Homecoming

I really don't like the way blogspot writes the number of posts I do each month/year next to this, because it constantly reminds me that I do bugger all writing. I'm trying to fix this now though, since I've moved back to Welwyn Garden City. After spending four years living in Cheltenham (3 years of university and 1 year to watch The Sopranos boxset) I've finally had to come home. University never felt like the real world - well it did at the start of course, I'm living on my own, doing my own shopping and drinking legally like what grown-ups do, but when the government are giving you money to go out and buy vodka it's hard to see that as the real world. So, in my third year, when I received an e-mail asking what my plans were for the following year ("er....they're....I'm going to be a world famous writer!...nevermind how! they'll read my blog and give me a novel deal....shut up!") and if I fancied staying in Cheltenham, I jumped at the chance. It was a way to continue getting drunk and I saw it as a "gap-year," albiet one where I didn't travel the world, see China or help build a school in Africa. The closest I got to travelling the globe and trying new experiences was accidentally walking into a gay bar in Gloucester.

But I could pretend to still be a student and spend as much time as possible drunk and that was a good enough excuse to avoid doing anything proper/scary career-wise and, more importantly, watch The Sopranos. I even went out for the first night of Fresher's. That was fucking weird. It makes you realise what a dick you were back then. It was most of these kid's first night's away from home and they went mental! I forgot there was a time when you were genuinely excited about a man throwing glow-sticks at the crowd. Most of these people had never been given a glow-stick by someone at this stage in their life. Their days had been made. It was quite moving to see.

To be perfectly honest, Welwyn Garden City is definitely far less of the real world than Cheltenham. If a major reality check is what you're avoiding (and let's be honest, it was) then a place that calls itself a city when it's barely even a town is the place to be. By the definition of the Oxford English Dictionary a city has to have a cathedral and by my personal definition, it's not a real town if it doesn't have, at least, a reasonably sized HMV. Two things worried me on the day I moved back home 1) Where was I going to put my DVD collection (approx. 500 DVDs... every time I've come to count them something has distracted me before I finished). 2) Where the hell was I going to buy my DVDs from now on? I'm used to having CEX and HMV a short walk away. If ever I was bored or needed a new DVD because I didn't fancy any of the 500 I own, or just needed to walk off a hangover, I could just nip out and buy one. Here I have to take the bloody day off if I want to waste my money. And if I want a good selection of DVDs I have to visit Stevenage *shudders*.

Welwyn Village is nowhere near reality. It's like living in an episode of Midsomer Murders but without the excitement of murders, or a strict adherence to a white-people-only casting policy, despite the wishes of some of the older people who live here. Sadly, I returned a little bit after Welwyn Festival Week, which is a wonderful display of bunting, street markets, history of Welwyn talks, open gardens (why not go and sit in someone else's garden for an afternoon? - there's usually cake), tombola's, a village fete and not-to-forget the headlining event: the 47th Annual Welwyn Duck Race. Oh, the Annual Welwyn Duck Race, it's no lie or sarcasm to say it really is the talk of the town. God himself tried to stop us one year when the river dried up in the midst of a drought, but we merely called in the fire brigade who used their hoses to force the ducks along the path where the river once ran. It is not known how many people died or treasured heirlooms were ravaged by fire during this time or how that squares with a national hosepipe ban, but Goddamnit, you don't mess with our duck race!

It's sweet that the Welwyn Festival is a chance for the whole community to come together and do something and get excited by rubber (oh yes, they're not even real!) ducks floating down the river that runs through the village. Maybe it's due to the lack of DVD shops, book shops, cinemas, any venue open later than 10pm (even the streetlights pack up for the night and turn themselves off at midnight), that there is a proper sense of community in Welwyn. It's the kind of place where everybody knows each other. I'm constantly bumping into people who I kind of know from ages ago, or whose face I kinda remember or whose son/daughter went to school with me. I'm constantly getting into conversations that begin:
THEM: "You don't remember me do you?" SUBTEXT: I'm saying this to put you at your ease so you don't feel awkward about admitting that.
ME: "Yeah. I do. 'Course I do" SUBTEXT: You're right, I don't remember you, but I'm worried that you'll be offended if I say that. And you massively overestimate how supremely awkward I am around strangers or people I barely know or my close personal friends.
THEM: "How are you?" SUBTEXT: I'm flaterred you remember me.
ME: "Oh, fine. Same old. Same old. You?" SUBTEXT: Please respond with something like "same old...still teaching year 6 at St. Marys Primary School where you went all those years ago."
There are a few elderly dog walkers on my street who I regularly keep up-to-date with my university shenanigans, because if I talk about myself for long enough the dogs will get restless before I have to ask about their lives. It's not rudeness it's just I'm pretty sure I don't actually know who these people are. One day, one of them stopped me and offered his sympathy following my dad's stroke and hoped I'd pass on his good-will...wait a minute...you don't know me either?! My dad hasn't had a stroke. I'd describe Welwyn as a place where everybody knows everybody else, but I think it's something infinitely more beautiful than that, it's a place where nobody knows anyone else, but everyone is to awkward to admit this. That's a wonderful society.

