cake in milk

I was blessed with good parents who provided my brother and I with a warm, loving environment to grow up in. Unfortunately they’re not quite old enough yet for me to return that favour by placing them into a moderately priced care home. But they also brought me up with a healthy appreciation for good live comedy and that’s certainly one act I can repay now.

On my recommendation they attended Robin Ince’s Darwin Birthday Spectacular at Norwich Arts Centre back in November; a touring version of his School for Gifted Children shows featuring Robin and Josie Long alongside folk musician Gavin Osborn and popular science writers, Ben Goldacre and Simon Singh. My parents both enjoyed it but my mum remarked that Robin seemed like an angrier Stewart Lee and that she had concerns about his levels of stress.

I talked to Robin about this (the comparison with Stewart, not my mother’s fears of an imminent cardiac arrest) during a recent interview for Den of Geek:

I’ve noticed with Stewart Lee, because we’re both middle-aged men with young children, our concerns have become similar. This is probably going to sound really highfaluting and awful but it’s as if the morality comes more and more to the fore and I think, “I don’t want the world to be this wrong.”

And yet one of Robin’s favourite pieces of cinema is the the first ten minutes of the 2004 Dawn of the Dead remake where the world turns to absolute shit. He is a paradoxical man.

Here’s another cut piece from our chat, where Robin discusses working with childhood heroes and not being able to find somewhere to hang his coat backstage:

One of the reasons I started in stand-up is John Hegley. Whenever I’ve worked with him it’s a tremendous excitement because I watched him when I was 15 years old and he’s someone that I think has carved out a brilliant career doing what he believes in.

I still have a signed Jeremy Hardy poster I got when I was 17 years old in Edinburgh. He was selling posters from his show for a pound for the Terrence Higgins Trust and now I find myself sitting next to him when I do The News Quiz.

I keep going on about Alan Moore, but it was one of the most exciting things doing a gig in Northampton. I was saying to a guy outside I was getting worried because what if Alan Moore was there? And yes, he is. He’s in the front row with his wife Melinda. I’m trying out a show that I’ve never done before and because of the shape of Alan’s hair you can tell when he’s laughing because there’s a certain movement in it. Then afterwards when I’m chatting to him and he goes, “You should come round to dinner at some point.” I’m going, “This is Alan Moore! I started reading him when I was ten years old in 2000 AD, Warrior Magazine, and V for Vendetta and now I can be in a room having a conversation with him and finding out things and learning stuff.”

These are all of the sides that make up for the fact that I’ve spent a lot of my time sitting on late night trains or at home full of self-loathing going, “That wasn’t as good as it should have been. I’ve let that audience down.” When I’m just sitting outside of a pub having a conversation with you I’m full of excitement and thinking, “What a magnificent world,” but tomorrow when I’m about to go on stage I’ll think, “What on earth are you doing? Why are you standing here about to show off to people and talk about things?” At the Lyric I saw my arm as I was gesturing in some routine and I thought, “I’m still wearing a fucking duffel coat,” such a British amateurish thing.

Robin’s flat was flooded with sewage a few years ago, destroying his prized record collection. Here’s a documentary he did for Radio 4 back in 2008 asking if his generation were the last to have such an obsession with music. It also features Stewart Lee, Andrew Collins and Lauren Laverne.

[podcast]http://www.cakeinmilk.com/podcasts/How%20Robin%20Ince%20Got%20His%20Groove%20Back.mp3[/podcast]

Technorati Tags: den of geek, robin ince

I attended a talk on the merits of the narrative non-fiction genre in Notting Hill the other month. I was a huge fan of Jon Ronson, but hadn’t really heard of either of the other speakers; Blake Morrison and Isabel Losada. Blake was really good and interesting and Isabel… well, it’s a little telling that on Amazon the majority of the books on her recommended reading list are her own.

The next day I conducted an interview with Jon for Den of Geek. We covered a range of subjects but during our last ten minutes briefly discussed a bit of the sceptical movement. It didn’t really tie in too closely with the media-related talk, so I’m publishing it here.

