasts of wind that seem to be cooled further by bouncing around the stone concourse. It was freezing! They had their ‘celebrities’ just sat there in the outside. Some were swaddled in blankets, all were clutching hot drinks like a tramp at a soup kitchen. Brilliantly, Showmasters managed to introduce a hierarchy to the suffering. The most famous guests (Tom Baker, Linda Hamilton from Terminator, some schmo from Twilight) got tents! TENTS! Those crappy white gazebo looking things! They were still open to direct blasts of wind that whipped up across the playing fields but somewhat protected from the peripheral winds that circled the concourse. All of the other guests were just left to die of exposure. It was hysterical. In a really, unbelievably cruel way. They had reunited a whole bunch of the people who had played Stormtroopers in the first Star Wars films. These guys are in their seventies now. They were contacted to sit for four days outside whilst all but the most insane SW fans ran past them on their way to shelter from the weather in the toilets.

Also, because the entire event was laid out over what was essentially one long corridor, it managed to not feel like any kind of event. It was just a big round cold corridor with sad, confused, frozen z-listers sat staring over a football field with that glassy-eyed hangdog expression that can only say ‘how did my life bring me here?’ From starring in Hollywood blockbusters to sitting like a homeless person in Milton bloody Keynes.

Many of James’s autograph experiences were amusingly wretched too. Barry Bostwick, aged and bloated way beyond recognition, sat discussing agents ‘for these things’ with a strange little man as James patiently waited for him to be so good as sign the scrap of photo paper he was being paid £15 to do. Chewbacca (apparently recovered) was quick and perfunctorily polite, Tom Baker was keen to get through his queue with speed. James did have fun meeting Linda Hamilton and Kenny Baker, though.

The one guest I wanted to meet was Slavitza Jovan. I don’t expect you to recognise the name, I only learned it recently, but she played Gozer The Gozerian – the baddie at the end of Ghostbusters. It’s very rare I actually want a signed photo for myself but I figured a signed Gozer photo with the dedication ‘To Jon, Are you a GOD?” would be a fun thing to display next to my Ghostbusters dolls in the study. Of course, things rarely go to plan in the world of nerdfest celebrities. Upon paying my £15, and having her shakily write my name, she said ‘No, I will not talk of God. People ask me to write of God but I will not. You understand?’ I smiled and said ‘of course’ but, really, I didn’t understand. In the same way that I didn’t understand when I met Linda Blair and asked her to write ‘To everyone at Videosyncratic, your mothers suck cocks in hell” and she said no and stared at me like my asking her to write something which she had SAID VOCALLY in a BLOCKBUSTER MOVIE was completely unreasonable, despite the fact I was paying her a wadge of cash just to scrawl her name. So, I pretended to Gozer that I understood, then she signed her name. Then she crossed out her surname. Then she threw the photo away after telling her assistant ‘I throw this away, as I write my surname by accident!’ And she started again on a new photo. A little shakier ‘To Jon: Slavitza J.” It looks crap.

As per usual, I left the event grumpy, tired and hateful.

Who’s coming with me to the next?

Fuel Up.

A big chunk of my social life is centred around the Oxford music scene. There are very few people I’ve met through it that I haven’t liked and since I started making my documentary on it a few years ago, I feel like I’ve got to know most people associated with it. At the most I’d reckon I’m only one degree of separation from anyone in any way linked to it over the past 30 years. I say this not to brag, OK, to brag a bit because, frankly, my friends are brilliant, talented people. I mean, seriously, I know so many incredibly fantastic creative people, it’s a genuine privilege. I’m very lucky to be surrounded by it and I get a major buzz from it. Most people have to book expensive tickets to great big venues and stand in sweaty crowds to see the people who most inspire them perform. I just have to rock up to some room above a local pub, swan in and stand slack-jawed at the undiscovered brilliance which eclipses anything I’ve seen in the charts for many years.