That said, we do need to sort something out right now, people of Welwyn. Smiling. It's the kind of place where people smile politely when they pass and while I can see that this is a terribly civilised way to go about, we need to develop a system of signalling - a smile that means "hey! I'm just smiling," a smile that means "I'm smiling because I know you and we should chat," and a smile that means "I'm mental." - because I'm tired of pulling my earphones out and looking like a moron, or leaving them in and saying "hi" with no idea how loud it was.

I'm not sure how comfortable I am living in a friendly place. It's the kind of place where David Cameron's Big Society could genuinely work. Lot's of middle class people all volunteering and being communal. It's lovely. But lets consider this: do we want to let David Cameron's Big Society work? Surely any time David Cameron wins is regrettable. And everyone helping organise the duck race should never lead to "meh...get people to run their own schools, save us some money" thinking in the government.

In Welwyn's defence: That's the view from the shopping centre.

The local newspaper is shared with the next town along Hatfield. The Welwyn Hatfield Times concisely sums up the differences between these two towns. A game I like to play (because I'm sad and bored) is "Hatfield or Welwyn?" Two example headlines might be HORRIFIC MURDER! and FLOWER SHOW A SUCCESS. (If you said 1. Hatfield. 2. Welwyn, give yourself 2 points. Well played). In my first week back they printed the gripping story "BUSINESS AS USUAL AT WATER FIRM" and on the letters page it's all kicking off about the parking situation on Knightsfield let me tell you! There was a story about the Bowls team being on fire, but that turned out to be more metaphorical and less amusing than I first thought. It's a quality local paper - one that's even printed my picture a few times - it does good work and good reporting for the community but it's not always the most exciting place to be doing it. And it'll never beat the Gloucestershire Echo's single greatest headline of all time

And here is my picture from the Welwyn Hatfield Times getting my A-Level results...

unfortunately for Welwyn capturing the joy of the moment I discovered I would be leaving.

Welwyn and Cheltenham are similar in some ways. They're both quite posh. Every comedian who I saw in Cheltenham went on and on about how posh it was. I lived in St. Paul's, I had no idea what they were on about. Whenever anyone visits Cheltenham they would kick our bit of the town under a giant sofa in Pittville Park and distract the visitors with cake and fine cutlery. Both places are literally full of big, nice, expensive houses that I will eventually buy once I've become a successful writer (when is that happening by the way?). Which I guess means, now that I'm home with nothing to do except write and walk around looking at nice houses I should own, I guess I should probably do some writing. It's free from distractions. It takes 20 minutes to walk to my nearest friend's house instead of...well living in my nearest friend's house. So I moved back in, unpacked my DVDs and books, and immediately set about writing, ok I watched all 3 series of Community in 4 days. (WATCH IT! It's amazing. You have to watch it online or it's on the Sony channel (?) on Sky). But then I set about writing. Well, I opened Word - Look it's not my fault the youtube machine and the important-future-career-ensuring machine are the same thing. But, over the last week, I've been trying to dedicate a bit of time every single day to writing (it's a 5/7 success. I couldn't be bothered on Tuesday. Tuesdays are boring.) and that's not including this. This is just mucking about and a bit of practice for the old fingers. So I'm definitely not going to try and keep this blog up and regular (every time I say that I will, I write three more then piss off for six months). 

Now, I just need stuff to write about. Sport probably. I've probably got to mention the Olympics, I believe it's the law that everyone has to mention it in everything they write at the moment. I did try and get into sport a bit over the summer, I saw some of the Euros (They're not as bad as everything I'd read about them beforehand. I thought Spain and Italy were meant to be fucked...maybe I got confused) and I watched British Scottish hopeful Andy Murray in his Tennis final. Wimbledon is about Pimms, Strawberrys and Maria Sharapova's legs, in theory I should love it. But...I think the rain ruined it a bit. It took far too long to put the roof on, for those who don't know the sport, that's because they have to lower the umpire's chair first or his head gets stuck in it. If the players just wore a colour that didn't go see through when wet, there'd be no need for any of that song-and-dance. I don't really understand the scores either. There were three numbers at the top: I assume one is the number of points they've got, one is the number of sets they've won and the third is the number of celebrities they've spotted in the crowd. That seemed to be the most important bit judging by the BBC coverage.

Anyway, I'm off to write or look at youtube now. One last note about Welwyn's community spirit. Here is a photo taken at the Welwyn Festival (I think) in 2000 to celebrate the millenium. Loads of people turned up and I'm right near the front. It's the only copy I could find online so it's not particularly clear, but I am the one wearing a cap (? I know!) and - no word of a lie - picking my nose in this delightful record of Welwyn's history.

