Sweet Dreams

The title of this blog refers to the content contained within it, though coincidentally it also alludes to the effect it will have on you if you continue reading. Here are a few interesting interview questions I came across and my less interesting answers.

Dream Film Cast:

David Tennant plays a cop with a dark and ambiguous past. Leslie Neilsen plays his partner, a cop with an amusing past. Patrick Stewart is the wise old-guy who has seen it all. Chevy Chase plays Patrick Stewart's stoner brother. Karen Gillan plays Tennant's kooky love interest; while Leslie Neilsen's love interest is played by Mel Brooks dressed as the late Audrey Hepburn. Hugh Laurie appears in a double role as Tennant's American boss who regularly says "Damnit Tennant! You don't play by the book!" and Tennant's English butler who is basically George from Blackadder. Stephen Moyer and Anna Paquin play a brooding vampire king and a sexy telepathic waitress but in a bit of stunt casting not the way round you'd expect. The villain of the film is Rik Mayall - the insane head of the New York mafia and his inexplicably hot wife Francine from American Dad. Their posh daughter is played by Mila Kunnis who tries to seduce both Tennant and Neilsen to compromise their operation, but finds her soul through the help of her kindly confused old Butler played by Ronnie Barker with a lisp that's more cute than funny. Johnny Depp has a cameo as a homeless man who makes the audience go "wait, was that....? Nah." While Kings of Leon cameo as themselves in a scene which proves they have a sense of humour but is regarded by critics and fans alike as the worst part of the film. Damien Molony out of off TV's Being Human plays a man with learning difficulties in a subplot that has no impact on the rest of the film but I think Damien Molony deserves some top acting award. The whole thing is narrated by Greg Proops who has smoked a ton of weed and just improv's around the plot.

Dream Rock Band:

On vocals and wordsmithery: Suggs from TV's Madness.

On Guitar and rock n roll anecdotes: Pete Townsend from The Who. With Dave Gilmore from Pink Floyd on weird guitar noises. Assuming he can stop fighting for one minute with the bassist.

On bass: Roger Waters out of Pink Floyd. It may become necessary to disguise both of these people in order to get them to work together without knowing it. Disguise Gilmore as Jed or Ward from Jedward and Waters as Greg Proops who has smoked a lot of weed and just improv's around the plot.

Drummer: Dave Grohl - coz he seems like a nice guy with a sense of humour and he can bang those things pretty loudly.

Song Writers: Alice Cooper, Suggs and Al Yankovic.

Backing and support of: The Horne Section - I just really love this band and their simple funny songs. Proper talented comedy musicians.

Triangle: Justin Beiber, because I feel he should learn a bit of humility.

Dream Lover:

Personalitywise I'm after a Doctor Who companion: Someone loyal, clever (but not as clever as me, or clever in ways I'm not), who tells me I'm brilliant, wants to travel with me, helps me find my human side before I commit another genocide and knows exactly the right questions to ask for me to explain the plot.

The sexy Scottishness of Karen Gillan would have been the obvious answer a few months ago, but new kid on the block Jenna-Louise Coleman is very sexy. Not Scottish though, so I'd be missing out on that beautiful accent. Let's just get Jenna and Karen to fight it out and the winner wins me!

Unless they're left hideously disfigured by the fight in which case I'm marrying Alison Brie and her amazing Disney-princess eyes. Fuck it, I'm just going to marry Alison Brie. Someone tell her this is happening so two beautiful and talented actresses don't end up hurting each other. She's gotta agree to that, she seems so lovely. Then again Katy Perry does love her funny Brit's doesn't she...no Alison Brie it is.

Dream Project:

Anything involving writing comedy I would love to do. If I had the power I would love to be involved in creating and writing for the British version of the Daily Show, which is an American satire show and one of the ways in which their comedy is currently better than ours. A hit sitcom of my own would be nice or any cutting/gluing/colouring-in project would be great, I haven't had one of those since school and I bloody loved them. Always thought about doing a podcast too, I could talk at my laptop for ages about shit and two of my friends could pretend to listen and tell me they liked it and I'd feel special. An Edinburgh show too.

Dream Alternative Career:

Well, I don't really have a career at the moment. I'm a writer to pay the bills while I wait for inspiration for my next big waiting job. Ideally, a writer of comedy. As a child I wanted to be a window cleaner for a bit, but I think that dream is now dead. There was once a window cleaner when I was five who seemed happy and I thought he must have had a good life. But when I was six I saw Canary Wharf and thought fuck that shit. Scared me off far too young. Since then it's been comedy writer all the way. I'm kinda singularly focussed in career terms actually. That might encourage some people to chase that option vigorously but...seems like harder work than pint pouring doesn't it?

