Is the Queen in Equity?

Hola. Hope you are well.

I’m back from my hols, Bruges and Paris, all went well and we didn’t bring back any kitchen utensils (see last week’s blog post).

In Paris we went to the places you’re supposed to, the Champs Elysees, the Arc de Triomphe, the Eiffel Tower, the Louvre and a cemetery, where randomly Jim Morrison, Oscar Wilde, Marcel Marceau and Edith Piaf are laid to rest. Although when I mentioned in passing, going to the tunnel where Princess Diana had the car crash, ‘Her With One Permanent Job’ said that would be ‘sick’. Too soon perhaps.

With the Olympics being in London and me now living in London, it was no surprise that I was in Paris, when the opening ceremony was taking place. Opening ceremonies are generally bonkers but even more so with French commentary (if you’re not a French Speaker). If that wasn’t odd enough mid way through, the Queen turns up in a skit with James Bond. If I were the Queen, I would have had to remind the organisers that I am the Head of State. After all she’s not some shmuck, trying to resurrect her fading career, she’s the Queen. At the very least, I hope she got paid Equity rates for her acting role.

The 4 hour ceremony was wrapped up with Sir Paul McCartney singing, ‘Hey Jude’. After what happened recently it would have been funny if someone had cut his mic.

Now I’m back in England, the big Olympic story is about the number of empty seats at some of the events. When I do comedy, here in London, they are generally held in the upstairs of pubs and although the capacity my not be massive, it does mean that the venue packs out easily and creates a good atmosphere. So if Lord Coe is reading this, my suggestion is to move some of the events to the upstairs of pubs. Or he could re-issue the tickets and allow the people to enter a complicated ballot system, where they’re sure to not get tickets for the event they wanted to see.

And Finally... the Olympics wouldn’t be the Olympics without the thoughts of the 3 Prong Attack radio show. Below are a few short vids.

Here’s our Olympic Competition (1 min 46)

This is our insight into the games  (1 min 12)

These are our Olympic predictions (1 min 11)

Enjoy!!

Til next week, stay safe!

Sunday Blogging Sunday

Hola. Hope you are well.

Sharp eyed readers may have noticed that this blog has been published on a Sunday. In this blogs history, I’ve mainly blogged on a Monday (as is my intention), occasionally I’ve had to blog on a Tuesday and very rarely I’ve had to put it back to a Wednesday but in all my time doing this blog, I’ve never blogged early and wrote it on a Sunday, until today. Not one to overstate things, but THIS IS HISTORY!!!. Technically, I could have written the blog up, saved it as a draft and then published it tomorrow, but due to the fact I’m going away early tomorrow morning and because our internet connection is temperamental, I thought I would avoid stress on this occasion.

In addition to blogging on a Sunday, I also reached another milestone on Friday, when I completed a full academic year as a TA (teaching assistant) in the one school. The last day of school, was somewhat weird in that everyone was happy, the children were happy, the staff were happy, people were smiling, it was nice to be part of it. I’m sure the reverse will be true on the first day back in Sept.

Talking of Sept I should be back at the same school, which is good news. I’ve also managed to secure some work during August, again working with children. Part of my role involves working on my weekends in Sept. So between the two jobs I will be working 7 days a week during Sept. I’m not sure how this has happened. I’ve always attempted to have an easy life and now I’m working 7 day weeks. It just goes to show having an easy life, isn’t as easy as it first appears. And just for good measure Prong 2 has booked the 3 Prong Attack (my double act) in for a gig in Sept.

I can’t really complain, I might try from time to time, and like I said at the top of this blog, I am going on a mini holiday tomorrow. ‘Her With One Permanent Job’ and I also went away this time last year to Valencia, the home of Paella. On our last day there, we went to a market, where ‘HWOPJ’ wanted to buy a paella dish, I wasn’t so sure of the merits of adding to our luggage with something we could buy in London. Anyway, after the conversation went back and forth, we ended up bringing the dish back with us. Can you guess how many times we have used this paella dish in the subsequent year?? Answers on a postcard to Julian and ‘HWOPJ’ have yet to use the Paella dish, comp!

And Finally… we watched ‘The Graduate’ last night, for the first time, so with this in mind, feel free to let me know if you’ve ever had intimate relations with your partner’s parents.

Til next week (and a day), stay safe!

Two idiots and a pop up tent

Hola. Hope you are well.

With 11 days to go before the Olympics start it’s good to see everything is in order, apart from security that is. It’s not as if the organisers have had 7 years to plan this. It does seem odd that it was only with two weeks to go that G4S realised they were well under staffed to cope. You’d think that this might have been flagged up a little sooner. I’m sure if Lord Coe wanted, he could find people in the East End of London who would be prepared to take care of security and they’d be cheaper than what G4S are charging.

Now on to ‘Her With One Permanent Job’ who was at the most controversial music gig of the year. I’m of course referring to the Bruce Springsteen gig, where the council pulled the plug on Bruce and Sir Paul McCartney, who’d turned up to perform a couple of songs. A lot of people seemed to put the blame on the council, the general feeling being that they were being mean-spirited and killjoys. I on the other hand would like to praise the council, as rules are rules, even if you are ageing rockers. Bruce was on stage for over 3hrs, which although I congratulate him for his value for money, I would also say that if he can’t fit his set into this time frame, then maybe he should go on a time management course.

