Now I am a married man I have proper responsibilities. A man came round today to talk to us about life assurance. I am a gambling man and I love a flutter and this is quite an interesting one. If my wife and I give him a small amount of money each month and then one of us dies in the next 21 years, he gives us a massive pile of money in return. Sounds too good to be true. The only downside is that if we stay alive for 21 years then he gets to keep all the money we've given him and we get nothing. Plus to add a bit of jeopardy if we kill ourselves or one of us murders the other then we don't get the money. Someone was on the ball when they spotted that loophole. We have to wait for illness or accident to take us which makes it less of a sure thing.
But I am still not convinced by the wisdom of doing this. My wife says she'd prefer to have me than a massive pile of money, but what if, as the marriage progresses her allegiances start to shift. Twenty-one years is a long time. In about 2029 she might be thinking, actually I'd rather have the cash than this dubiously aromaed drunken, annoying idiot. Obviously she can't directly kill me, but you know, she could feed me meals with a lot of cholesterol or take me for walks along cliffs on blustery days or push me in a river and claim she was just enacting our favourite little joke. Seriously though, it's irresponsible to have this kind of offer. It's entrapment. We've surely all got a relative that we'd swop for half a million quid if we could. I've got four nephews and nieces, which is more than enough. I'd happily sell off Andrew for that much. In fact if it was cash I'd take £300 for him.
I mean this cuts both ways. I do love my wife an awful lot, but if someone came to the door and offered me £500,000 for her I'd be a fool if I just said "No" straight away. I mean I'd want to find out what their plans for her were, but if they said they just wanted to take her away to a luxury spa where she'd get pampered and be happy and have whatever her heart desired then it'd be selfish of me at least not to consider it. And is that not what Heaven is? The best luxury spa ever. I don't think I could kill her, but say she tripped over while feeding some tigers and was falling into the cage and I just failed to catch her.....?
And financially speaking it would be much better if one of us died sooner rather than later. If I died just after we'd made the first payment she'd get maximum outlay for minimum expenditure. That's be Us 1 Insurance Company 0. Really the only way to win this gamble is for that to happen. Man, if I die the day after we've signed up I am going to be so laughing in the face of THE MAN. And I trust my wife will be too.
The worst thing that could happen is that one of us dies in 21 years and one day's time. In fact if I owned a life assurance company I would hire assassins on motorbikes to drive round to the house of anyone whose policy had just expired and gun them down. And I'd get them to shout, "Thanks for all the money, arsehole!" before driving off. I doubt I'd be in charge of the assurance company for long - for about 21 years and 2 days.
But the assurance company are setting me and my wife against each other and whilst I don't think either of us are capable of killing the other, probably the best way for us to compete is to both try and stay alive to spite the other. I can sit opposite her at breakfast in my pants, fat and flatulent, saying,"Yup, bad luck darling, I am still breathing." She'd be visualising all the clothes and luxury goods that I could be exchanged for if only I'd hurry up and peg it, but I would obstinately refuse to let her have them. And then to add insult to injury I would make sure I died just after the policy had expired. When I would only be worth to her what she could get at the knacker's yard.
The grown-up world is a strange place.
I decided to keep my clothes on for
frame 16 of Me1 vs Me2 snooker. Some mild spoilers follow, though I prefer to see them as tantalising trailers to the action. There's no audio-self-arse-slapping this week, so fans and fetishists of that will be disappointed. Last time all the Mes, perhaps disappointed for being neglected for so long were not quite themselves and I struggled to bring them to life, but this time they were less reticent and though I started with nothing planned somehow Referee 2 ended up on a journey into space and Commentator 2 suddenly became more loquacious than he has ever been before. There's also some nice tension between Me1 and his wife as the postman arrived just as she was chopping up some chicken for lunch, but her husband couldn't go to the door because he was playing snooker against himself. You couldn't plan stuff like this, especially the fact that it turned out that the delivery was a copy of "Total Recall" on DVD which I am planning to do a non-director's commentary on for another time-wasting, non-money making podcast. She feels that my time might be better spent writing the sit-com that I am being paid for and which might lead to a proper TV series, but the majority of Mes feel that the real long-term financial benefits will come from underground audio snooker. Time will tell which of us is right. You all have it in your power to make a little boy's dream come true. The fact that that little boy is now grown-up should not detract from the issue.
There was also some dazzling snooker, inadequately described. After a couple of slightly disappointing frames I think the franchise has been revived and surely it can't be long before the audience numbers start to rise again. Although the Commentator 2 in my strongly disagrees I think this might be the best thing I've ever done. Even I am unsure about where the joke ends and real life begins. But I hope you will stick with it to see if eventually the podcast turns into a black hole that sucks reality into it and destroys us all.
Do remember that my less insane Leicester Square Theatre podcast returns next month and the line-ups are taking shape and tickets selling well. On 1st October I will be talking to Peter Serafinowicz, plus probably another big name comedian who is not 100% confirmed yet, but who I am equally excited about chatting with. 8th October is Steve Pemberton and Reece Sheersmith, 5th November is Dave Gorman and 3rd December Russell Howard. The other two podcasts on 22nd October and 19th November should have guests of high quality too. It's only £12.50 to come and see these live
Book here, but as always they'll be available to download for free at the British Comedy Guide and on iTunes. But they're even more fun live and you'll be helping to keep the project alive and get to meet other like-minded nerds and breathe in the exhaled carbon dioxide as some of the most amazing comedians in the country.