Occasionally the world cottons on to Oxford. Obviously, Ride, Radiohead and Supergrass broke through and more recently Foals and The Young Knives. Mostly it doesn’t, though. A small handful of us are left with our one Beaker single, our Dustball ball, The Bigger The God 7 inches, The Evenings mp3s, ATL gig posters and maybe even a Purple Rhinos fanzine.

The weird thing about being on good terms with pretty much everyone is that you get a lot of gossip and a lot of unique perspectives. There is, of course, a lot of bitchiness. I’d love to draw a diagram of who hates who and why – a spiteful family tree linking all of the bands, promoters and record labels by branches of hatred and acrimony. But I won’t. Because I like all of them. Unlike other music scenes, ours is not linked by genre. Every genre of music exists within this scene and bands live or die not on the style of music they choose to play, but how good they are. But even quality isn’t enough to impress the scene as a whole. I never find two people with the same opinion about any one band. Which is good as it shows there is no following of the herd in Oxford.

The one band who I have recently heard the same thing said over and over again is Stornoway. And here is what everyone says about them ‘They are SO nice’. I bumped into Ronan, the editor of the local music mag Nightshift recently and that was one of the first things he said to me. They’re the cover story of the current issue and I’d mentioned enjoying the interview. He told me not only had they been willing, generous and interesting interviewees but they’d written him a thank you letter when it got published.

Rewind a year or so and my friend James, a promoter, had put a Stornoway gig on. The next day he came in and made a point of telling me that they were the nicest band he had ever encountered. At the end of the night, having loaded all of their equipment into their van, they came back and offered to help James load the bulky hired P.A. equipment back into his van. Nobody ever does that. Nobody even thinks to do that.

Tim Turan, the mastering genius behind most Oxford bands and the man who re-mastered the back catalogue of seemingly every band from the 70′s of any note (the first time I met him, he had the original master tapes for Thin Lizzy’s The Boys Are Back in Town sat under his desk) enthused to me the first time he worked with them about how decent and knowledgeable they had been.

My own most recent experience of them was the night I closed my video shop down. On less than a day’s notice, they were ready to come and play a free gig to pull in customers to buy our remaining stock. Crammed into a corner of a heaving, shouting shop, they held their own and eventually held the entire crowd. When I thanked them afterwards, they waved it off as if it were ridiculous I’d consider it worth gratitude. They are SO nice.

Their debut album is released today. And I’m writing this blog because I think you should buy it. Not just because they’re so nice but because you really should own this album. I know a lot of people who read this blog are not music snobs, so I’m giving you this tip-off now. You really should own this album.

It’s so appropriate that it gets released today because musically, there couldn’t be a better soundtrack for today. Their music is the sound of a long hot dry summer day, lying on your back on the grass, thinking about your problems and realizing that they’re not so big after all.

They represent strange and wonderful things to me. Without being retro, they remind me of the bands of years before I was born who I never got to see perform but whose music means the world to me. Back when the role of musician was still a craft and not an affectation. There is nothing fashionable about Stornoway and I see no aspiration on their part to be considered hip, cool or relevant. They just make the music which is the sum of their parts. Rooted in the folk music of our country’s past and the accessibility of the singer-songwriters of the 60′s and 70′s their songs are alternately bouncy and introspective but never less than beautiful.

Their musicianship is, in my eyes, unrivalled by any band of this ilk since Sandy Denny lead Fairport or The Band’s Last Waltz. Their orchestration is deceptive in it’s simplicity and it’s that very simplicity which creates an emotional resonance which just lifts me. Lead singer Brian has a straightforward, occasionally fragile singing voice unaffected by posturing. At his best, he reminds me of the little boy in the school choir realizing that not only can he sing, but he rather likes it. Jon is both his Keith Richards and his Garth Hudson. He’s the only keyboard player I’ve ever adored in a band apart from Garth. Your eyes are drawn to him and his various boxes of tricks with which he seems to be conducting some form of engrossing yet non-showy wizardry. Brothers Ollie and Rob on bass and drums are the lookers but nobody seems to have bothered to tell them. There’s no trace of arrogance or posturing, just studious dedication to keeping this train on the tracks. As with all bands, it’s the combination of people and influences which is critical. And theirs is perfect. The moments when their vocal three-part harmonies kick in, especially Jon’s rare talent for singing bass, that my heart just soars. I really do love this band.

