The reason I thought I’d come back wasn’t so much to do with any particular event rather the predictable reaction from many to said events and this includes comedians depressingly. When someone is found guilty of an utterly shameful act it’s almost inevitable now that there’ll be someone defending the indefensible and shifting the agenda to some wider worldwide problem of ‘you can’t say anything these days’ or ‘these people will not rest until they get the verdict they want’ and so on.

An action has an opposite reaction so you’re told but it seems that people apply this vague law of physics to political leanings and the word reactionary seems to me to be someone that sees their view, however risible and downright ridiculous to others as vitally important to avoid tyranny and create balance. Also it’s that victim mentality that pisses me off the most. The technique whereby said dissenter and sympathisers of said dissenter complains that they’re being ‘silenced’ is a one where the Hopkins’s and Morgan’s (there’s shit loads more as you know) of this world want to make themselves look like Nelson Mandela or Lech Valesa, kept quiet by the authorities because they don’t want to hear the truth when in actual fact it’s the equivalent of turning the telly down in the 70s cos Finland have just come on in the Eurovision Song Contest and they’re making a terrible fucking racket. To be fair me and my sister loved ‘Pump Pump’ back in 1976 and my Mam and Dad let me stay up till 10 o clock fully decked out in pyjamas when they were due to go on despite me being a very tender age. A few years later some dafty from the same country sang a song called ‘Reggae OK’ which was a nonsense and just like Pump Pump finished way down the pecking order on the final medal table.

Has anyone been to Finland? I’ve heard it’s weird. To be honest that makes me want to go more.

Anyway where was I? Yes I’m back, have a great day everyone. Will I be back tomorrow? I hope so. Spread this far and wide.

Peace and jobs.

People do stuff in different ways as you know and I’m not one for telling all about family issues, I’m not Eminem. Some like that sort of thing and each to their own but I’m not the type to reveal all. Maybe this is the new way I don’t know. People tell all about their family deaths, family births, cat deaths, anniversary of parent’s deaths, wedding anniversaries you know ’12 years ago this lovely lady said yes and since then we’ve had the greatest time’ and loads of other sick in a bucket stuff that I see as a bit crass but others see as a liberating experience to share.

People expose their political views on social media all the time as well and maybe that’s why folk aren’t getting on. When I was young it was rumoured someone was a fascist but you never got to actually find out, they almost took their bigotry to their grave, it was like a private comfort them. Nowadays a quick check of someone’s Facebook history and boom there it is! Fuck me there’s some wallopers out there. They give away tell tale signs because they comment on other people’s statuses with classless rude stuff about bestiality, incest, infidelity and general abuse. Then when you look at their profile it’s there for all to see, Britain First, normally a profile picture of a Poppy, Armistice stuff, a photo of Dianne Abbott and some stuff about her apparently being thick as fuck in the form of a quote that she didn’t say and then pictures of their grandbairns saying ‘I fuckin love these cunts, if I could inject them like heroin I would’ or something of that order. Then you go back and they’re always born in 1965. I made that last bit up but it tends to be not so much baby boomers but rather people who left school and went on the dole at the beginning of the 80s.

Bloody feelings, I think they’re overrated myself. When I watched Invasion Of The Body Snatchers (I’ve seen it a few times) I don’t know whether there was much of a loss when the human were replaced by the alien duplicates, it just reminded me of Leicester or one of those dreadful towns like Dorking or Aylesbury, you know the ones, you drive into them and think, shit have I been here before? and you’re still not sure cos they all look the bastard same. Bet you can’t think of anymore Gav! Bet I can, Maidenhead, there you are. There’s loads man. If I was brought up in Buckinghamshire I’d move to Barnsley for the culture.

Anyway that’s me, it’s started to get light now. I’ll do another blog entry tonight to make up for not doing one yesterday, see you later.

Today’s blog is sponsored by Tommy Cooper’s grandson that he didn’t have.

Just like everything though it fell away but it wasn’t through lack of interest, it was because of the friends I was losing as a result of a brutally honest daily blog. Rather like cancer drugs the very thing that was working was also the thing that was destroying it. There are comedians (famous ones) that have still not forgiven me for my honesty (fuck them I didn’t say anything that bad) and there are others that have let it go. Some people took issue with the frankness straight away, others have held a grudge. Fortunately the worst person that ever lived (the editor of online comedy listings site Chortle) has done horrific things to me and accused me of all sorts of evil stuff because he didn’t like me exposing him for what he was.