(By the way: The cap says "Been There. Done That." That's how I'm commemorated in a piece of my village's history)

And now, the weather

It’s been a while since I last wrote a blog so I figure I should, but I don’t really have anything to talk about. So er....lovely weather for the time of year innit?

Oh yeah, it’s summer. Not quite sure how it happened but it’s been summer this week. If I had to guess, I’d say it’s something to do with changing to British Summer Time last Sunday. Everyone changing their clocks forward an hour so that between 1 and 2am didn’t exist. This fucking around with time can only end badly. We’re not Timelords! We can’t just go altering time because we don’t want to go to work in the dark. I’ve seen Back To The Future what if people start fading away? Think of all the babies that should have been born during that hour who now wont be born! Think what if, during that hour, someone had come up with the solution to world peace, but we just deleted that whole hour. Think, most importantly, of the poor bastard who had a meeting at work at 9am and hadn’t got much sleep! Well, I couldn’t go to bed before 1am because – despite it happening once every six months – no one is ever quite sure if theirphone changes automatically and by the time I’d confirmed that it did, it was all ready 2am.

So it’s summer now and the park behind my house is full of people chilling and playing games, while I sit in my room writing blogs and cursing the eejit builder who put the bathroom window that overlooks the park in the actual bloody shower. There’s always the downstairs shower, but it’s impossible to stand up straight in that tiny room, last time I used it (because some work men were retiling and playing bloody Radio 2 in the good one) I wacked my head repeatedly on the ceiling and had to bend over meaning my arse was poking out of the shower curtain – in prisons I believe that’s known as a target.

Cheltenham: Twinned with Ibiza, Miami beach and Put-a-fucking-shirt-on-on-sea.

I do try and get out and about when I can though if it’s sunny. I go to the park and play football, well stand around by the side of the pitch while the bigger boys play football. I’m not a fan of exercise, I always like there to be odd numbers at a football game because it means I get to sit down. I just like sitting around in the sun to be honest. Most of the time I read a book or wait for any girls who came out (who all got picked for the football teams before me) to start playing Frisbee – I am so Will from the Inbetweeners it’s horrible.

It’s not all good though. The thing is the Sun is a bit like a guy who does really terrible farts all day even when it goes away its effects still linger. It’s night, there’s not even any sun, but yet I’m still getting an interrupted night of sleep and waking up all sticky – and not in the good way. It’s easy to warm yourself up in the winter, but it’s so hard to cool yourself down in the summer. There are rules about the minimum temperature at which you can work, but no maximum, that’s sick!

The people I feel most sorry for are the weather forecasters. These days what with climate change, the weather seems to go between the extremes of really cold winters and really hot summers with not much inbetween weather. As a result the weatherman kinda has his thunder stolen (pun intended, though I am still a bit ashamed) by the newsreader. A lot of the time the news these days is reporting that it is the hottest/coldest day since records began. Every damn year! Are you sure they’re not just mislaying all these records? Or using a magnifying glass as a paper weight? “The records are on fire!! Well at least we know it’s hot, someone tell the news.”

When Huw Edwards hands over to the weatherman, the weatherman must so badly want to say, “You bastard! You utter wanker! I wanted to report on the snow! Weather is my job! You don’t hear me banging on about Syria do you!?! Yeah, it’s snowing. What’s the point of me saying that now, after you’ve interviewed all the dickwads stuck at the airport! ‘Oh it’s terrible...one little bit of snow and the country grinds to a...it’s not like this at the north pole, they’re prepared for snow.’ You imbecile!! Of course they are, they’re bloody made of it!! ‘Oh no, it’s terrible, we’re stranded abroad!’ Yeah ON HOLIDAY, being stranded at the top of Everest or the north pole is fair enough...I’m just saying it doesn’t count as ‘stranded’ if there’s a pool, you know what I mean Huw? Anyway since Huw has already told you what the weather is like, here’s some pictures you sent in. That’s right we’re actually showing pictures you sent in! We’re calling this part of the news but it’s clearly little more than Springwatch and The One Show combined and condensed down to a minute and a half. Look here’s a car with some snow on it sent in by Ben in Harrogate, and here’s a field covered in snow, sent in by the same person who will send a picture of the same field with a vaguely seasonal bird in it come the spring. This photo of a lady lying in the snow was sent in by Lucy in South Hampton making a snow angel, and this photo of a lady lying in the snow was sent in by Detective constable Thomas Bramble who says if anybody saw anything it would be most helpful, she’s been dead for quite some time now. SEE! Don’t like it when I do the news do you Huw! So before you go showing any of those video reports in the summer where the camera man focuses on a lady in a bikini for as long as he can get away with it. I want to show those pictures! Anyway, in Scotland there will be terrible storms and so...Huw? Did you steal my thunder symbol? I’ll be back at around midnight with that special weather report where I tell you what the weather is like in Switzerland for a reason no one at the BBC is sure of. I think they just put it on to keep me at work longer than I need to be on pointless tasks.”