Dream Holiday:

 

Been on it all ready. It's the Edinburgh Fringe Festival. If they could transport that to somewhere where the weather is less fucked in August it'd be spot on. I could quite happily spend the whole month there and would love to bankrupt myself achieving that dream one day, seeing show after show for a whole month. Plus late night drinking in a city where all the girls sound like Karen Gillan! What's not too like? Plus I've bumped into all my favourite people in bars in Edinburgh: Paul Merton, Suggs, Marcus Brigstocke, Thom Debaere, Ben Goldsmith and Simon Amstell.

Dream Home:

That place the old Pope's moved into looks pretty sweet doesn't it? Big old mansions and stately homes on a modest budget are what I'm after, what have you got?

Actually, there's a house between Welwyn North and Welwyn Garden City station and you can see the huge garden from the viaduct. The river runs through both their back and front garden. There are bridges and a little island and all sorts. Nosey people like me would look down on me and Alison Brie sunbathing though so maybe not. Nile's apartment in Frasier is beautifully pretentious. But then if I feel uncomfortable about people looking down on us from the passing trains the studio audience might be a drag. What I want is big house or swanky flat, a reasonable walk from Tesco, a pub, CEX, Costa, a theatre, and one of those adult soft play areas with the big ball pits that grown-ups can go in. If it's in the Mediterranean too that would be a bonus.

Dream Cuisine:

Indian.

Move on, nothing to debate here.

Dream Day Out:

Stay in bed most of the morning. I find the notion of being awake before Channel 4 has finished it's early morning Frasier repeats detestable. In fact since the introduction of 4+1 I sleep a lot more each day. If I am up watch Frasier.

Meet my friends at Joes Cafe in Cheltenham for a massive Belly Buster breakfast. Eat and read the papers there, everyone laughs at my satirical remarks about the headlines (hey, it's my fantasy, doesn't have to be credible).

Breakfast done, head to the shops for a spot of elevenses: crisps, chocolate, a big bottle of Vimto each.

Then helicopter ride to London. The pilot lets me sit in the co-pilot's seat and fly for a bit, until I angrily chase a pigeon for five minutes and nearly crash, then he turns my controls off but doesn't tell me so I still think I'm flying it.

1PM: Lunch at either the Ritz or the pasty shop at Kings Cross. We'll do a vote on the day, but know that I'd personally prefer Kings Cross.

1:30: Go to Golden Nugget Casino in Leicester Square. Win a fortune on Punto Banco so we can afford the rest of the day's activity. Celebrate by throwing chips up into the air and have them falling around us in slow motion like I've seen them do in films. Have cocktails brought to the table on a little tray so people think we must be someone important. Like the young people who do T4 or wanker bankers or something.

Hit up Oxford Street, all the boys go to HMV and buy awesome box-sets with our Punto Banco winnings, and buy some of that delicious vodka I got from Selfridges once. Get thrown out for complaining aggressively that they don't sell fridges. If they do, complain more forcefully. Then head straight to the pub. The girls can go clothes shopping in all the swanky London fashion stores, Primark, PDSA that sort of place - to be honest I don't know much about fashion, they can go where they like so long as it buys us more time in the pub.

Meet up with the girls again. Have a few more drinks.

Visit a museum or art gallery containing works of outstanding beauty. Enjoy the total silence as people weep at the sheer majesty of the exhibits. Shout 'bollocks' loudly and leave.

Punch Piers Morgan in the face and walk away. As he clutches his face in pain, return and punch him in the scrotum. We all do this, we form a queue.

Go to Fortnum and Masons and buy something needlessly extravagant. An expensive coat each or something. Our casino win covers it all. Spend about £60 on posh Fortnum chocolates and scoff them all on the way to the Soho Theatre to see an afternoon show or two if we can squeeze them in, which we can because it's my dream.

Evening drawers near. Time for a curry and some pints. Then it's off to the Comedy Store for a show: Paul Merton, Stewart Lee, David Mitchell, Stephen Fry, and the recently revived Morecambe and Wise perform.

Book into a hotel for the night and get thrown out four minutes later for throwing the TV out the window because I've always wanted to do that. It's one of the big old fashioned TVs too, not a flat one.