Now I understand why you might not want to read on and maybe think I’m a horrible piece of work but I don’t care. I did a blog about 10 years ago (it ran from about 2010 to 2012) and it was the most honest and perhaps best thing I ever did and also maybe the worst and despite the other highs and lows I’ve had in this career I was chuffed that I did something every day that was of varying quality but was a great stream of consciousness. Sometimes it was hard hitting, sometimes I was pissing about and I’m sure you’ll agree there’s a paucity of that these days!

Anyway, as they said at the beginning of Spinal Tap enough of me yakking, I’m back with the blog and I intend to write some more stuff tomorrow.

Wash your hands

Today’s blog was sponsored by I’ve Got A Life But That Doesn’t Matter

I set off for Edinburgh tomorrow and make myself acquainted with my flat and then it’s down to work as in get flyers in people’s hands and persuade them to come to my show. Week zero is a bit up and down (in terms of pre sales), week one looks more than canny good then it tails off somewhat but there’s time as of yet. By all means get a ticket if you’re reading this. It’s in Stand 2 and it’s 6.20 every night. ‘I Am Stand Up Comedy’ and do you know, I really fuckin well am whether you like it or not.

Anyway I’ll are blogging every day, gigging every night and hopefully doing the comedy results every night as well so watch this bloody space folks I’m going to be busy if I’m anything. The family, the dogs and the whisky will see me through of that I have no doubt!!

Today’s blog is sponsored by Nothing. Sorry slow advertising day. 

I’ll try and not make this one an insightful one but then that’s weird as well. Why would I make this entry a trivial one?!! If that were the case why do it at all?!!

There’s definitely a dilemma at the heart of daily blogging. This is going to be in all the years of blogging the most memorable entry yet in that it’s not really saying fucking anything. I’m sort of making a stand against no one and it’s pointless cos no one is seeing it. I can’t even plug a show because it’s not getting read by anyone that could potentially come.

Anyway regardless come to my Edinburgh show, it’s called ‘I Am Stand Up Comedy’ it’s at Stand 2 every day at 6.20 pm and I’m working on the bastard now. Monday 6th is the day I’m hoping to sell out so buy tickets for that date!!

Anyway must dash and get back to reality and real interaction.

Today’s blog is sponsored by Tracy Jacks

I’m loving how the tone is ‘you can tell how well Brexit is going…..not’, bloody hell it’s hard but you have to remind these people that Brexit hasn’t actually happened yet but still they bang on. They won’t stop, they’ll only stop if the vote is run again and they get a slim victory of say 52 to 48 then I presume they’ll insist that the referenda must THEN stop. Fine let it stop and you can all pull out your Prossecco and say ‘thank god, what an awful dream, it’s the will of the people, now that’s put a stop to all these evil brexiteers’. Expect them to kark it though when the Labour wing of UKIP rise up, the moderates start voting for this semi knuckle dragging party (because there’s no one else expressing their views) and they end up with 100+ seats because believe me that’s what’ll happen. Thank fuck Corbyn and his small band of rejects and misfits (shunned by the Mandelson and Campbell-esque junta) see sense and realise that running the vote again could cause untold damage.

If I was young I’d say please let it stop but I just now say oh fuckin get on with it, but let me know when you’re finished. Rather like a squid when it mates on the last night of it’s three year life then it dies, let these political rookies have their one moment of underpants on back to front, fist shaking whirling dervish-ness and then watch as they slip into middle age and they can complain passionately about how the bus doesn’t stop at their estate or how there isn’t a tuck shop at the park.

Today’s blog is sponsored by When Yer Man Get’s The Ball

Other news, I was once again playing football in the Pavel Cup yesterday, that’s three years in a row at Dunston UTS’s ground for a great cause (St Oswald’s Hospice). I was on the ‘celebs’ team, god I hate the idea of being even remotely linked with a ‘celebrity’ but it was meant well and even though we got hammered from the ex pros (what the fuck do you expect there was former World Cup players playing for them) I will state that it was 5-0 at half time but when your truly took up the left back berth in the second half it ended 7-4. That’s right we won the half 4-2 and both of their two were offside in my angry as fuck opinion. We’ll be back again next year as the benign football chant from the 70s used to bellow out from the losing team’s fans.