I imagine that’s the kind of thing they want to say, it’s all in the subtext of that awful forced laugh they do in response to the newsreaders banter. It’s thanks to an outburst like this that Carol from BBC breakfast was banned from the studio and now has to stand in the coldest or hottest place they can find.

By the way, here's a blog from about a year ago about British Summer Time: http://danvine.tumblr.com/post/3593755865/only-a-matter-of-time

Wind Up Toy

Ok, here’s the thing Blogger. I’m reasonably happy with my choices in life. On the whole. I make decisions, pick favourites and stick by them. Most of my decisions in this area have made me happier and certainly I now surround myself with more cheery things. But recently, I’ve started to doubt it, just recently I’ve been thinking a lot about my former love Alice. It’s Madness, of course it is, Madness, total divine Madness all the way, but still….Alice.

I should make clear at this point, rather than later on, that I am talking about music here and not revealing some sordid secrets of my love life - I just wanted an opening that misled you into wanting to read what I have to say. The Alice in question is not beautiful, smiley, funny with lovely smelling hair and boobs. In fact he’s ragged and old and wrinkly with messy hair and a giant albino boa constrictor called Katrina, he is Alice Cooper. Yes, you do know him, he did “Schools Out for summer!!”

Anyway, my point is this. Just recently, I have been listening to a lot of Alice Cooper, as you probably all ready know because Spotify now tells Facebook everything - I can never listen to a cheeky bit of S Club again without it grassing me up to all my friends, wanker.

(Er…I don’t do that)

This is all kinda interesting to me and literally no one else, because the other day, I was wondering into town listening to my iPod and in between all the ska, Weird Al, clips from Radio 4 comedy and classic rock that make me feel varied, random and interesting when I shuffle all my tastes, this insignificant Alice Cooper album track tucked away at the end of his 1991, Top 47 bothering album Hey Stoopid came on.

For no adequately answerable reason, I hadn’t heard that song in fucking years. It’s one of my few very favourite songs, I don’t listen to on a weekly or, at least, monthly basis. So I’m having a little walk, thinking about this song, what it means and all the clever little tricks and bits of post-production he uses to make it creepy. All stuff that I think makes me appear deep, analytical and clever. It actually makes me look like a fool who isn’t paying attention to where he’s going and keeps tripping over loose paving slabs or walking into lamp-posts and shoppers. But as I tripped and stumbled into town, it occurred to me that this was the first rock song I can ever remember hearing.

It certainly wasn’t the first rock song I heard. At the moment of my birth, I’m informed that Bohemian Rhapsody was playing - I have a lot of love and respect for my mother for bringing me into this world and more for my dad for not saying “keep it down, I like this one” and letting go of her hand to air guitar to the loud bit. Also, it’s the last track on the album, so there isn’t a chance in hell that it’s the first rock song I heard! But what can I say? Memory can be a fucker.

Bear in mind, I was aged somewhere between 8 and 10 I’d guess, and my music taste up until this point had been largely the fare of school discos and the nightclubs at Haven Holiday Camps(or “singing and dancing” as my young very literal child’s brain called them. I probably called pubs “drinking and puking” too). Now it goes without say that after some Blue slushpuppy (coz it’s obviously the best) and an overdose of Panda Pops, I’ll jump around to any old shite. I think BOOM BOOM BOOM BOOM! I WANT YOU IN MY ROOM. LETS SPEND THE NIGHT TOGETHER FROM NOW UNTIL FOREVER was my favourite song for a while. Back in the days when you were too young to know if a song was about sex - I guess it’s the “until forever” bit that’s confusing but then “Boom, Boom, Boom, Boom, I want you in my room for about 5 minutes then I just want to not fall asleep in the damp patch” was never gonna chart.

Any rock I had listened to from my parents collection was more of the “safe” (that’s a terrible word to describe it, I apologise for my lackadaisical attitude to finding pertinent synonyms) more pop-py stuff. So when I got bored of my pop mix CD and went looking in my dad’s CD collection I found Hey Stoopid and listened to Wind Up Toy for the first time. It elicited a reaction I didn’t know music could. It scared me. At that stage I was pretty much scared of everything by the way: the noise the pipes made in our house at night, the big cupboard in the corner of my room I rarely looked in but once saw a spider when I did, being told off by Mrs. Witchell, the millennium bug. But this song kinda got to me, it was weird and creepy. But it was also kinda exciting and loud and had lots of good words (this is me trying to express the thoughts I had when I was 9, not just being a shite writer). Instead of ignoring it, I decided to listen to it over and over again a hundred times, which was how I responded to anything exciting as a child. I watched new Postman Pat videos until I could quote it. I would slide the CD off the shelf and try not to look at the cover, I couldn’t articulate really how it made me feel, partly coz fear is a really primal, deep and affecting emotion, but also coz at that age nobody had yet taught me the phrase “That is some fucked up shit.”