Climb to the top of the Shard, discarding clothes on the way up till we just have swimming costumes on, because from the top of the Shard there is a slide like the one in the Barclay’s advert that twists and turns all round London and lands us in Buckingham Palace. Get ready to go out. Boys whack out an episode on one of our box sets and crack open the drinks. Girls continue getting ready. Pre-drinks in the Queen's drawing room with our luxury Selfridge’s vodka. Ring Of Fire, Polish Poker, and Gravy Train (TM) get us all nicely wasted.

Head out to a cocktail bar. Find £20 on the floor, we don't need it because of our Punto Banco millions but it's always nice to find one.

Cocktails and drunken antics. Hop between roofs to get to the clubs. End up in the biggest club in the world with a VIP pass and free drinks. Most of us end up in the room playing cheesy music, but whenever we leave the room we come back with an amazing tale of what happened to us or who we bumped into in another room. At one point we get the whole room to do the wanking-off-the-elephant dance in perfect time.

At the end of the night, we leave the club and the wind blows our expensive Fortnum and Mason's coats dramatically, as the club explodes behind us. None of us flinch. Luke captures the moment perfectly on his camera and it looks like a movie poster. We all get given big canvass copies of it for our walls and use it as our cover photos on Facebook.

We jump on a roller coaster like in the other Barclays advert (this day is in no way sponsored by Barclays, though their money would be gladly accepted to make it come true) and it takes us to Turkish Delight in Cheltenham for kebabs.

Leaving Turkish we bump into the cast of Community and I propose to Alison Brie. Everything fades to black before she answers, because who doesn't love an ambiguous ending?

The whole day is narrated by a very high Greg Proops.

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Fringe Benefits - Day 1

Last month I went on a four day mini-holiday to Edinburgh. I avoid the word mini-break because it was far from a break, there was lots of walking, a fair amount of drinking, early mornings, late nights and lots and lots of doing of things.

To set the scene, since 2007 I have been on five holidays, four of them have been to the beautiful city of Edinburgh during August and have been wonderful. The one time I broke the trend for a June or July trip to France with seven good friends, it ended so disastrously that by the end of it only five of those people were friends and worse still, I had horrific sunburn. I knew I was crazy to mess with the holiday gods, there was never any danger of that in Edinburgh. Edinburgh is like my second, perhaps even, third home.

In a slapdash effort of last minute organising over a pizza at Ben's house - well over my pizza that Ben and Thom also ate - we planned our trip to the greatest comedy and arts festival in the world. It was brilliant and the month or so that followed was filled with pure excitement. What could possibly go wrong? (In fact, nothing, and nothing did go wrong, I'm trying to hook you into this story now before it just turns into reviews of comedy shows...shouldn't have said that. Fuck. It's got a shocking ending, I promise.)

Nothing, in fact, went wrong, but that's not how it seemed at 4am on Tuesday when I had to wake up for our journey to the airport. Our flights were early and cheap and, remarkably painless. For precisely this reason I'm in two minds about this Scottish independence thing, on the one hand, I love how easy and relatively comfortable all the airport shenanigans involved with an internal flight are, but I also wish there was one of those pretty stamps in my passport to commemorate this trip, rather than simply a print out with my name, flight time, a bar code and a list of hand-luggage restrictions. Conversely, I also believe on a metaphorical third hand that you should stop being silly Scottish nationalists. God if the SNP are successful, it'll make my holidaying as stressful as everyone else's, plus they wont pay any child support to us to help bring up Wales.

So we arrived in Scotland and took a bus to the city centre for £1.40....I repeat a £1.40 bus ride...a figure as low as that has not been paid on the privatised buses of Welwyn Garden City since 1924, when Barry caught a bus to visit his next door neighbours. We arrive in the city centre and take a little walk up the Royal Mile.

Day 1 - The Royal Mile. 12noon

The best way to describe the Royal Mile during the Edinburgh festival is: recycling waiting to happen. When you first step onto the royal mile, look up. Then look back down again, your hand is now full of flyers. As you proceed down the mile, past street theatre and makeshift stages, you will be handed more and more flyers. To count them is like counting grains of sand or stars in the night sky: pointless, hard work and probably really really amazing to Professor Brian Cox (Please note: but not to actor Brian Cox who couldn't give a fuck). The Royal Mile is a great street that branches off into roads that connect to all the bigger Edinburgh venues, but my god it's worth avoiding if you're in a hurry to get to one of those. Amongst the throng of people, as a flyer for a comedy show is handed to me by a man in his underpants (I make a note to file it somewhere safe and see that show as underpants are clearly funny, but alas a sharp wind and my wrist action sends it floating into a bin in a screwed up heap), I hear a sound. A sound that would haunt me for the remainder of my stay in Edinburgh. If it was an image I would still see it everytime I closed my eyes, but you cant close your ears so the metaphor is useless! I heard it a bit when my ears popped on the plane though. I speak of the horror of acapella. It's everywhere in Edinburgh. Someone, once decided that music would be better without music, they were wrong and everyone to have performed it since then has been wrong too. Just as people who juggle or pretend to be statues are wrong to call it street-theatre. I cant deny there is a lot of street involved, but it is hardly on a par with Hamlet or even Mama Mia. "My bikes only got one wheel," yeah, it was fucking clever the first time I saw that, but word of advice...it's been done.

