Can't Stand Up for Sitting Down (19 page)

I had
assumed, owing to my pretty poor Britney impersonation, that I would not get
through the first round and had organised a weekend away with the family When I
got through to the final, having been picked by the judges as the third
finalist I thought, Oh, I’m not going to be able to go away We did, but I had
to drive up from Canterbury on the day and was away for hours.

The
final was good fun because as usual I had invested no energy in hoping I would
win. Everyone knew it would be Robert Webb who had done a scarily accurate performance
of ‘What a Feeling’ from the musical
Flashdance.
Paddy McGuinness and
Keith Lemon also stood a good chance. I was there to enjoy myself and try to
remain continent.

On the
night, poor Lisa Maxwell from
The Bill
had a dodgy tummy so between us
we were worried that the finale of the show might be a little more than people
had bargained for.

As I
predicted, the victory of Robert Webb was a foregone conclusion. But my
daughters loved it and had a good laugh, and at least they thought I should
have won.

Power-boat Hell

Occasionally you offer to
do something for charity and when you get there, you wonder if you were
completely insane to agree to it. One such event was a power-boat racing day
down in Portsmouth which I had been asked to do by Jeremy Clarkson’s wife,
Francie. Jeremy Clarkson and I do not see eye to eye on a huge number of areas
and I find myself occasionally referring to him in my stand-up as shorthand for
someone who is a Little Englander and who jealously seems to guard the
‘British’ way of life and is constantly having a pop at other European nations.
As someone who is acutely aware to some extent of how it feels to be an
outsider through working in mental health, having German family and being in
comedy I find this very unpalatable.

This is
not, however, the reason to date that I have not bombed round the circuit in ‘a
reasonably priced car’ on
Top Gear.
The main thing stopping me is that,
having had two brothers, I am enormously competitive, and fear that if I ever
stepped into that aforementioned vehicle, I would probably kill myself in the
process. So I have declined so far, but am sure I will be tempted soon. Jeremy
Clarkson is unfailingly polite and friendly in real life, and I cannot fault
him socially He and his mates on
Top Gear
love a bit of risk, as was
evidenced by Richard Hammond’s spectacular stunt in a cart-wheeling car on
Top
Gear
a while ago. And this day was no exception.

One of
the reasons I’d said I would do this event was because my friend Jayne, who
sorts out all my charity requests and fanmail for me, has a son who is a huge
fan of the show, so I went down there with him and her to give him an
opportunity to have a look at the stars in person.

The
point of the day was to raise money for a children’s hospice called Helen and
Douglas House, and the way this was achieved was to get big companies to sponsor
a power-boat which would take part in races round the harbour. Each company had
sent a couple of gung-ho young men who were to have a crack at driving a boat.
In order to attract them, a bevy of celebs had been invited and each boat had
two blokes, an instructor and a celebrity in it. Other celebs attending that
day that I can remember were Jimmy Carr, Brian Conley and Jane Moore, who is a
well-known
Sun
columnist.

Many
photos were taken and then eventually we climbed aboard a power-boat. The two
men were very excited, one more than the other, and he asked if he could go
first. We all concurred and he got into the driving seat. The sea seemed
slightly choppy and I began to wonder when my breakfast would reappear.

Our
instructor was a very sweet, mild-mannered woman and she gave us a quick
run-through: some instructions emphasising the safety aspects, then it was time
to set off.

Our
slightly over-keen driver had obviously decided to go for it big-time, and
before we knew it, he had floored the accelerator and we set off at a
terrifying speed which threw us all back in our seats. Our instructor looked a
bit perturbed by this burst of enthusiasm and warned against further
acceleration. But our intrepid driver was away with the fairies, her voice was
very quiet and he chose either not to hear her, or ignored her. His companion,
who was in the seat beside me, looked positively green. The boat at one point
tipped dangerously to one side and my elbow grazed the water. We all had
life-jackets on and I began to visualise falling out and banging my head on the
boat as I went, then sinking to the bottom of Portsmouth Harbour. We then
looked as if we were going to do a somersault and my companion turned to me and
shouted, ‘We’re all going to die!’ At that point he and I joined in with the
instructor and shouted various helpful technical suggestions like, ‘For fuck’s
sake, slow down!’

It sort
of worked and he did a bit. By that time, thank the Lord, his ‘go’ was over and
he slowed the boat to a halt and jumped out of the seat, declaring, ‘That was
brilliant!’ and let his companion into the driving seat. The latter drove like
a Sunday school teacher on major tranquillisers, as did I when I got my
opportunity I think we came last but I didn’t give a toss about that, I was
just glad not to have drowned.

When we
arrived on shore again, I discovered that all the celebs who had kids had felt
similarly to me and had seen their lives flash before their eyes, whereas the
young, single and carefree types like Jimmy Carr announced it to be one of the
best days of their lives.