Then I grabbed some big 90s headphones, plugged them into the big 90s stereo, slid the CD into the drawer between the tape-deck and turntable…look what I’m trying to say is this happened in the past! Before I could do this kinda thing on my computer in the comfort of my own bedroom. Back in primary school I thought I was pretty clever coz Mr Hutton the computer teacher let me help him fix machines coz I knew them, it now occurs to me that computers were just stupid. So in those days where Windows 98 ruled, I would sit in the corner of the living room listening to this album. Sometimes skipping straight to track 12 or stopping at track 8 which is also fantastic.

As the 00s raged and computers grew up - remember the days when the internet was so small Askjeeves was an effective search engine? - I started looking up this Alice Cooper bloke. I’d probably listened to a few of his albums that my dad had by then. His 2003 albumThe Eyes Of Alice Cooper is the first album I ever bought…I say bought, but I pestered my dad for the money. I ended up reading about this stone-cold-sober reformed alcoholic Christian golf-playing old man. Ok, a golf-player who goes on stage every night with a sword and a snake and has his head cut off, but a golf-player nonetheless. Not very rock and roll is it? I think I prefer him for that though, the fact it’s all an act it’s so much more impressive. In terms of his big over-the-top live shows I guess Lady Gaga is the current equivalent (she’s even cited Alice as an influence), and I think I would have a lot more time for her if she could confine her weirdness to a stage between the hours of 7 and 10, and didn’t turn up on Jonathan Ross with a phone on her head. To be fair, back in his youth Alice basically lived the life of his on-stage persona (with less murder and more drinking) until it all but killed him (his From The Inside album partly written while he was in an asylum recovering is phenomenal and blows away every image you might have of his music from his reputation).

This wasn’t my thinking at the time, but what with now wanting to be a writer it seems that I probably like it more that it’s all a story. I don’t particularly like horror in rock, I also love Pink Floyd and went through a Lordi phase after the 2006 Eurovision song contest, but mostly I don’t listen to horror rock. I like lots of it, but nowhere near as much as I like Alice. As I said at the start, I’m more a lighthearted happy ska man. But with Alice, every album tells a story, but better than that, every song tells a story in it’s own right as well. That’s incredibly clever. If you asked me to compile a list of the most underrated writers of all time (and even if you don’t I’ll definitely write a blog about it soon) he’d be up there. His narratives and ideas are so good that in 2011 he released an amazing sequel to his 1975 masterpiece Welcome To My Nightmare. All through his discography are subtle ballads and slow songs and works of beauty too.

These days he’s not seen as the hardest, edgiest rocker, just in the same way The Beatles don’t seem quite so ground breaking because rock has evolved and moved on since, but they started it. I guess these days screemo is the new hardest rock, most of those bands were influenced by Alice, but it’s not the same for me. Screemo is like car horns, the Daily Mail letters page, and the comments on tripadvisor.com: an angry, inarticulate noise. It’s like “Ok, I get that you’re angry. Just calm down. Chill out. Stop shouting and write me a song that tells me why.” Alice’s songs also have a fantastic sense of humour to them, and a lot of it is tongue-in-cheek which I massively love. There is nothing worse than music that takes itself too seriously.

So there you go, I recommend you check out some Alice Cooper for sophisticated, good rock and story telling. I also recommend you check out my friend Lee’s blog for more proper music reviews that aren’t secretly all about me and my adolescence: http://unacclaimedmusicfan.blogspot.com/2012/02/44-and-angels-airwaves.html

And finally to reward you for sticking through my chat about me and Alice Cooper, here is a more mainstream Alice hit and a video with boobies in it. Enjoy

“The world needed bad guys and music. We needed the ultimate rock’n’roll villain…Enter the Coop…the original punk…and the original goth, glam, shock rocker”-Rob Zombie

“When Alice comes on the stage, it’s like a mythical character. He’s still my favourite rock star.”-Vincent Furnier

Private Passion

One of those things people always asked in those annoying MySpace (or My [ ] as I understand it's now called, in a witless move that reminds me I'm not sad I left it) questionnaires that went round, aside from "do you have a crush on one of your top 8 friends?" was "What's your favourite TV program?" Occasionally you'd get a "What's your favourite book?" but more often that question was left out for the naturally important "Who's the last person you texted? Was it a girl? Was it? Was it? Do you have a crush on someone?" In conversation too it's always "Did you see Sherlock at the weekend?" or whatever the TV talking point is at the time or "What music do you like?"

