I appeared on the obscure radio station Resonance FM with obscure comedian Stewart Lee and the obscured comedian (behind a big beard), Daniel Kitson. It was a giggly couple of hours and it seemed a shame to let it all end there, so at 2pm we went out into Soho looking for lunch.
We chanced across a new Pizza Express restaurant (at least none of us had seen it before) which oddly had a red neon sign declaring its name, rather than the usual blue. We wondered if this restaurant was nothing to do with the popular chain and the owner had found a clever way around the copyright laws. "No, this restaurant is very different to the others. Look the lettering is in red. Not blue. Red. It's a totally different place."
On entering and perusing the menu this seemed unlikely. It was otherwise identical to the other Pizza Express restaurants in every detail. Except weirdly we were the only customers in there. OK, it was Soho on a Sunday and it was after 2 o clock, but even the inferior Ask Pizza in Chiswick was busting at the seams on a week day lunch.
Possibly it was such a new enterprise that no-one else was aware it was there, but more likely, I suggested to Daniel as Stewart nipped off to buy some fags, this was some kind of false restaurant, set up by an hilarious new Channel 4 hidden camera show, where doubtless we were all about to be made to look like the idiots we truly were.
The waiter offered us olives, but we turned them down, suspicious that they would contain the hidden microphone that would record our idiocy.
Stewart returned with a smirk on his face. We realised that he was in on it. He was probably the host of the new Pizza based show. That pissed me off in itself. I have gone on record saying that I really like pizza. Stew only quite likes it at best. Why had they chosen him rather than me?
Yes it all made sense. Stew had contrived to get us together by setting up his "real" radio show (so why did it take place in the back room of a strange delapidated little building and not in a radio studio) and then contriving for us all to walk down this particular street, where there would be a pizza restaurant that none of us had seen before (even though I am a regular visitor to Soho - not for the sex shows or the gay bars. No. I come here for... other reasons), and in which their haste to set up, the Channel 4 idiots had even got the colour of the neon sign all wrong.
No doubt Stew was going to make me and Daniel compete over an attractive waitress and only when we had kissed her would he reveal she was a transexual (like I've never come to Soho and kissed a transexual before..... I mean, it's not like I do that. I come here to look at the...er... you know, er, that shop that sells old whiskey and fine cigars).
Me and Daniel were not going to be drawn into Stewart's web of pranks. And I was very keen to demonstrate to the idiots at Channel 4 that they had chosen the entirely wrong half of an obscure double act to front their false restaurant, pizza and transexual based show. We ate our pizza in silence. And whenever Stew said anything we studiously ignored him.
He seemed upset at the end of the meal. No doubt he was aware that his cunning schemes had failed and that like me he would be back at the dole office on Monday. His dreams of his pizza and transexual based millions gone up in smoke. That would teach him.
And if you're reading Stew, could you send any of the transexuals from the show round to my house. I have some.... gardening... yes that's it.... that needs doing.
More importantly if there's any pizzas left over I'd really like those too.