Sean Hughes: Life Becomes Noise - Pleasance Forth - 5:30PM

Ah, Sean Hughes, proof of the old saying "Never let yourself be replaced by Bill Bailey. You will only be forgotten." The underrated (my opinion, but coincidentally factually correct) former Buzzcocks team captain and Coronation Street star whose dad has recently died.

More on that later. But first news of the queue. Don't worry, my obsession with Edinburgh does not yet stretch to reviewing the queues (for anyone interested, comfortably short, plenty of breathing space in front and behind and a pleasing amount of sunshine (4/5)). It was while queuing for this particular show that another show was ending around the corner in the Pleasance Grand. The Pleasance is my favourite Edinburgh venue. A collection of rooms that are part of the university the rest of the year. Some rooms clearly designed to be theatre space, others are bars or gyms or small rooms of no significance 11 months of the year, but all are venues for top entertainment during August. It's also got a beautiful courtyard where everyone mills around between shows at open air bars and eateries (by which I mean sheds selling burgers). If you're a celebrity spotter, this is the place to be. And coming out of his show at that exact moment while we waited for Sean's show was my comedy hero,  Paul Merton. We'd warmed up earlier on the Royal Mile by meeting Simon Amstell, but my social awkwardness and his made conversation brief at best. A polite "I quite like you on the telly" was all I could muster. Mutual social awkwardness tends not to lead to "Oh wow! How cool! Me too!" type of conversation. But this was Merton. Comedy royalty. The man I aspired to be like. I would have to get a photo, tell him I was coming to his show and embarrassingly attempt a joke in his vicinity. I don't recall the joke or his response, but it was probably a polite "nice try" sort of laugh and we achieved photography, courtesy of Andre Vincent who pushed the button after which point I worked in a mention of The Early Edition just to prove I knew he had a show and wasn't a randomer we'd accosted to get a photo with a much more famous comedian.

Sean's show itself dealt with the death of his father and had something more of a one-man-play style than it did of the stand-up comedy style. Which is not to suggest for a moment that it wasn't funny. It was very funny. Darkly comic throughout but with some great puns too ("My dad's dying of the big C...He's drowning.") with a set and acting performances and puppets, but he drew the audience in with some audience participation too.


Rhys Darby: This Way To Spaceship - Pleasance Grand - 8PM

A surreal stand-up performance. Rhys Darby wakes up on a spaceship and recalls the events of his life to work out how he could have ended up there. A lot of it is observational comedy about dancing in clubs, Dyson hand-dryers and a childhood rebellion on a golf course, but Rhys has a seriously good surreal style and a great turn of phrase (helped by the New Zealand accent) that elevates it to being something brilliant. One of the best stand-up shows I saw at this years fringe. Clever surreal. Better, and slightly more grounded than the Mighty Boosh/Noel Feilding style of surrealness (surrealality?) where nothing makes sense at all. Plus the space ship is voiced by Jermaine which is pleasing.

This one may seem a bit short, but in fact it was one of the best stand-up shows of the 2012 fringe, it's just nothing much happened around it. We found a pub that sold Iduns cider (remember that name, hopefully that stuff is going to be massive) and a delicious steak sandwich, see I knew you wouldn't care.

The Horne Section - Pleasance Grand - 11:15PM

Earlier in the day, we were given a book of flyers for shows at the Bongo Club that included Simon Amstell's. We decided therefore to see Simon Amstell. Sadly he was sold out. Miserable, dejected, we could have left Edinburgh at that moment having failed, or gone to see some acapella. But instead we soldiered on towards the Pleasance - ok it wasn't that hard, it was right next door, but there was a hill! The Pleasance is home to many great acts and so in "the great ticket splurge of 2012" we spent close to £200 (not each) on tickets, and while Ben was entering his card details, I spotted a sign on the wall that announced Simon Amstell would be the special guest joining The Horne Section on stage that night at 11:15pm. Given the title of this section you can probably already guess that we spent some more money and went to see The Horne Section, who were becoming slightly legendary around the festival as a fun way to end the night and had lots of five star reviews.