They're all great questions and tell you a lot about me (Yes. Have I Got News For You or Doctor Who. The Hitchhikers Guide To The Galaxy. Lee. He's not a girl though I can understand why you'd be confused. Yes wasn't it excellent, I have theories but bloody Moffat is gonna make us wait another 18 months isn't he!!! and Ska & Rock. In case you were interested) but they miss out something I love almost on a par with TV:

Radio.

Specifically Radio 4 and Radio 4 Extra (for the even more sad). I feel for those of you who didn't close the window the second I said Radio 4, I should explain. I don't love ALL of Radio 4. The only point to The Archers as far as I can tell is so we have an equivalent to "it's like watching paint dry" for blind people: "It's like listening to The Archers." Nor do I care for shipping forecasts and even though I love books I never listen to The Book At Bedtime mainly because 10:45 is not bedtime. Until they move it to 3am and have someone reading aloud from the weeks FHM magazine, Radio 4 is never gonna shake off it's elderly image.

But comedy. Comedy I love as an art above all others and Radio 4 does it fantastically. 6:30 every weekday is home to some of the funniest jokes I have ever heard and Claire In The Community (If I tell you the name is the funniest thing about it, you start to see what I mean). I used to use Radio 4 to give me the edge when it came to comedy. By that I mean, I stole the jokes and told them at school coz nobody was gonna have listened to it. It keeps me one step ahead when it comes to comedians to watch out for, thanks to his excellent series What To Do If You're Not Like Everybody Else on Radio 4, I was very excited to go and see Andrew Lawrence live at the Frog and Fiddle even if no one else knew why I was THAT excited to be going to the pub and staged an intervention in case I had a drinking problem. Then eventually when Andrew Lawrence appeared on Mock The Week I could be smug and happy coz I already knew about him.

But the time for my secret passion is over, because I think everyone should be talking about and enjoying these quality shows. So, with that in mind, here are 10 Radio comedies, I think everyone should give a go. Think of these as the 10 shows I would take with me if I was stranded on a desert island.

10. You'll Have Had Your Tea: The Doings Of Hamish and Dougal

This series of 15 minute visits to the glens of Scotland is a spin-off of another radio comedy, I'm Sorry I Haven't A Clue (more of which later). It's also a great one to start this list with because it demonstrates some of the things radio comedy can do which it's TV counterparts can't. For example, one episode involves Hamish and Dougal getting stuck in a massive London department store in between floors. After five minutes of jokes about them panicking and having to eat each other, it is revealed that they aren't in a lift but are on an escalator that has stopped and can't be bothered to walk up the remaining stairs, obviously on TV that joke would be ruined from the start, on radio it's great. It's written by and stars Barry Cryer (Morecambe and Wise, The Two Ronnies) and Greame Garden (The Goodies) with Jeremy Hardy (more of whom later) and Alison Steadman (Gavin's mum in Gavin and Stacey) Hamish and Dougal is a world of puns (*Lots of glasses raised and clinking* "To the ladies!" *everybody runs to the women's toilet. and the homeless man selling Bigger Shoes.) and surreal stupidity. The great thing about radio is that budget's really don't matter hence this crazy film parody with Volcano. It's not quite brilliant out of context, but there isn't enough of this show on the interweb, still funny though:

9. That Mitchell and Webb Sound

David Mitchell (That Mitchell and Webb Look) and Robert Webb (The Mitchell and Webb Look) write and star in this precursor to TV's That Mitchell and Webb Look. It's a good example of how TV shows start out on the radio. Little Britain, The Mighty Boosh, Hancock's Half Hour, Armstrong and Miller, Whose Line Is It Anyway?, Alan Partridge... is a very short list of others that started on Radio. A lot of Mitchell and Webb's radio sketches were done again in the TV show, because sometimes Radio is a good testing ground for comedians to try out material before showing it to millions of people on TV, so listening to this put you one step ahead of the comedy game. A lot of their radio sketches were just inspired dualogues between the two of them some quite surreal and inspired ramblings. Here they are playing inanimate objects and someone has made some pictures for it

Also a little bonus clip for big comedy fans, a sketch which references loads of other comedy sketches

8. Count Arthur Strong's Radio Show

A traditional sitcom this time, about an elderly old "celebrity" (how famous he was is pretty vague, but it's obvious he wasn't that famous, definitely not as famous as he thinks) who has gone senile and is very often drunk. Barely knowing where he is or what he's saying, hilarious misunderstandings ensue. Steve Delaney has created a very good character, which he plays really well, I've seen Count Arthur Strong live and met Count Arthur Strong and he never breaks character once. He's a bumbling forgetful old idiot, so it is appropriate that I left my signed poster on the train on the way home.

In this clip, he is giving a speech to Oxford University on Creation vs. Natural Selection, but they've provided free drinks so he ends up rambling on about Cremation vs. Naturism.