So, my involvement with
charity events has led to snogging, singing, sailing, running, dancing and
kicking the arses of some quite annoying blokes. It’s been bloody brilliant.

Over the years I have been
offered the opportunity to front some advertising campaigns, either in person
or as a voiceover. I can’t imagine what on earth I’ve got that might persuade
people to buy a product, but who knows how the minds of advertising execs work?
At the risk of sounding ‘holier than thou’ there are many reasons why I will
never do ads.

First
of all, the words of George Orwell, the Uber-leftie author of
1984
and
Animal
Farm,
often resound in my head. He said that advertising is ‘the rattling
of a stick inside a swill bucket’ and I can’t help but agree with him.

Our
system needs to advertise things to sell them (obviously) and if there is not a
market for certain products, they will create one. For example, many products
have appeared on the market recently aimed at very specific age groups of
children, and once some products are spotted by children because of ads, a huge
demand is created. Even worse, children feel that they are not a fully paid-up
member of their peer group unless they own that particular product. I don’t
like this. It puts pressure on parents and kids and is not fair.

Also,
many electronic products now have built-in obsolescence so that they have to be
replaced every few years, and advertisers have to make it sound as if you’re
getting something new for your money when in fact your old whatever-it-is would
probably do just as well. The world of fashion is a really good case in point.
Each season a whole new raft of clothes appears on the catwalks, some of them
utterly bloody ridiculous, but some stupid arses go ahead and buy them because
they think they must —although I have to admit I have never seen anyone wearing
any of the more wacky designs that make them look like a bush on legs or a
zombie with liver disease.

One of
the other main reasons I don’t do ads is because once you spout support of a
company for money they sort of own you, and should you ever have occasion to
slag them off, or any of their products, you simply cannot do this. I know it
is a small thing, but to me as a comic, it’s very important not to be owned by
anyone and to be able to say what I like when I like and wherever I like.

Having
said all this, I wouldn’t criticise people who do choose to do ads, because
that’s up to them as an individual — and it’s hardly killing your grandmother,
is it? Perhaps those who said they would never do ads and then did them are
slightly more culpable, and I find it completely puzzling that some comics
would slag off others for doing an ad when they themselves do advertising
voiceovers. Is it any different if people can’t see your face?

I don’t
think so.

If you
find my little sermon dull, please have a look on youtube.com at Bill Hicks’s
rant about advertising. He puts it much better than I could.

One of the times I would
love to be invisible is at festivals. There’s nothing I like better than to
wander round just drinking in the fantastic atmosphere, looking at the bonkers
stalls and lying in a tent listening to snoring, giggling, shouting, laughing,
singing and the general festival hubbub.

I went
to Glastonbury a couple of times in the eighties, one time boiling hot and full
of pissed pink people and the other time absolutely swamped in mud, but very
manageable if you’re off your face.

Since
then I have performed at Glastonbury, Reading and Latitude (apparently
nicknamed ‘Latte-tude’ because it is
so
middle class).

I think
the secret, if you stay overnight at festivals, as you know you’re not going to
get a decent night’s sleep, is to self-medicate, which I normally do with
alcohol.

Although
you feel shit in the morning, at least unconsciousness has been much easier to
achieve. Glastonbury is the only festival I’ve actually stayed at, however; all
the others I’ve either come home from or have gone straight on to somewhere
else afterwards.

Reading
always happens in the middle of the Edinburgh Festival so that’s the closest
I’ve ever got to feeling like a mega-star: being flown down to Reading and then
back up the same day to continue doing my shows. I suppose if you are on the
road a lot you get used to things like a bed, a kettle and a telly, and these
days, a hangover lasts a hell of a lot longer than it used to when I was a
sprightly young thing in my thirties.

When
people clock you, it’s a totally different experience at a festival. At Latitude
I felt like the Pied Piper because when I went for a wander I was followed
round by autograph-hunting children and eventually had to give up and go and
hide. My experience of Reading made me think that they could just as well put a
cardboard cut-out on stage as the heaving, sweaty delirious audience don’t
really seem to care what’s on stage. And good luck to ‘em, that’s what music
festivals are for.

Literary
festivals like Hay and Cheltenham are a different kettle of fish altogether.
More subdued and with an older, middle-class punter, they are altogether a more
genteel affair. The green room at Hay is a veritable cornucopia of literary
bedazzlement. It seems so weird to sit amidst Jeremy Paxman, Alan Bennett, Gore
Vidal and Terry Jones. I tend to promote books at literary festivals and of
course the stakes aren’t as high as they are with stand-up so it’s a real
pleasure because I don’t get the usual accompanying butterflies.