Firstly, I should mention The Horne Section themselves. They're a band led by Alex Horne who, according to them, are the first to bring music and comedy together. A lot of their songs and routines remain stuck in my head to this day. Especially "This is not the show. This is just the intro" during which they attempted to assess who in the audience was in their demographic and we weren't. Their demographic is only men over thirty with beards. A lot of their routines were very simple musical gimmicks, but they were all very fun and clever at the same time. It was a very nuanced performance (apologies for sounding all wanky like a real critic) with loads of little touches, tiny gestures, quietly brilliant looks and lines that made them stand-out above the rest. As did the fact that they're brilliant musicians - the band clearly excel in their own right outside of this comedy, largely improvised silliness.

Then there were the guests. First up: Lloyd Langford. He's one of those Welsh. He hangs around a lot with Rhod Gilbert on various projects (not the suggest for one moment that all Welsh comedians live in a big house together, but they probably do.) and did a couple of stories from his stand-up show while the band improvised some musical accompanyment. It was clearly a lot of fun for both sides and he interacted a lot with the band, made suggestions, mocked and encouraged them. His stand-up was good too, though having seen a couple of stories from it here, I didn't go and see his actual show. It probably just wouldn't be the same acapella.

The next guests were a very weird pair. I have no recollection of what they were called, as they were slightly drowned out in my mind by the weight and excitement of the other guests, but essentially they were a musical duo that were dressed and made-up as though they had barely survived an apocalypse who played music on a table. That is they slapped a table repeatedly to make a rhythm and music. It may have been some sort of a special magic table, I don't know, but it was very good whatever voodoo they used to create that sound. They slapped each other as well for added amusement and did some Irish dancing.

Then it was the turn of Simon Amstell, originally our main reason for being here and still a very exciting one, but now The Horne Section had proven itself brilliant in it's own right. The only way this could get better is if Simon Amstell did a hilarious medly of I Can Be Your Hero Baby, The Circle Of Life and Kiss From A Rose so it's quite lucky that's what he did, as it was brilliant.

So that's all good then. All the advertised guests have been on and been good and now all that remains is for the Horne Section to do some material about the Olympics and we can all go home to bed - I'm not going to lie, I've been up since four in the morning and it's coming up to one in the morning tomorrow now, I've laughed a lot, I've eaten a lot (when your day is that long, standard mealtimes no longer make sense. When breakfast is at 5am, things get complicated), I've walked about a bit and I've met some famous people. I'm ready for my bed...well someone else's sofa where I will be kipping. "Did everyone enjoy the closing ceremony?" Alex Horne asks. We cheer. "And what was the best bit of the closing ceremony?" he asks. We shout some suggestions "That is was over," being a particular heckle I didn't think I would disagree with prior to the Olympics. "That Paul McCartney didn't sing," heckled another man, this time that I agreed with. "Madness," thought I.
"That's right, Madness," said Alex Horne, either through psychic power or pre-arranged script. In light of the picture that appeared on the projector at that moment probably the latter. The picture was of Madness with a circle drawn around one member of the famous ska band so that we'd spot that he was also part of a certain comedy band. A round of applause ensued. I was in the presence of one of The Madness. I was happy with that. But then, the curtains started twitching and whose this walking out?! It's only fucking Suggs!!! From Madness!!! I cannot stress how awake I was at this point! I joined in with "It Must Be Love" as though it were the national anthem and I were a member of the EDL, probably massively annoying the people around me who wanted to enjoy the music, but guess how much I cared.

All the men with beards got up on the stage and were led out of the room by the wonderful beard of Alex Horne and we virtually skipped - skanked more like - into the bar where we met Paul Merton. It was late now and the bar was empty, aside from the back of a man stood at the bar. A back I had a feeling I recognised. We instantly ran over to the back and told it how awesome we think Madness are, and that we'd just seen him in the Horne Section and it made our night and that we've downloaded Death Of A Rudeboy already and that we'd love to have a photo and that wow! And then we touched Suggs. Actually shook hands with the lead singer of my favourite band ever! No longer so sleepy, adrenaline or something (I'm no biologist, what is it you get when you're excited?), excitaline or something, forced us to go on a little walk and sing Madness songs, before getting a taxi to the wrong place and wandering the cold Scottish streets some more in search of our beds.

Next time: We see a terrible show, more encounters with a comedy legend and some dancing.