My greatest regret, bar none, in my Oxford music life is missing the chance to have directed one of their videos. They asked me to direct one for We Are The Battery Human and I came up with a whopper of an idea but at the time I was up to my neck in the post-production of my film. Couldn’t make time to get it done. They’ve made a few videos now and I’ve disliked all of them. Well, I kind of like the one for Zorbing above but didn’t like the new one their record company just put out. I really didn’t like the one for I Saw You Blink. I think it’s easy to make a good looking video but less easy to actually capture the magic and personality of a band. Usually it ends up being beautiful shots of some uncomfortable people who have never been asked to act before. Maybe it’s just that every director sees something different in them that they want to show. All I know is that they have yet to be done justice.

But, incredibly for a band so out of step with the industry, things are on the up. They’ve signed to 4AD Records and their debut album is released today. Their single Zorbing has been B-Listed by Radio 1 – that blows my mind as I don’t think I’ve heard anything good on that station since Peel left us for a better place.

For an album to do well, it really has to hit high in it’s first week. It’s all about the first week for a band hoping to break into a career. So I’m urging you to take a punt on them.

You can click any of the below links to buy it for no more £7.99

http://hmv.com/hmvweb/navigate.do?pPageID=4605 (you can get a signed copy from here and be automatically entered into a competition to win a guitar)

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Beachcombers-Windowsill-Stornoway/dp/B003FVCZ8Q/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=music&qid=1274700237&sr=8-1 (£6.99 at Amazon)

http://www.play.com/Music/CD/4-/13867468/Beachcomber-Windowsill/Product.html (£6.99 here too)

http://itunes.apple.com/gb/album/beachcombers-windowsill/id369503432 (only £5.99 on itunes!)

For me, Stornoway are defined by that second and a half when they finish a song and, as it still hangs in the air,  the audience has to catch it’s breath and recover before they can applaud.

They deserve to be heard and you deserve to hear them.

Order it NOW.

Sit Down 5

I write this missive from beyond the grave.

My words travel to you through the ether, across the spectral plane, from the afterlife, through the vortex of consciousness, out of the bounds of purgatory and into the hands of Derek Acorah who is very kindly typing this for me.

You see, last night, I died. ‘Died’ maybe doesn’t do last night justice. It leaves open the possibility of a quiet, peaceful passing rather than the amplified public obliteration that my death actually was. Of course, when I talk of death, I mean it purely in the metaphorical stand-up related definition of the word. The death of one’s performance, credibility with the audience and, I’d have to say, self-esteem. I died. Tanked. Bombed. I went down in a blaze of ill-judged, horrific, glory.

I lay awake in bed last night, wide awake at 3am, replaying those 10 minutes over and over in my head. Each time, I remembered something new that mortified me further. As it was happening, I was aware it was going badly, but it was only afterward as I pieced it together did I realise just how badly it had gone.

I shall set the scene. It was a ‘new material’ night. There were 5 comedians on the bill and there were 9 people in the audience. They sat in 2 rows of 4 and 5. This is not an audience. The effect this has is that rather than feeling like someone preaching to the masses, you feel like you’re in an audition or job interview and under heavy personal scrutiny. This is not the ideal time to try out new material.

