Hooray, 7/12! It's my American birthday!
But no Americans bought me presents. The motherfuckers.
Well now I am going to leak some hearsay and gossip about them. What are they going to do in return? Set me up with some spurious sexual assault claims and then refuse me bail?
Actually I can't quite get my head round this one. It does seem mighty suspicious that Julian Assange would be arrested just as all this shit kicks off, but then again if you were going to set him up on false charges would you really time it in this unsubtle and suspicious way? I don't know who to believe: the shady forces of the American secret services who want to cover up their wrong-doing or the creepy nerd who seems determined to kick up a stink by revealing stuff that seems to be mainly hearsay. My main fear is that genuine rapists will now be able to make it appear like they are innocent by revealing thousands of government secrets just before they get arrested. And then liberal do-gooders will assume they must be being set up and pay their bail for them.
I don't see how all these secrets are getting out in the first place. It seems to me, if we are just going to try and guess what is happening (and it seems we are) is that Assange is working with the Americans, revealing these secrets in order to stir things up and that they have had to arrest him now to make him look like a credible enemy. I don't know why they would do that exactly, but don't let logic get in the way of a conspiracy theory that turns something mundane into something exciting. But really, if wikileaks is endangering security and lives then you'd think that the US government would be able to get it taken offline and have all the people involved rubbed out. And the fact that they can't suggests to me that we might be all right for the moment.
They came for Julian Assange and I just took the piss because I am not Julian Assange and he has a name that sounds like he is a French ass-monkey and he looks like a posh villain from a 1980s thriller. Then they came for me....
If I am ever arrested for anything, remember it will be a set up because of my uncompromising opinions and revelation of THE TRUTH on this website. I would NEVER shoplift Kinder Eggs. You know that.
Tonight I recorded a stand up set for the Christmas edition of Russell Howard's Good News - you can't get me off the telly these days. There were a lot of young people in the audience - I am sure I spotted a foetus in amongst them - which made for a slightly tricky atmosphere and at times I felt that I was teaching youngsters about things they didn't yet need to know. Usually when I am doing my routine about threesomes I direct some of the saucier bits at women in the front row, but tonight I realised I was going to have to be suggestive to girls who looked about 14 and surprisingly felt horrified rather than excited by the prospect and backed off. Some of the jokes I was doing were older than many people in this crowd. It took a short while to win them all round and a few years ago that might have freaked me out and made me fall to pieces, but I knew that really all that mattered was how it looked at home and as weird as it felt I directed most of my material right down the barrel of the camera. Hopefully it will come out well. It was very much a greatest hits set, because I am guessing that many of the people who see this show will be new to me and my work, but I realised early on when subtler or ironic bits like the enemy's enemy and the treating women "as if" they were equal bits didn't hit too hard that I would have to change tack. I wanted to do the bit about why racists are more liberal than liberals, but realised that this was too ambitious for tonight, so instead pushed the filthier stuff as far as I could go, dredging up a few routines I haven't done for a while in the process. I think it should look OK and if you're in an audience full of teenagers when you come to see me on tour you will know it's been a success.
As is quite common these days it turned out there were a lot of Lee and Herring fans on the production staff, who in a neat parallel had loved our shows when they were teenagers, but now, 12-15 years on were in positions to give me work. We never achieved the fanbase of someone like Russell (who I gigged with a lot when I returned to stand up in 2005 and who I am delighted to see doing so well - he is a phenomenal stand up, especially good when he goes off script.
Here's what I said about him back then), but I think we were enjoyed by the kinds of young people who loved interesting comedy and thus were more likely to become journalists and producers and comedians. In another ten to fifteen years these people might be TV executives. I am playing the long game. But it's good to know that some people appreciated what we were doing in the 90s and that it is indirectly leading to opportunities this far into the future.
We recorded the last Lee and Herring series in the studio next door to the one I was in tonight funnily enough and I was reminded of the ups and downs of this business and the fact that there is no way of knowing what will come next. But in this second spike in my career I appreciate opportunities like tonight properly. TV comedy eats up young comedians, then moves on to the next generation. It's tough to weather the storm, but I am glad that I am still chugging along and hopefully I can carry on until one of those 1990s teenagers becomes DG of the BBC and lets me make anything I want. And just as I sign the contract I will die!