I’ve seen you a couple of at the Sceptics in the Pub meetings in Holborn and I know you attended TAM London the other weekend. How do you find those kinds of things?

I’ve thought a lot about this actually and the conclusion I came to is that the good stuff about them kind of outweighs the bad stuff. The main thing, as I tweeted about afterwards, is that sometimes you need to draw a line in the sand about what’s true and what’s not true. And not enough people do that and I think it’s really valuable. So there’s a bit of over-love of Randi but I just think they’re good spirits, and they’re factually right.

It amused me last night when Isabel brought up past lives and you slammed it as simply being wrong.

I was just a bit grumpy, but for fucks sake don’t we know by now that it’s bollocks? I was past-life regressed once and it’s so obviously a scam. You’d have to be an idiot to not think it’s a scam. What happens when you’re being regressed is you’re just desperate to please the regressor, so you just come up with fucking suits of armour and Joan of Arc and whatever shit you can come up with.

How do you define yourself then with regards to the sceptic side of things? Which category do you fall under?

Ooh…  I don’t really know. My main sort of problem is they can be aggressive and hostile towards believers. I was talking to Adam Curtis the other day and we were talking about the sceptics and he said the same things: there’s no life after death but it doesn’t matter because look at all the wonderful things in life. Adam’s point to me is “what about someone who’s just about to die?” and he’s got a point. There is some comfort you can take from religion and there’s no problem with that. So even though I know as well as I can know that the sceptics are right about everything the fact that they’re not particularly humane is the thing that stops me from being a 100% supporter. An atheist is a weird thing to call yourself, I think. My initial gut feeling about that is why do you want to advertise yourself in that way? I see myself as a writer.

One of my hobbies is to collect writers’ first published works which have never been reprinted. This is generally because either they’re not very good, or the publishers have folded. Jon looked horrified when I presented him with a copy of Clubbed Class and threatened to firebomb the shop that sold it to me.

Technorati Tags: den of geek, joan of arc, jon ronson, sceptics in the pub, TAM, the men who stare at goats

Having never seen the sketch trio in action, but having heard great things about them, I watched the first two episodes of We Are Klang genuinely excited. I was under the impression that with the (albeit delayed) commission of Stewart Lee’s Comedy Vehicle the BBC finally seemed to have learned that decent comedy from established acts deserves a place in its schedule.

After then watching a few YouTube’d clips of their live show, from the interview I conducted via email with Steve Hall from the group, I think my question about making compromises for the TV show is probably the most pertinent. Many of We Are Klang‘s live reviews cite their unbridled passion for going too far; for being deliberately offensive and having fun with it. Perhaps that’s what makes the ‘Edited for TV’ version a bit of a let down. There are a few moments of inspiration, like the Jew song, that translate for TV relatively complete from its stage incarnation, but by-and-large it comes across as a CBeebies version of Bottom.

This is just my own viewpoint, and certainly the press had great things to say about the debut episode in the listings sections. Chortle seem to have ignored it, the British Comedy Guide have mixed reactions and Cook’d & Bomb’d hate it (probably because Chris Morris isn’t in it). Perhaps I’m in a minority, but I’m not really sure who to place the blame on, and I don’t know who it’ll appeal to: it’s pretty tame juvenile humour for an adult show, but still a little too sweary for a child audience. I imagine longtime Klang fans are going to watch it, but ultimately be disappointed in the toned-down nature of the show.

It’s like picking up your dog  from the vets after a check-up. You’re happy to see him back, he’s overjoyed to see you but as he runs to greet you, tail wagging, he’s developed a bit of a limp and you notice he’s been castrated. You’re angry and confused. You ask the vet why he performed the unnecessary operation and the vet replies, “Well, he wanted to get on primetime BBC Three.”

You kick the vet in the face. You kick your dog in the face.