On before me was Dave Smiff who does a comedy cockney character and teaches the audience how to be a cockney. He was very good but you could see him struggling with the small and not-terribly responsive crowd. Then it was my turn. The compere introduced me and I took to the stage affably. My first look at the audience kind of shook me. I clocked (besides the friend I’d brought with) only one person who I thought would ‘get’ my set. Now, I’m not trying to sound elitist with that, or even prejudiced, but if you do anything creative, you just KNOW who is going to ‘get’ you. If you make lace shawls, you wouldn’t expect a bloke in an England shirt knocking back a can of Special Brew to get excited about your wares. If you put on an evening of classical music, you wouldn’t expect to see a line of chavs patiently queuing around the block to get in. These were polite looking, straight laced people out for a nice un-challenging evening of entertainment.

I had constructed my ultimate challenging set.

For a while I’ve been developing this material which is, essentially, comedy about comedy. Going to so many gigs recently, I’ve been kind of shocked (as you’ll know if you’ve read my other blogs on the subject) by hack comedians and the easy laughs they get from undemanding audiences. i wanted to explore audience complicity in sub-standard comedy. The irony, of course, was that they remained thoroughly un-complicit through a set of the most sub-standard comedy you could ever see. Mine.

I opened with the one piece of not-new material. The joke I described in the last blog which is designed to get them laughing and then i spend a couple of minutes deconstructing it. I like to make an audience think I’m freezing and then kick in with some intensity and not allow them a laugh for a while. It works for me and they like me a lot more once I’ve broken the tension and they can see that I am in control and it is funny. So I did my little deconstruction to their faces of apathy and disinterest. I expected SOME laughs, just at the fact I was deconstructing a pointless, crude joke with such intensity. Nothing. So, I decide to lighten them mood by finishing that section with a lighthearted throwaway comment. In my head, I’m about to say to them, in a cheeky-chappy rascal fashion ‘I like to start by highlighting my audience as a bunch of cunts – always a clever tact for a fledgling comedian.’ Instead, I find myself saying – with a total absence of cheeky-chappery – ‘I wrote that joke to show that you’re a bunch of cunts.’

A girl in the second row’s mouth drops open. I look over to the comedians. Matt and Alex’s mouths have dropped open into confused nervous smiles. The other comedians are just staring in confusion along with the rest of the punters. There is silence. I feel my ears heat up to about a million degrees. They must be glowing red.

I explain to them that the bit they laughed loudest at in that gag was the line ‘fucked in the arse!’ and sarcastically comment ‘because there’s nothing funnier than being fucked in the arse.’ Adding the line ‘this is why homosexuals bring such joy to the world’ sets me in many of their minds as unfunny AND homophobic.

My next ‘bit’ depends on selling to the crowd that I’m a bit nervous. I’m so nervous, I become nervous as to whether my nervousness is visible through my fake nervousness. It, of course, is. This is not the moment to do my brand new ‘fake observational comedy’ bit in which I feign struggling with presenting some observational comedy.

I wrote this ‘bit’ because the night, which had been advertised on Facebook  to 228 people, mostly comedians, billed me as ‘observational comedy so spot-on it hurts’. I hated this description for a couple of reasons – mainly I don’t consider my stuff as being what is really labelled ‘observational’.  ‘So spot-on it HURTS!’ Ugh.  So, here was my plan. I’d spot the promoter in the audience and go ‘hey, you know how nobody talks to each other on buses?’ and then go ‘oooh, are you ok?’ followed by ‘you know how it takes your girlfriend ages to get ready for a night out? ‘are you sure you’re ok?’ ‘hey, you know how your gran says the craziest things because she isn’t in-step with modern society?’ ‘ARE you OK?’ and then explain that I had felt obliged to do observational comedy since that’s what had been promised and I had wanted to make sure I hadn’t hurt her with it. All I can imagine at this point is that I just looked like I was having a nervous breakdown. With my fake nervousness mixing with my real nervousness lapping over my fake awful material and punctuated by my asking someone apparently random if they were OK. Then for the masterful reveal. My masterful reveal was really me just flatly explaining why I had done that. So, not only had I been strange and unfunny (which is a feat in itself) but I was also smugly explaining to them why I thought I had actually been very funny but had, in actuality, childishly used part of my act to tell the promoter she was shit. It was apparent that the audience – correctly – felt that I should have maybe talked the matter over with her in private rather than have done this. She felt the same way. She loudly said ‘Why are you doing this?’ in an unamused fashion four times.