Naturally, I don’t really care about Bruce-gate (as I’ve just named it) but it didn’t stop me from posting this on my Twitter page

“I’m with Westminster council. Rules are rules. What Mr Springsteen and Mr McCartney need to consider is Health and Safety!!” Unusually for my tweets someone responded, a random in fact, which was quite exciting, he asked “What was the health risk?” I didn’t reply, as these kind of things can often escalate into a slanging match, plus more importantly I couldn’t think of a witty response.

And Finally… On last week’s blog post I mentioned how I had some difficulty putting down our pop up tent. At one point during my difficulties, Prong 2 (from 3 Prong Attack) came round and instead of helping, decided to film me. It’s probably too long for the attention span of those that trawl the internet but why not sit down with a cup of tea and a couple of biscuits and watch two idiots and a pop up tent.

Til next time, stay safe!

Tennents in the Park

Hola. Hope you are well.

I’ve had an interesting week, mainly revolving around T in the Park. preparations for T began a few days before the festival, when ‘Her With One Permanent Job’ and I decided to try out our pop up tent in the living room. What we found out is we could get the tent up but we couldn’t get it back down. I did what I normally do in such a situation, I left it a few days and hoped that would sort out the problem. Surprisingly this approach didn’t work. After that I rang the helpline, I’m not sure the man, manning the phone was too happy to receive the call as he was “just putting his coat on to go home”. Firstly, if he didn’t want to take the call, he shouldn’t have taken the call and secondly, I can’t imagine the tent helpline is overly swamped with calls. One helpful tip he did give was that you need to force it, even if it doesn’t feel like it. Armed with this knowledge and the online video, I was able to get the tent down. I know this might be a little deal to most people but I can’t tell you how satisfied I was with my achievement.

So with the pop up tent unpopped, we were ready for our festival. Mentally, I was prepared for it to be terrible, weather wise, and I wasn’t disappointed on that score. Over the weekend, I got familiar with the different textures of mud, from the ultra thick mud to the really liquidy mud. But as I had prepared for it to be terrible and because it was, meant in reality it wasn’t too bad. And even the camping side of things wasn’t that bad, having said that after 3 nights, even London seemed appealing. I can’t help feeling if I were a fugitive and had to live rough in the woods, it wouldn’t be that long before I turned myself in. (Let’s hope it doesn’t come to this)

As for the bands we saw, it was a bit like a Manc Band Bingo as we saw, the Stone Roses, Noel Gallagher, Happy Mondays, New Order, and Elbow (technically from Bury). One thing I was impressed with was that despite the crowds enjoying the acts they weren’t nutters. Although, as is the way with outdoor music events, some people thought it would be a good idea to throw some of their unfinished pints into the crowd. I couldn’t help thinking, you wouldn’t do this if you were in the pub. If you’d reach the point where you didn’t want anymore of your drink, you might offer it to a friend or leave it for the bar staff, what you wouldn’t do is lob it across the pub.

Whilst we were at the festival, Andy Murray was playing the Wimbledon final and oddly in this era of technology, we found out the result when we saw it pinned up, outside a Tea shop. What does feel weird is that before we went away, the public seemed indifferent to him by the time we’d come back he’d become a national hero. And what had he done to achieve this? He’d fought a good fight, lost and then cried, the perfect combo for us Brits.

And Finally… what have I learnt from my time at T in the Park? Apart from reaffirming that Bez is the luckiest man in music, it’s that my bladder isn’t as good as it used to be.

Til next week, stay safe!

Play Your Carr-ds Right

Hola. Hope you are well.

My favourite email of the week, was off a friend asking me about being in a trailer for a programme about Victorians. As you probably can guess, it wasn’t me (I’m pretty sure it wasn’t me). She didn’t know what the programme was but is going to look out for it. If you know what the programme is let me know (via the comments button). Also feel free to tell me what was your favourite email of the week, or have you ever been mistaken for someone else?

In other news, I couldn’t help but notice when I logged on to this site last week that the number of comments were exactly the same as the number of posts I’d done, 111. I was pretty pleased with that number (even if half are me replying to people’s comments). Since last week there’s been a few more comments so I now have more comments than blog posts, woohoo! Keep up the good work!

Also this week I have come up with a TV prog idea. It’s called, ‘Play Your Carr-ds Right’. After David Cameron described Jimmy Carr’s actions in joining a scheme designed to lower his tax contributions as ‘Morally Wrong’, I thought our Prime Minister could comment on all topical scandals. The contestants would have to decide whether the PM would think each scandal should be deemed lesser than what Jimmy Carr did (lower) or worse than what Jimmy Carr did (higher). I could see this being a primetime hit to rival ‘Take Me Out’. Feel free to let me know what you think, especially if you are a TV exec.

And Finally… it would appear ‘Her With One Permanent Job’ has taken a shine to Mario Balotelli. She’s always liked him but I think her admiration increased after he scored his second goal for Italy in their semi-final, and he celebrated by removing his shirt. I do feel like she is stepping into my area, as football is my domain. How would she like it if I started ogling feminist Germaine Greer. Secondly, a more insecure man, would be a bit concerned by this situation. But why should I feel threatened by this man, who is younger than me, more successful than me, richer than me and more ripped than me???

Anyway, I’m off now, I’ve got an appointment at the gym!

Til next week, stay safe!