Saturday 31 March 2007

Dave Foley is Real Scientific

Dave Foley from Kids in the Hall does his own films on Super Deluxe. Have a look.

Friday 30 March 2007

It's Not All Shit After All...But No, Hang On, It Is

If you’re at work, idly allowing the precious minutes of your life to ebb away for the sake of a lot of meaningless pish, fill up on the good stuff here.

Of at least you think it's the good stuff, until you realise that its all a complicated advert for Microsoft. What a shame.

Demetri Martin is a very funny man. And also now a corporate cock sucker it would appear. Enjoy that scaley old whang buddy.

But he is pretty funny.

Don’t believe me? Get stuck into the video below then smartypants.

Search the 'Net With Dice

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It's Pay Day and We're Bored



Paul here and Neil have been catching Maltesers in their mouths. So bored.

Wednesday 28 March 2007

Jim Gaffigan in the New York Times

This is a good article in the New York Times with stand-up comic Jim Gaffigan.

On Circumcision -

“How’d they come up with that idea?” Mr. Gaffigan, who was raised Roman Catholic, mused during his performance on Sunday, marveling not just at the pain but also at the effort involved. “My wife told me that in the Bible Abraham circumcised himself.” Pause. “Wow! I can’t even get to the bank before it closes.”

Funny Wool

Here's about 8 minutes of Glenn Wool at the Up the Creek comedy club in London. It starts off with a bit of the MC Alun Cochrane. Keep watching for Wool talking about how he handles 'your mamma' heckles.

Surprise Rock

Here’s an account of a surprise stand-up set Chris Rock did in New York recently.

He came out and mocked some guy who was trying to film the set and then pretended to stop by putting the camera on the table. Chris said, "I've made fucking movies! You don't think I know when I'm being filmed!?"

Here's another comedian's story of the same evening.

Being and Thyme

Graeme and Anna have launched a food blog Being and Thyme. When he worked in our office Graeme would on occasion bring in things that he had baked. They promise lots of recipes and food discussions.

Sorry I'm Not in Service


Sorry I'm Not in Service
Originally uploaded by thom_brogan.
I've crashed into a bus stop. It's amazing how many drivers see the bus stop creeping up on them late.

Spotted this on St. Vincent Street last night. Not seen it in the news, so I presume no one was killed or injured. The police were in attendance, which is why I only hurriedly clicked a few shots, in case they gied me into trouble.

The bus seemed fine, but the stop was a write-off.

Monday 26 March 2007

Nobody Knows Anything


William Goldman, has written a couple of great books about writing for the screen. In Adventures in The Screen Trade he famously remarks that when it comes to knowing what audiences will go for “…nobody knows anything.”

This is a frightening notion for media industry professionals, but oooooh, so true.

Look at the panic on the big channels. You have ITV saying their dropping their wall to wall reality drivel and the BBC are desperately scrambling around trying to find a spot in which their own fly on the wall drek“Castaway” will get more than a relative handful of viewers.

It indicates a number of things, not the least of which being we’re sick of reality TV for the moment. Or at least sick of it being on all the frigging time.

But it also indicates something that the current big boys need be much warier of.

The number of times they lead Britain’s TV audience is falling. Tons of programming these days is reactive, someone else’s idea re-hashed. Innovation is at a premium.

The BBC in particular are in for a very tough time over the next few years. When once they had only ITV to content with they now have Sky, You Tube and Bit-torrent battling with them, among a plethora of other distractions. On top of this they are committed to developing digital technology DAB (which as yet doesn’t really work) and they have failed to secure a rise in license fee payments that would have given them a realistic chance of maintaining their multi pronged agenda.

Quality of programming will doubtless suffer as budgets are squeezed, unless they dispense with tired old formats and invest in talent and innovation.

ITV don’t care – they can just stick on more shows like the Mint, but the BBC could really have done with being able to make cheap reality stuff for a few more years.

The good news for us is if they can’t find a reality formula that works, they’ll have to try something else and cheap doesn’t necessarily mean bad.

NO2ID Night

Following on from our last festival show on Friday, on Saturday night we played the NO2ID Gala Benefit at the Old Fruitmarket. As you may be aware from previous posts this was a gig that we initiated and helped to set up.

There was always an uncertainty over the line up and over how many tickets could be sold. In the end around 150 people turned up. Which is fine, but really we were looking for 200 at least.

No fault though of the NO2ID campaign guys who had tens of thousands of flyers printed. Several folk at work told me they were handed flyers through the week, so they were out and about all over the place.

As for the show it was an odd night. Several of the acts touted to appear didn’t. Mostly I think this was down to the promoter not securing them.

He did land an extremely good compere in Gordon Brunton and he had his job cut out for him. Paul Pirie opened the night and went over well, pretty much everyone who was on went down well with the crowd, who were up for enjoying the night.

We were on next. The Old Fruitmarket is a pretty big venue and as such we needed microphones. Radio mics were too much of an expense I was told, so we used simple cable microphones. It was a bit awkward, but not too much and we got through our 5 sketches fine, going down well with the crowd.

After us Green MSP Patrick Harvie went on to rally the crowd into opposing ID cards. From what I saw he gave a pretty good speech that was met with a warm reaction.

Through a lot of Gordon’s time on stage compering there were no comedians in the building and he just had to keep talking until someone turned up. This was down to the fact that everyone apart from us were doing other gigs at other venues.