There was a pause. I thought about just leaving. Silence. Someone drops their mobile phone. I doubt I’d have heard that had the room been empty but this vacuum of silence amplified everything.

I decide to press on. The next line in my act is this:

‘Why do you never see attractive people at comedy shows?’

Someone gasps, which – at least, thank GOD – is a response. I continue ‘Seriously, look around, you’re a bunch of feckless, ugly, grinning baboons.’ I made up the grinning bit. I continue telling them how unattractive they are and then turn my attention to my fellow comedians who are ‘no better’. This includes two men I had not met before this evening. The high point of the set for me was highlighting my friend and fellow comedian Matt Richardson as being the most attractive performer ‘and, in honesty, he looks like what would happen if the PG Tips chimps decided to parody Skins’ – which I’m very proud of but, within the context of the set was me having moved on from insulting the promoter, to strangers, to my friends. I was uncharismatic, unfunny and just pathetically rude.

I decide to explain to the audience why ‘hack’ comedy is awful and how it works. This is something I believe in strongly. I get angry when I see a comedian appear onstage, ask someone their name and where they come from then tease that person. It engenders laughter from the rest of the room because they’re relieved to not be the one who is being picked on. Once the room is laughing, the comedian has insidiously won their approval. not through gags but manipulation and victimisation. As if this were the perfect time to improvise, I decide to win the audience back by doing a demonstration of this tactic. I go straight to that one guy who I thought might ‘get’ my humour, get him to stand up and I and say ‘what’s your name and where are you from?’ ‘I’m Tristan, I’m from Bognor’ – I launch straight into my brilliant satirized ‘truthful’ take on hack comedians by snarling ‘YOU’RE A FUCKING IDIOT AND YOU COME FROM SOMEWHERE SHIT AND BY EXTENSION THAT MAKES YOU FUCKING SHIT’. The audience, bucking the expected response of laughing, glad it wasn’t them being picked on, instead look at him with horrified sympathy and then back at me with unbridled disgust. Tristan was a nice young chap with round specs and a stripey jumper. I had just shouted at him. The most recent in an escalating scale of demonstrations of me just being nasty to people – apparently in the name of comedy, but not detectably so. I tell him to sit down as I move into the last part of my set.

This was my plan: Whilst talking about the detestable rise of comedy about rape and pedophilia, my set would slowly become ABOUT rape and pedophilia – the jokes would be increasingly centred in those subjects, which would highlight how easy it is for an audience to become complicit whilst being hysterically ironic that I was campaigning against these things, whilst my set descended into unavoidably drawing humour from them. The ‘denouement’ was to the effect of ‘still, I guess we all become that which we hate’. So I’d written the material carefully to be getting unintentional laughs from rape/pedophile jokes and to be getting increasingly angry at being funny in ‘that’ way.

The last bit is where you traditionally try to tie up all the threads of everything you’ve talked about earlier. I ask Tristan to stand up, he stares at the floor and ignores the request. I declare that Tristan being from Bognor is funny, Tristan being fucked in the arse is funny, but only if it’s consensual – Tristan being RAPED in the arse BY A CHILD is just NOT funny!’ The audience agrees. Silence. I have played my mastercard. And forgotten what I wanted to say next.

What I had wanted to say was (following on from the audience being ugly because they were insecure and liked to come out to see other people get picked on so they can feel better about themselves) ‘who needs to hear jokes about rape and pedophilia to feel more confident about themselves?’ I fluff this completely and – to my own utter horror – announce ‘I’m just worried that I’m in a room full of rapists and peadophiles!’

Silence.

Silence.

I can’t remember how the hell i had wanted to end this set. I look at my hand and see the final note as ‘rapists/peadoes’ – doesn’t help.