Technorati Tags: den of geek, we are klang

I met Dan at the King’s Head in Crouch End, a pub that houses one of the oldest Comedy Clubs in Britain. I haven’t seen him perform live yet, but I can’t wait to. If he has half the energy and enthusiasm he displayed in the interview I’m sure he’s got to be pretty great. The interview is available at Den of Geek here. No bonus questions this time, I’m afraid.

Our chat took an interesting turn when he brought up his extensive graphic novel collection. As something of a collector myself, and a big fan of a number of the titles Dan mentions, I had to hold back on talking to him about them and concentrate on my more generic stand-up related questions. Once the interview finished we did gang up a little on the woman from Avalon, Dan’s management company, when she dared suggest it might be a bit pretentious to call them anything but comics.

Dan mentions he could bore me for hours with an on the craft of comedy and his comedy manifesto, so I offered to take him up on the challenge next year. If there’s one thing I don’t think I do enough of, it’s transcribing ridiculously long interviews.

After the two of them left, my friend Dave, who’d been patiently waiting at a nearby table came over for a couple of drinks. He was terrified of the chalk board art behind me on the wall, of a creepy hand reaching toward a blood-filled nut. I can see his point.

Technorati Tags: dan atkinson, den of geek, downstairs at the king's head

On unassigned assignment again for Den of Geek I was interviewing today Dan Antopolski (of Sandwich Rap fame) at his house in Brixton. He was in a bit of an Edinburgh hurry, with Avalon taking bags out of his house to a van to transport them up as I arrived.

As it was a pleasant day we decided to do the interview in his massive garden. Waiting for Jo from Avalon PR, we discussed his rap over pasta and drinks. Sometimes I think I have a great job, but then I remember that it’s unpaid.

After the interview had concluded I headed back to Brixton tube with Jo. We had a chat about Edinburgh, the recent Richard Herring/Brian Logan incident and then she offered me tickets to all of Avalon’s Edinburgh shows. I realised that as well as meeting people I think are great there are additional perks to this unpaid job, so I’ve started thinking it’s great again. Apart from the transcribing bit.

Technorati Tags: dan antopolski, den of geek, pasta

I met up with the kind and exuberant comedian Josie Long for an interview just before she went off to plunder charity shops for her London is Funny column. She suggested a pub in Holborn for the venue which turned out to be a BNP hangout with a distinct smell of dead rat. Next time I’ll choose.

The interview is up at Den of Geek, but here’s an extra added special bonus piece of conversation around my question about her atheism. I brought up the only other thing of note in Holborn: the Sceptics in the Pub meetings.

Josie: How are they? Are they great?

Me: It’s quite good; I’ve seen Robin Ince there, Jon Ronson, Ben Goldacre… It sometimes creates a church-like atmosphere in itself.

Josie: Yeah, ‘cos people are so… but you know what? It’s a way that people bond and that bonding is for good.

Me: You can tell that the bonding there is the only bonding some of the attendees get.

Josie: Aww, yeah, lonely dorks. People need ways to look after one another a bit and be kind to one another and anything that does that can be good. More and more I find I have to organise community events. Where I live there’s a resident’s group and they have meetings and it’s so lovely and I wish there was more things like that in cities ‘cos in villages you have your village mayor, and when you have kids you have your school fête so it’s more for people who don’t fit into established community categories; something to bring them together.

And here’s a bonus piece of poor quality audio, straight from the dictaphone, of me asking a question which a friend suggested.

[podcast]http://www.cakeinmilk.com/podcasts/Josie%20Long.mp3[/podcast]

Technorati Tags: atheism, den of geek, holborn, josie long, sceptics in the pub

Just before Richard Herring had his iPhone stolen, I was sat for an hour with him in the lounge of Shepherd’s Bush’s ridiculously poncey hotel, K-West. This is an establishment which refuses to admit on its website that it’s in Shepherd’s Bush, despite the fact it is directly behind the second best shopping centre in Shepherd’s Bush, and refuses to include the location in its address. And a freshly squeezed orange juice will set you back £4.95.

