Bleurgh

Only a handful of types of people venture out drinking on a Monday. If you find yourself in a bar at 2am at the very start of the week you will note that you are surrounded by people who do not give a shit about the next seven days. That usually means the clientele will include comedians who don't need to be up anytime soon on a Tuesday, students who don't have to be up anytime soon until they graduate, and the suspicious other people who are probably alcoholics or unemployed and either way just don't care about their well being. Last night my willpower went home and left me to follow Andrew O'Neill, Lisa Keddie and their assorted band of cohorts from the Five Pound Fringe party to wander the streets of Camden in search of booze. After passing a few pubs that looked like they would have actually been agreeable to sit in and drink but were obviously closing, we took a last resort and went to the sort of place that I would equate as being on a par with my personal idea of hell. They were working with that wonderful notion that due to the immense lack of people there, that the music must be played to an unagreeably loud level. I'm not an oldie who complains about loud music by any means. Loud can be great. But when the bass is causing the vibrations of the building to shake because there are not enough punters to absorb the sound, then you should probably turn it down. Actually I take that back. I am an oldie who gets annoyed with loud music. Unless its music I like and I'm playing it loud. Then its ok. Essentially if I could have control over the sound systems of everywhere I went, I'd be a much happier person. I'd be some sort of musical dictator, but I'd love it. At times I would love it for the convenience of playing music I enjoyed a lot, and at other times I would enjoy it because I could walk into a goth bar and make them play hip-hop, and walk into a hip-hop bar and make them play terrible 90s pop. It would upset a lot of people. Especially at live gigs. I could do it when I see Blur at Hyde park. 40,000 people paying money to see Blur but then old Lional Richie songs come out of the speakers.


Sorry brain is clearly not working today. This blog may be a tad laborious at times. Sorry. Its mostly because I didn't feel drunk last night but this morning feel terrible. I hate this unequal balance of hangover vs soberness. It always happens to me now too. I get none of the fun associated with being so drunk I can't see and injure myself, yet I do get all of the pain from having drunk as much as if I'd been unable to see and injured myself. I also hurt like I've injured myself. I think its some sort of karma for all the years I would drink and then wake up feeling great. On my 21st birthday after getting so drunk I left my own party without telling anyone and fell asleep on my friend's doorstep, causing mass panic among friends, I then woke up the next day, bright as anything at 9am and put 'Singin' in the Rain' on the telly very loud waking up everyone. My friends were less than pleased. Although they should have been very pleased as there is little greater way to start your day than a burst of 'Good Morning'. It was all fun last night, meeting some very nice people and some nice people I already know. The Five Pound Fringe is a great idea and hope it will do really well in Edinburgh. They had a mini show featuring some of the acts with Stephen Grant galliantly MCing to a group of industry peoples which is never fun or easy although he made it look like both of those things. It was a mix of music and comedy and as a comic I really enjoyed the musical bits. Martin White and Gavin Osbourn are two people whose shows I will have to see up in Edinburgh. Martin White's song about how he took up the accordian in particular made me laugh a lot. I love accordians. I like to believe they are an accident formed by someone running with a pair of bellows into a dwarf with a tiny piano.


Fat Tuesday tonight. Andrew O'Neill who was on last night and was brilliant and Paul Foot who wasn't on last night but is also brilliant. Do come along. It will be good.

http://www.wegottickets.com/event/49192

I'm off to go lie down and pretend to do useful things such as invent a tiny zip to go on the top of pitta breads. Better blog tomorrow when I will not be in pain. Unless of course my pitta bread idea takes off.