Brain freezes.

‘And that is all I have to say’.

Silence.

Alex, the compere, comes out and tries to illicit some applause. it is muted.

Usually when you finish a set, the other comedians nod or shake your hand or whisper some congrats. the other comedians – three of them being friends of mine – AVOIDED EYE CONTACT. Nothing.

On stage, Alex says ‘let’s try and get some goodwill back in the room’ and tells them how they aren’t ugly and they’re all very attractive people. Paul Fung is the next onstage. He riffs an opening detailing what he had to go through to get his friend Tristan to come to the show tonight.

‘Will you come to the show?’

‘No, I don’t like it when comedians pick on the crowd’

‘Nobody is going to pick on you!’

‘Really?’

‘I promise! YOU FUCKING IDIOT!’

UGH.

Looking back on it, it wasn’t even just death, it was a suicide mission. I’m stunned in retrospect that I could ever have thought that any of that material would warm me to an audience. But I don’t think that’s what I was trying to do. My comedy heroes were always Bill Hicks, Lenny Bruce, Stewart Lee and Denis Leary – nasty, mean, snide, intense guys one and all. It was only natural I’d want to play about with that stuff and see how far i could push it. It was also honesty. Honestly, I didn’t like that audience, I didn’t like the standard of promotion either. If i’d had the conviction to be more aggressive rather than intermittently nervous and apologetic, maybe it could have worked somehow. As is, I got it out of my system. I feel like that’s the set I’v been working on for a while and I needed to try it, needed to see where it took me. I won’t ever do that material again.

And I have to decide if I want to do stand-up again. I’ve still not worked out why I’m doing it at all. I hate the audiences and resent the expectation to amuse them, so why do it? Do I want to try a nice set?

I don’t know right now if I want to continue at all.

I shall now crawl back into my coffin and have a little rest.

Sitting on the feet of giants.

These are my two strongest memories of the two best parties I have ever been to:

1. Eyes closed, feeling the world rock steadily back and forth on the upstairs landing with the soundtrack of the toilet perpetually flushing.

2. Flying through the air giddily, and landing in a huge pile of soft, bouncy cushions. Looking up and seeing one of my good friends with a plant pot on his head saying ‘DO IT AGAIN!!!’ and then doing it again.

Snatched memories from dizzy, heady, occasions to which all other details are completely lost in the mists of time. Not exactly momentous but those sudden seconds when you say to yourself ‘This is GREAT. I shouldn’t ever forget this!’ When I think of parties, I think of those.

I threw my own party a couple of weeks ago. It was fucking ace. My parties always are. Is that biased? I don’t think so. I don’t drink these days so I think I can be objective and, God knows, I’ve thrown some rotten parties over the years so I think you can trust me on this. It was ace. I’m fortunate to know a lot of really good and interesting people and have absolutely no tolerance for twats so, at the risk of sounding elitist, that was a house full of great people. Watching them all interact and get to know each other is a huge thrill. Being able to introduce my pal Ben who has been working with NASA footage to my pal Tim who is completely obsessed with all things space – brilliant! Watching as Richard and Mark – Oxford music’s most wonderful eccentrics of different generations finally crossed paths. Watching shy Emilie who had come over from France bonding with drunk Sharron who had stumbled across from Rose Hill – magical! Ach, it was ace.

I only throw a party at the house every couple of years, I send out mass invites and am always chuffed and surprised at which characters from my three and a halfish decades come sauntering back for a cuddle and a chat. The first person to knock on the door this time was my best friend Tom. The best friend issue with me is a strange one. I would argue that I’ve had six best friends in my life. Two of them I have no contact with whatsoever and so have defaulted on their right to the title. At best, I would call them ‘my best friend at the time’ but rarely find myself ever really talking about them at all. Another, I remain highly highly fond of, as he does me, but the relationship changed, as they do. The three remaining are my best friends, people who I would do anything for without thinking twice. For these people, I would drop anything in an instant and just be there for them.

