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Our last Fubar radio show was recorded today (it will be on on Thursday night). Even though we've only been together for three months I will miss Loulie Sanders and her somewhat blase attitude towards broadcasting. But we've made the right choice I think. At the very least we don't really have the time to spend a day on these shows with so much to get done. Who needs paid work anyway?
The backroom team have been fun to work with too and they gave us retirement cards and a tiny cactus to mark our passing. Imagine how big a cactus we'd have got if we'd been here for a year or two. Thanks also to the loyal listeners of the show. I don't think there were more than six of you, but you all seem upset that we're going. It's not you, it's us.
We talked about bad break ups (and my all time worst one when I went on holiday with a girlfriend who I didn't know had been proposed to by her ex the day before we left, and then I was bowled over by a wave in the sea and hit my head, which for some reason made one of my testicles swell up to an enormous size) and covered the news that Kate Humble likes to go on naked rambles and that she has to watch out for ticks. In the interview in the paper Humble said that she would leave it to our imagination where the ticks had attached themselves and I got upset because this obviously made me imagine that the ticks were in her vagina. And I wouldn't have imagined that without her making me imagine it. And then I couldn't stop imagining it. And late out of the gates Lou introduced a new feature of improvised raps on any subject, which she approached with gusto and which were so improvised that even she had no idea what she would say. It might be the funniest thing from the whole three month run.
And our guest was Andy Parsons who I had shared a house with briefly in the early 90s and had worked alongside at BBC Light Entertainment Radio (he had written on the great lost topical sitcom, That's Wiggin's Yard, which he recalls getting commissioned, but that we all decided not to take it any further). He recalled us racing up the LE corridor on swivel chairs, which I vaguely recalled and the oddness of the Weekending writers' meeting (and the now legendary story of one of the non-commissioned writers walking into the room and his trousers falling down to reveal his unpanted genitalia). What happy miserably unhappy days those were.
All the time that has passed and our fortunes have gone up and down. But here we are, still going. None of it means a thing.
And then the three hours and the three months were over. I think we've made the right choice, but it felt strange to be leaving the studios, the team and most of all Marion's Motto behind. Lou was on her bike so I had to take her cactus and mine home on the tube. It was quite tricky carrying them and I ended up with lots of tiny cactus spikes in my fingers. Perhaps that's a fitting metaphor for my Fubar experience. I wish the station and the team and whoever replaces us in our time-slot (the rumour is that it's Max Clifford and Josef Mengele - admittedly I started that rumour) all the best. But most of all I wish myself the best of luck. Because I am really going to need it. Unless some magic elves write this play for me.