Right that’s me, I’m enjoying doing the blog again and it’s great to have a proper website again. Do get Edinburgh tickets, details on the events page but I’m at Stand 2 on 2nd-26th of August (not 13th) and tickets are on sale now. Speak tomorrow.

Today’s blog is sponsored by The Hand that do the dishes

I’ve got to get in my car and drive to Leeds tonight. I’ve got a gig there. And after it’s done I’ll be driving home. No doubt regardless of today’s football result, revellers (It’s normally just a phrase the police use) will be spilling out in the street singing the songs and behaving in a reveller way. It’s a nightmare driving around these people. It’s a group of folk I’d never confront even if they took a shit on my bonnet or somersaulted across my car roof. I’ll just drive and then avoid the city centre of my own city to get home. When I was one of these ‘revellers’ in the 80s we were called (by the red top tabloids mainly) ‘lager louts’ and ‘rowdies’ as well as the usual hooligans and yobboes by the daft older generation who felt we should be grateful to them cos they’d attended school during the second world war.

All of a sudden though, (it felt like it was just about the spring of about 1990 when it all changed) it got be cool to like these pastimes and books were written about it and magazines catered for the ‘lads’. Being a city centre drinker and a ‘regular bloke’ suddenly made a a 180 degree turn and in the 90s the posh cunts decided they’d always liked doing this and joined in in a Disney type of a way making it all a bit weird looking back.

Nowadays the 90s seems like a lifetime ago. It was a very hedonistic decade but at least as a decade it had a definition unlike the one we’re in now and the previous one. Shite times culturally on the surface but the 20s will be great I’m certain of that when all of the underground stuff finds itself a home. As this decade plays out the only significant contribution I can say that I’ve made to culture is 8 Edinburgh shows complaining about the lack of culture but at least it’s something. As I say I’ve got things in the pipeline, watch this space.

Today’s blog is sponsored by Faith, Hope but not Charity.

Yes the blog is back. That daily thing that 7 and 8 years ago got me into daily trouble is back. It’s back as fuck. As of now very high profile, should I actually say famous comedians (I don’t know they’ll probably take offence to that phrase if they’re reading this) took great offence to me just observing stuff about the business and mentioning them in passing as they did appalling television programmes  after appalling television programmes and thus have never spoken to me again. I know, one man and his blog!! Indeed one comic mentioned about these little people sniping right at the end of his book when summing up his success and quoted a line from the great Mark Twain in order to put people like me down. I was quite proud of that one. I’ll not mention the comedian’s name cos he didn’t mention mine but it does rank highly in my life achievements.

This time I’m not going to even give people balls to fire. My disdain these days isn’t so much toward individual comics that are causing the malaise but the malaise in general and what television comedy has become as a result of this mutual nob stroking on these cosy TV shows where stand ups have turned themselves into wanky celebrities. Not a hint of rebellion from the fuckers should surely make me more angry than the bloke who had not long turned 40 all those years ago.

But no! No no no!! I’m back and now I’m really positive. Why? Because people are doing their own thing now. From Kiri Pritchard McClean doing podcasts about murderers to Janey Godley being all over social media, podcasting and creating her own following and indulging in street politics and wonderful disorder toward world leaders. There’s Richard Herring doing his own sketch comedy online and blogging and self funding his own shows. Scott Bennett is making his own sitcom and what about Jonathon Pie and I’m sure there’s loads more. These fuckers have not only saved comedy but saved my sanity. Just when I thought it was all horrendously touchy feely and the only way to get on as a working class person was to be grateful and discomknockerated (spirit of Ken Dodd) to be in the chat show studio and had to say every two or three sentences ‘who would have thought me, a person from insert name of crap town would be sitting next to Meg Ryan and John Cleese’. I’d say this is better than punk and a great time to be alive. There’s no rules anymore, if you’ve got an idea put it out.

I’ve a few, I’ve put a few into practice. Watch this space for all of them. We are coming to get you.

Today’s blog is sponsored by nuts whole hazelnuts oooh.