Below this is a layer of friends who I would describe as ‘one of my best friends’ – who I would do almost anything for. I really sound like an elitist fuck, don’t I? No, I don’t – you know what I mean, everyone has the levels of friends. The trick is to never openly classify them. Well, I’m only classifying Tom today, so that’s OK.

Until that knock on the door I hadn’t seen Tom in 3 years. He helped me move into this house – and before that day I don’t think I’d seen him in a year or so. He has a five year old son that I haven’t met since he was a baby. It seems weird for two best friends, but that’s how life goes sometimes. And the thing about the best best friends is that even if years pass, you still care and you still relish each other’s company and you know that you’re still there for each other. Tom lives in Bristol, which is not far away, but there never seems a desperation to see each other. Maybe because we have a lot of time in the bank. Between the ages of 9 and 17 we saw each other pretty much every single night. 8 years is a long time to kids. When we first hung out, we were playing on 48k Spectrums, we progressed right through ATARI STs, into Mega Drives and SNESs and finally a spell on PCs before Tom left for university and we never really hung out again. I don’t want it to sound like we were total geeks, our hangouts were only partially based on computer games. We spent a lot of time hanging out in one of the two parks near where we lived and, went to the cinema a LOT and once Tom got to 17, we had 2 years of driving around the county in his knackered old car Hilda.

As the summer creeps in, I still feel a pang of emptiness some nights, absent of the guarantee of the laughing, bickering and warm sense of best-matery. The world was reassuringly simple when I knew that each night I would meet Tom in the park, along with a revolving bunch of similar local miscreants, then go back to his house to play ‘Gauntlet’ or ‘Ikari Warriors’ long into the night, whilst discussing how cool ‘Aliens’ was and then falling out because I’d either play unfairly or tease him about his love of Michael Jackson.

Tom’s house was my second home. If I could have, I would have moved there. I loved my family and still do but I never felt I fitted in to our home. I still don’t. Architecturally, it’s the kind of place i have an inbuilt hatred for – suburban newbuild – and my mother is houseproud, which is fine and respectable, but I was a big dirty clumsy teenager and I knew that as much as I was loved, I was viewed as a force of destruction and calamity. The tidiness and the matching colour schemes and delicate nick-nacks felt achingly false to me. Tom’s house was like the Weasley’s house in Harry Potter. It was full of action and stuff and it formed it’s own beautiful character by just being an environment landscaped by the life within it. The furniture was old and battered, there was no handrail on the stair case – tom used to literally jump off the top stair and land in the hallway. The art on the walls was kind of grim but beautiful – I remember a Lowry by the front door, I think. Everything was practical rather than pretty but that kind of practicality radiates it’s own beauty. It wasn’t dirty, it wasn’t scummy, it wasn’t impoverished. it was just completely without pretension and shaped by a family who appeared to me to have their priorities in the right places.

And what a family they were, Tom was the youngest of three kids and he was a year older than me, so his two big sisters Clare and Ele (Same age and sometimes friend of my big sister) and to an extent he were leading far more interesting lives. Clare played in bands and had a cool boyfriend. Ele, well, we didn’t see much of her but she seemed to be off doing interesting things. Tom’s parents were the coolest parents any of us knew. They let their kids call them by their first names -Pat and Hugh rather than Mum and Dad. They drove one of those VW camper vans – and this is decades before surfer chic deemed them retro cool. I think Tom was at times mortified by the naff hippy vibe of the vehicle but to me it was always crazy and exotic and so far removed from anything my parents would ever contemplate driving (we were far from a camping family) that it blew my mind. Pat worked for Oxfam and Hugh was some kind of scientist. I knew him best as the ranger of one of the local nature reserves – that’s how I always picture him – in the wilds, fixing, building, maintaining. He was the tallest person I have ever seen. I’m sure had I seen him since the age of 17, he would have seen much shorter but as a kid, he appeared to be a giant. Our families had known each other since before Tom or I were born and one of my earliest memories is the two of us, each sat on one of Hugh’s feet, arms wrapped around his legs, being walked across the room like the greatest theme park ride of all time. Tom hopefully wouldn’t mind me saying that he was a difficult kid. He hated school and would rarely go. When he was forced to go, he’d run away. It made sense to me but I never joined in the skiving (actually, I did once and was – of course – discovered by my mum), we went to different schools and mine was more accommodating than his. Despite this, his folks never seemed to write him off in any way. I was kind of envious of his relationship with his dad. My dad was – and is – brilliant and I wouldn’t trade him in for anyone but he was never the ‘Boy’s own’ kind of guy – building stuff and climbing stuff and using chainsaws. Hugh and Tom seemed to really enjoy each others company and were always up to something exciting.

