Putting the butter in the microwave for a bit first, cream together the butter and the sugar in a large bowl.
Add the egg, baking powder, cocoa, flour and sugar. Shove it all in recklessly. Mix it all up until it’s an thick, sticky but even consistency. Stir in some chocolate drops now, if you’d like.
Break the dark and white chocolate into nice chunks with your hands. Or use a knife (whichever feels more natural).
Take a chunk of cookie dough and roll it up into a ball. Squidge a dent into the top of the cookie and place a few chocolate pieces into the middle.
Fold the dough back over the top of the cookie, so it forms a nice even ball again, then squeeze it so it flattens out a bit. Finish by arranging some more chocolate pieces on top of the cookie. It’ll look fantastic, but don’t eat it yet!
You’re aiming to cook the outside but leave the inside really melty and delicious. So heat the oven up to the temperature of THE HOTTEST YOUR OVEN WILL GO. Then put the cookies in on a baking tray for about 5 or 6 minutes. They’ll look completely raw after that, and they’ll be really squidgy, but you can tell if they’re done by the chocolate on the top just starting to brown. Once they cool for five minutes or so you can feel free to pick them up and stuff them into your chocolate hole. You can freeze the dough the day before if you like and cook them for ten minutes in a hot oven for perhaps a better result, but I tend to want cookies immediately.
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.
There are numerous videos available on the internet of people attempting to ingest a teaspoon of ground cinnamon. Worryingly the most popular of these Cinnamon Challenge videos feature attractive young women inevitably puking while their boyfriend looks on holding the camera giggling, and asking insincerely if she’s okay.
Like most hot girls who attempt it, at 2am on the 1st of November, Chris, Ian, Dave and myself spectacularly failed.
The stations on the Hammersmith and City line (also known as the Hammersmith and Shitty line due to famously unreliable service) are quite unique in that they don’t ever specify how long you’ll be waiting for your train. With no electronic signage, and a distinct lack of staff, it’s often difficult to ascertain whether or not it would be quicker to walk.
Stretching from Hammersmith to Barking, the line passes through 29 stations. The tubes on this line are completely identical and as ancient and untrustworthy as the C-Stock in use on the Circle line . They don’t even have pink handrails to differentiate. Quite disappointing all round.
I was quite lucky to catch this though, despite the lack of people in the carriage, Lee was still rather reluctant to take the picture. These new London Overground trains were introduced in mid-July 2009 but the old stock from the Silverlink service are still very much in use. The new trains feature fancy new fangled sideways seats allowing more people to cram uncomfortably into each carriage. As far as I can tell this is the only innovation.
Using Oyster Pay As You Go on this service is cheaper than other tube services, for no discernible reason, and since the introduction of the new stock has increased from 90p for a single trip to a whopping £1.10. I don’t know why I’m trying to introduce some controversy into this; it’s still perfectly reasonable and quite accessible.
Furthermore I can say with absolute authority that this tube’s ceiling rails are the hardest to reach with feet.
Says Circle, goes in a circle. No messing around with this line; it does exactly what it says on the tin. These trains are from the late 1960s or 1978 and are due to be replaced by 2012. I really have a problem with using a vehicle that’s older than me.
It’s famous for being the most targeted and, therefore, the public transport winner of the 7th July bombings in 2005 as well as being the de rigueur mode of transport for Circle line pub crawls.
These trains entered service in the early 1980s, just like me. This is London Underground’s busiest line (though you may not suspect it from the empty carriage I pose in), and I can say with 100% honesty that the District is definitely my favourite tube line. It’s both easy to get from where I live and the monkey bar style handrails allow for numerous permutations of dangling.
Because of its broad reach and number of stations which are located above ground, each carriage on the District line tubes is guaranteed to have at least one EastEnders fan onboard, desperately waiting for the train to stop at the fictional Walford East station. If you see one, it is considered common courtesy to other passengers to gently shoo them off. They are nothing but rats with wings.
I’m not very good at reminiscing. I tend to forget a lot of things that happen. Looking back through all of the footage I shot during my trip to Vegas to with a group of friends way back in March was almost like having to sit through a slideshow of tedious photos from someone else’s holiday. Y’know, except fun.
I did think at one point that maybe I’d filmed too much stuff and not enough of us as a group but the few instances I did inadvertantly catch (footage of us gawping open-mouthed at the Grand Canyon, or a conversation about how small cars look from a distance) merely served to reinforce my original views.
Music is:
Blue Man Group -- Time to Start
Andrew WK -- Las Vegas, Nevada
Cirque du Soleil -- Svecounia (from O)
Venetian Gondola Man - O Sole Mio
Big Elvis -- Can’t Help Falling in Love
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.
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.