The absurdly long interview is here. I forgot to ask him why Nostradamus’ horse was called David Collins, but here are an extra couple of questions that were omitted for space:

Do you consider yourself a geek?

Not really. I think we’re just people and people are quite nerdy generally. I’m not massively into technology; I don’t understand all that stuff. I think other people would think I probably was a geek. I like comedy and I like computer games a bit, and I spend a lot of time on the internet so… yeah, I suppose I am, thinking about it.

You seem to write far less on your blog about Scrabble and poker lately. Do you just not have time for those any more?

I think the poker one I was playing a lot of it at the time, but people didn’t really enjoy reading about it. I’m not playing as much poker but I still play Scrabble just not as much as I did. I think I just spend more time on the internet now but I’ll just use that time on Twitter or Facebook or just trawling the internet over and over again. I’m always doing other stuff when I’m watching TV now; I just don’t have the attention span. So I’m not doing those things as much but they’re being replaced by even more tedious things to waste my life with.

Technorati Tags: collings and herrin, den of geek, fist of fun, hitler moustache, richard herring, tmwrnj, virgilio anderson

I was bored last night. So bored I almost listened to music radio. Thankfully sanity hoisted me up by the scruff of the neck and literally threw me face-first onto the internet.

But that bored me too… there’s only so many times you can look at funny pictures of overweight squirrels and argue with countless other nerds about things that don’t really matter before it all seems far too laborious. So I rolled out Yahoo! Messenger and went to play around with it.

I decided to IM someone I didn’t know and ask them if they minded awfully if I interviewed them. But who should I randomly choose out of the thousands that used this crappy application? Which person would be the most likely to agree to my inadequate request for an interview?

Dangerously lacking in imagination I chose ‘randomperson’.

‘Hi, mind if I interview you?’ I typed.

His reply – ‘Who are you and why do you want to interview me?’ – was the beginning of a beautiful friendship. I explained my dodgy premise for interviewing him and he seemed to be okay with it. Randomperson is 26, lives in San Diego and works as an Electrical Engineer. He’s not from San Diego though, originally he’s from Portland, Oregon on the west coast of the US. He prefers somewhere with seasons though, which explains his move in a couple of months to Denver, Colorado.

This information (naturally) led me to bring up the topic of ‘Denver the Last Dinosaur’.

barry: Denver’s the last dinosaur you know.
randomperson: How so?

I recounted part of the theme-tune for him – “Denver! The Last Dinosaur, He’s my friend and a whole lot more”.

He thought it sounded a bit kinky but it led me to reconsider – surely if Denver was truly the last dinosaur, naturally he’d want to (in some way) preserve some of his dinosaur genes. And if the only way to do this was to mate with a group of small children well… No, that’s just wrong; Denver’s a paedophile.

We found that we did have one thing in common – our shared adoration of Transformers. He named this as his favourite cartoon based upon the number of toys he owned. And because he’s an electrical engineer I bet he could make his own.

He also likes sci-fi and spy fiction and was currently reading a book about the fallibility of memory. Ironically he couldn’t remember the author.

We don’t share similar tastes in food though. I learnt this when he returned from lunch and told me he’d had Kung Pao Chicken and found it very tasty:

randomperson: I had Kung Pao Chicken. It was very tasty.

During our conversation I learnt many things about him. Randomperson’s favourite movie is The Blues Brothers, his favourite CD: Dire Straits – Brothers in Arms, he has well-educated ideas on abortion and likes some British television. Namely Ab Fab, Dr. Who, and Dangermouse.

randomperson: He’s the ace! He’s fantastic!

Of course, the best part about our conversation was near the conclusion:

barry: Have you not experienced the joys of cake in milk?
randomperson: I have not. I usually eat them together, but not as together as you suggest.
barry: Why not try it; see for yourself what the joyous combination does for your digestive system?
randomperson: I shall.

God bless Randomperson!