Everything felt OK in that house. It was really my solace throughout my teens. That horrible, bleak period where hormones just destroy you and change you and constantly fuck with your perceptions, I always felt safe and happy in that house. That was also the vibe which Pat and Hugh filled it with. Other kids parents were kind of scary – stand-offish, dismissive, grown up. Pat and Hugh welcomed you in and never talked down to you. Even at nine years old, I felt they treated me with respect and warmth and interest. They’d ask you how you were and what was going on in your world and just made you feel less awkward and cursed.

The year after Tom went to University, they moved away. The following year, I moved away. It’s always a little strange driving past their house when I visit my parents. The wild front garden has long been paved over and the climbing plants ripped from the front of the house. New front door, double glazing, garage conversion. It looks very dull now.

So, I see Tom very infrequently these days but he’ll always be my best friend. So, one of the moments from this party which will resonate for years, whilst I forget the others will be getting a good hug from Tom and also his shock at how readily I know admit that all of those childhood arguments were my fault and not his. You have to let some things go, right?

A couple of days after the party, Tom told me in an email that Hugh had died last summer. I had known he had been ill last year but hadn’t ever pressed Tom for any more than he was willing to tell me. I know how hard it must have hit him and understand why he hadn’t been able to tell people not in the immediate vicinity. I do wish I’d been able to be there to help him but they’re a tight family and that kind of thing is a family kind of thing.

Since I found out, I’ve been surprised by my own reaction. I haven’t thought about Hugh much since I was a kid but then you don’t look back so much, do you? and when you do, with adult eyes, you can suddenly see a lot of stuff.

I realise that the home I’ve created for myself is kind of like theirs – when I bought this place, the first thing my mother said was ‘you’ll need to get a hand rail and bannister put in.’ I said no. It’s a little grubby, a little untidy and highly mismatched but it’s practical and cosy and interesting. And when I talk with my girlfriend about the kind of home we hope to make together, the kind of family life we’d want, I find myself thinking of Pat and Hugh even more.

You’re not always aware of your influences, you just kind of take them for granted and absorb them. i can now see what a big influence Pat and Hugh were on me. and I’m very very grateful to them.

I can’t remember any significant memories of conversations with Hugh and that bothers me now. I have a suspicion that, as with most adult-child conversations, he would ask me how I was and I would tell him and never think to inquire back. But the two big memories that I have of him that I will cherish – along with the foot-riding – are both from birthday parties he threw for Tom when we were very young;

1. The pirate party. Hugh hung a heavy cardboard box on ropes from the attic, over the landing. One by one, he’d blindfold us, swing us back and forth in the box whilst continually flushing the toilet to make us feel like were rocking on the waves of the high seas.

2. The clown party. Hugh held sheets of paper over a plastic hoop and encouraged us all to dive through, bursting through the paper and landing on a big pile of soft, bouncy cushions.

Those were the two best parties I ever went to. And I know that, when I have a family, I’ll throw even better kids parties than I do grown-up ones. and hopefully all those kids will feel welcome and safe in our family’s home because I learned how important that is from a very good family.

And from a real giant of a man.