7. Bleak Expectations

This big epic parody of Dickens has been running for four series now. In it Pip Bin (inventor of the bin) relates the story of how, when he was young, he and his loyal if useless friend Harry Biscuit battle the evil plans of Mr Gently Benevolent played by Antony Head (Buffy and everything else on TV ever) and various members of the Sternbeater or Hardthrasher family. The situations get increasingly complicated and surreal with bizzarely silly metaphors and the kind of big budget comedy stunts TV can only dream of. It's set in the Victorian world of workhouses and the industrial revolution and yet boasts "Shipwrecks, time-machines, the wild west, volcanoes, the underworld and a sinister new kind of cake." It's all a bit daft, I love that. I feel bad putting it as low as 7, but there are some proper classics coming up. This is definitely one of my favourite shows though.
There's not many clips on youtube (though whole episodes aplenty to check out) this wouldn't be my clip of choice but it is funny and sets up a bit of the story from the first episode

6. The Now Show

Steve Punt is the man I feel most sorry for in the world of comedy, because he is Hugh Dennis's comedy partner, the other half of the double act and you hadn't heard of him. Perhaps because when Punt and Dennis are put together it sounds too much like rhyming slang for rude bits. But in this awesome radio satire Punt and Dennis are united as hosts and very funny too. I always say I think Hugh Dennis is the best and most underrated panelist on Mock The Week because the younger comedians don't give him much of a chance to shine. In this, him and Steve do witty satire, silly voices and sketches without the interuption from Russell Howard whose just happy to be on TV and that his mum let him go out. Throw in funny songs from Mitch Benn and stand up from Marcus Brigstocke, Jon Holmes, John Finnemore (he writes a lot of David Mitchell's stuff) and guests and you have a hit. This clip trended on Twitter last year because it's an assault on News Of The World:

5. The News Quiz

Well the name pretty much says it all really. Basically the forerunner to Have I Got News For You which was originally pitched as "The News Quiz on TV." It's hosted by Sandi Toksvig who is the Danish lesbian you may have seen on QI of late. Actually the show's current regulars include Susan Calman and Sue Perkins too, making it the show with the most lesbians that you don't have to pay-per-view. It also features Andy Hamilton (the short guy with the beard who is on Have I Got News For You a lot) and Jeremy Hardy (who I mentioned earlier and will do again). They read out funny bits from Newspapers and shoot the breeze about the weeks events. When I've been to see it live they also stray off into chatting about any old thing and they're always witty and clever and funny. Here's Jeremy Hardy explaining Christmas:

4. Old Harry's Game

It's a sitcom. It's set in Hell. The main Character is Satan. Do you really need me to say anything else to justify loving this show?

OK then, it waltzes between character comedy, traditional sitcom, political and religious satire, social commentary and subtle emotional development without you even noticing it's doing it. It's jokes about religion are subtley woven into the story of the series and aren't likely to be branded "offensive" - and they certainly aren't judgemental which most religion jokes seem to be - but it's clever and suggestive and singularly fun. It's also another show that would never work on TV: It's kinda funny when Satan mentions ironic tortures he's having performed on various groups, probably less funny to see actual torture. Even Frankie Boyle might say that is a bit much...nah he wouldn't. For anyone who is a fan of both torture and comedy I recommend listening to this or sitting through an episode of Sky1s Trollied. In this scene, Satan has a meeting with God:

3. The Hitchhikers Guide To The Galaxy

The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy is my favourite book trilogy (of 5) of all time. It's also a TV show, a computer game, a play, a comic book, a film and a towel, but it all started back in 1978 on BBC Radio 4. The epic space adventure begins with the destruction of planet Earth. Arthur Dent and Ford Prefect escape and encounter Vogon Poetry (the third worst of the universe), a clinically depressed robot ("Life. Don't talk to me about life."), find a planet that builds other planets, discover the meaning of life (SPOILERS: It's 42), dine at the end of the universe and encounter a spaceship full of dead hairdressers and telephone cleaners that have special significance...and that's just series 1. You wait till series 3 when our heroes get tangled up in the most deadly form of conflict known to the universe that was so badly misunderstood by the English (cricket).
What I'm trying to say is this is an insanely fun romp through space and time with batty characters and wonderfully clever and silly asides from the outstanding mind of the late Douglas Adams. Oh and a manically depressed robot.
This clip is from the TV series, although it's pretty much unchanged from the radio version and the special effects in the TV series are so bad, it's pretty much radio:

2. Just A Minute

This is the first radio comedy I remember being properly into as an adult. I'd heard the odd bit of radio comedy as a kid, but was too young to fully appreciate it, then one day I discovered that my hero, Paul Merton, did this thing on Radio 4 and I started to grow up listening to it, which is awesome because that's just what Paul Merton did. It's the longest running panel show ever, it started in 1968 and is still going today with TV episodes planned for sometime in 2012. The ever old Nicholas Parsons has not missed an episode since 1968 and a constantly changing and updating list of regulars keeps it fresh. It's success comes partly from the fact it's such a simple game - you get given a subject and you have to talk about it for a minute without repeating yourself, hesitating, deviating from the topic or repetition.

