All right, so I owe Ian Post-Office an apology. It turns out the letter I got from SCOPE the other day was not the cause of my £1.58 postage fine (even though it was inefficiently stamped and had the number 58 written in the top right corner). I made some accusations about Ian Post-Office that implied he hated the disabled and was stealing money from his customers and I hope Ian Post-Office doesn't sue me for this, mainly because I know that whatever he wins I will have to pay for in stamps. Today the actual envelope arrived and it turns out it came from the Stand Comedy Club in Edinburgh and contained photocopies of my press from the Fringe. The envelope had a stamp (1st class Large) and although it only contained 8 pieces of A4 which would surely make it fall within the correct weight for the stamp attached, the envelope was a bit bigger than it needed to be. Not massively so, but obviously enough for Ian Post-Office to get out his ruler and decide that this constituted a package rather than a large envelope. It was petty of him and he is thus not completely vindicated and I am sure if the people at the Stand had just used sellotape to make the envelope the size of the paper then all would be fine, but they didn't. The Stand have an amazing deal for comics in Edinburgh, where it's actually possible to make some money, unlike at most of the other venues in the city, but this is how they can make these concessions, by saving several pence on their postage. I wouldn't be surprised if they made some shady deal with Ian Post-Office before the Fringe, planning to carve up the £1.58s from dozens of comics and make themselves literally tens of pounds each.
Everyone is on the take.
But apologies for my mistake and apologies to the people at SCOPE for implying their postal system was inefficient. It worked out well though, because over 20 aggrieved readers of this blog went to
my sponsorship page and gave £1.58 to SCOPE. I know there's at least 3000 of you out there reading and listening to this - it would be amazing if you all made that tiny effort. If you think what you're read here just this year is worth less than 1p a day, then please donate the magical figure (you can give more or less if you wish).
Thank goodness my reviews for the podcast show were reasonably good - it would have been awful to have been charged £1.58 to receive an envelope full of articles slagging me off. Though there was an interview with the Metro which shows how a mistake by a journalist or editor can totally change the meaning of an interview. I was talking about my second Edinburgh where I was in the Oxford Revue and said "We had a really horrible year because of the stand-up comedians." The article then has me saying, "They represented the past and we represented the future, so they bullied us a little bit." In fact what I definitely said was "We represented the past and they represented the future" - because stand up was in the ascendant and student comedy was becoming archaic and being usurped. Obviously that is quite a big shift in meaning, but also makes me look incredibly cocky, like I am saying the people who were having a go were only doing so because we were coming along to replace them, rather than acknowledging our own obsolescence. It's a small and unimportant thing in many ways, but once it's in the paper that becomes a quotable thing. Don't trust the newspapers!
And more fun at the sexy Amanda Knox murder trial (someone else is also on trial, but no one cares about him because he is not a sexy/innocent/guilty-looking woman). After the prosecution called Knox a witch and a devil,
the defence have claimed she is more like Jessica Rabbit, from the film, "Who Framed Roger Rabbit?" Do you think the lawyers have had some kind of bet to see who can say the most ridiculous thing or make the most inappropriate comparison during this trial. To be honest that might be another way to sort the innocent from the guilty. The lawyers get points for the more tenuous and offensive they can be.
We did another 6.75 mile run today (we did one on Saturday too) and took 30 seconds off our time. At this rate we'll be able to run 6.75 miles in 0 seconds after just 148 more runs. And on the 149th run we might send the earth spinning in the opposite direction. We will need to turn back time to be prepared for the actual run, which is terrifyingly close, but on the plus side the 1000 or so calories I burned off meant we could go out for a pizza tonight.