1. I'm Sorry I Haven't A Clue

I cannot stress enough how much I like this program. One of the things that made me want to write this blog was that I feel this is as good as my favourite TV shows and better than almost everything on TV. The point of this show is that there is no point. All panel games have a point to them Have I Got News For You is about the news, Never Mind The Buzzcocks is about music, the idea of Clue is just to be silly. Regular rounds include New Definitions where panelists invent new definitions for existing words based on what they sound like (Arsenic: To steal buttocks. Feckless: An Irish Virgin. Countryside: To kill Piers Morgan), One Song To The Tune Of Another (If you need me to explain that one, this isn't for you), Sound Charades, Missing Words games, Pun-based games like those ones you see on Twitter hashtags eg #awfulprequels or #builderssongs. It's also pure filth. Utterly disgusting trash. The rudest, smuttiest innuendo you will ever hear while you eat your dinner. Despite being a panel show, at Christmas it's branched out and done Dickens and Alice In Wonderland parodies and has a brilliant spin-off sitcom (remember back that far.)

It was hosted by Humphrey Lyttleton from 1972 until 2007, he hosted an incredibly 50 series of the show and is the funniest jazz trumpeter you will ever hear. That's not even a joke, he genuinely was a jazz trumpeter and he genuinely reduced me to tears of laughter more times than probably anyone else. I'm increadibly pleased that my mum pushed me into buying tickets for myself and my friend Ben to see an episode of this being made in Peterborough - which I assumed was far away and hard to get to - because it turned out to be the last show he recorded before his death at age 86 - he was as funny as he ever was, if not more so.

These days Jack Dee hosts, and the show keeps going in style and is as mental as ever. Recent additions include a "Name-That-Celebrity-Duck" round...need I say more.

Here is some of that smut:

And Rob Brydon singing:

Please note: The clips I've used are the ones available on youtube. I love them all, but I'm not sure they're always the one's I would use to persuade you to check these shows out. Hope you do want to though. Every weekday 6:30 Radio 4, there's something funny...or Claire In The Community.

Now to "sing" us out, the star of three of these shows. Jeremy Hardy. This really is him trying his best!

WHATEVER YOU DO, DON'T READ THIS BLOG

DONT SEE DONT SEE DONT SEE - Well this is clearly spam
DONT SEE DONT SEE DONT SEE - Ok, I wont then.
DONT SEE DONT SEE DONT SEE - Maybe you just shouldn't have posted it in the first place?
DONT SEE DONT SEE DONT SEE - Well I'm curious now, I'll have a look
ONCE YOU'VE STARTED READINGTHIS YOU CAN'T GET OUT! Alt+F4 folks. rEAD ON IF YOU DON'T WANT TO DIE wELL in that case why did you warn me that I couldn't get out of this? Surely I want to carry on reading. I feel bad about all the people who pushed Alt+F4 when I said now. Actually nah, they don't wanna read my blog; fuck 'em.
... ... .........A year ago A girl named Kathy was hated by everyone. Everyone made fun of her. She was ignored. Make your mind up! Made fun of or ignored. Even by messages. Was she actually ignored by messages, or did people just not send her any messages coz they didn't like her? All, I'm saying is don't blame the messages, blame the people - Unless I've drunkenly text you ever, in which case the messages did it. One day she decided to kill herself. Because even her parents ignored her. She jumed out her window. (yeah, it's missing a P, but I'll let it off that one) No one noticed utill people started dissapearing. What does that mean? "People are disappearing. Hey! I've just noticed Kathy hasn't been around in a while. She still hasn't cleaned up that giant blood splat on the driveway too...wait a minute!" Kathy haunted them. She made them suffer like the way she did. Quick point: The way she suffered was that she was ignored. Are you telling me she came back as a ghost and ignored them? I mean, I get pretty freaked out by ghosts, but if my house was haunted by a ghost who just ignored me...it'd be annoying, but I could live with it. I mean, my DVDs flying around the room by themselves = some scary shit. Being ignored by a girl = standard. She hung them slowly and stabed them over and over very slowly so they could suffer like she did. Well, that's just not how she sufferred at all. I'd be on her side if that had happened to her.
If you don't send this message to 15 diffrent comments you will die tonight by Kathy. Is that what it says on the death certificate? "Death by Kathy." Because she considers it ignooring her. I thought Ignoorance was meant to be bliiiss.
Example 1:
Dave looked at the first sentece and said, "Spam" Hey, I like the sound of Dave. And the next day the neighbors found him in his backyard, dead. Well, it would have been nice to know you Dave.
If you don't send this, Kathy WILL find you

Is that it?! "Example 1." I just assumed that if you say "example 1" it would be followed up by further examples. I mean, the evidence in example one is hazy enough as it is.