Keir McAllister was another who had a good spot, before Lucy Porter came on. She got into some banter with the crowd about football and made the first mention by any comedian of the night of ID cards.

Canadian-Scot Phil Nichol was the highlight of the show, doing a fantastic twenty minutes where he closed on his famous song ‘The Only Gay Eskimo’. A fight kicked off in the balcony just as he left.

Gordon then had to announce that the headline act hadn’t turned up and that was the evening done. So a gigantic anti-climax, though I guess fitting for an evening in which the promoter bailed out on some weeks ago.

I think the audience enjoyed everyone they had seen however and the guys from the NO2ID campaign were very happy at the response they had from people there.

From there I went on to the late show at Blackfriars. Glenn Wool, who was apparently booked to do the NO2ID gig, was first on and performed a really good set.

It was quite a ramshackle night, which ended with everyone’s favourite comedy promoter stripping off onstage.

Our spot on Saturday was filmed and should appear on the Glue YouTube page later this week.

Photographs from the night and from Friday can be found here.

Saturday 24 March 2007

Good Last Show and Nice Write Up For Glue

A great show to finish off our run at the Festival last night. A great audience and a relaxed, confident performance from us.

The kind of gig that makes all the hard work worthwhile.

We also got a nice write up in the Evening Times.

If you didn't see it, there are scans below.

Friday 23 March 2007

Are They Knuts?

This photo gallery is pure class. How could anyone suggest killing this wee guy?

We Can Watch Heroes

Thanks yet again to the internet, and to Neil at work. I have been enjoying Heroes recently. The series covers the lives of people all over the world who suddenly discover they have super powers.

New characters are constantly introduced and not every episode features all the main characters.

A hugely enjoyable series each episode builds really well, normally to a great cliff-hanger that makes you want to stick on another episode.

It has all the qualities of a great comic book crammed into 45 minutes.

This Heroes Wiki tells you everything you need to know. Careful though if you haven’t seen many episodes.

It’s currently showing on the Sci-fi channel here, well worth watching or buying the DVDs when they finally come out. It's the best TV show since The Wire.

Tuesday 20 March 2007

Nothing Can Possib-lie Go Wrong...

Have a read at this. Astonishing.

Does anyone actually still want ID cards?

The Outlaw Comic

Thanks to the miracle of the internet, last night I watched the 75 minute documentary Bill Hicks: Outlaw Comic. Narrated by Janeane Garofalo it tells the story of how Hicks was censored by broadcasters in the States and played out much of his 16 years as a comedian in anonymity in his home country.

The doc is made up of archive clips of Hicks, mostly filmed in small clubs on cheap video cameras. There are also some clips of interviews with him from various cable shows and British television.

It’s very different from the other excellent Hicks documentary It’s Just a Ride which spoke to his family, friends and fellow comedians. This tells his story simply through voiceover and footage of him performing.

There were lots of clips I hadn’t seen, such as the 19 year old Hicks playing a local club and there were some I had seen such as his infamous rant one night in Chicago. "Take her out! Take her fucking out! Take her to somewhere that's GOOD! Go see fucking Madonna, you fucking idiot piece of shit!" His famed quote about how Hitler was right and was 'just an underachiever' isn't included however.

It’s well worth watching. Below is part one. You can click on it and follow the links for the further 7 chapters.

300


The potential film of the year 300 opens imminently.

An extremely loose interpretation of the battle of Thermopylae in 480 BC, the film is based on the best selling comic book by one of the mediums great masters, Frank Miller.

The story is for me, one of the most fascinating of all time.

It tells of a small band of 300 Spartans who held off a Persian army of close to a million for 3 days, thus allowing the rest of the Greek army to mobilise and eventually defeat an invasion that would have completely changed civilisation as we know it.



Of course that’s not really how it all happened, and there are many valid points being raised about the portrayal of the “villains” of the piece, the Persian Empire led by Xerxes the first.

It is certainly true that a group of around 300 Spartans were part of a force that delayed vastly superior numbers but they were part of a combined Greek forced that numbered over 5,000.

Even in their fateful last stand, when most of the Greeks had left to regroup, the Spartans were joined by Thebans who were being forced to fight against their will and by around 700 Thespians.

While the Spartans were a military people who were honour bound to stay and fight, the Thespians had no such obligation and so appear to be the forgotten heroes of the tale in many respects.

The million man army of Xerxes the First has been a source of great dispute among scholars and it is generally accepted to be a gross overestimation of the forces massed by the Persians.

That said, most agree that Infantry, Cavalry and Naval forces combined could have numbered as many as 500, 000 and it is generally accepted that during the Persians initial frontal assault they lost 10,000 men to the Greeks 2 or 3, losing ten of thousands more in repeated assaults until they eventually encircled the Greek force.

Whether massaged or not, it remains one of the most incredible stories of courage and military genius of all time and if Frank Miller and the filmmakers took a bit of artistic licence to make the tale a bit more resonant, so what? Who doesn’t?

But factual inaccuracies of a strictly historical kind are only some of the issues a lot of people are raising about the film.

Most of those critical of the film (and comic book) are concerned that in light of our occupation of Iraq and America’s manoeuvring against Iran that 300 represents a racist parable wherein noble Westerners hold back the unthinkable prospect of being overrun by the invasion of a “savage” Persian culture.

It is certainly safe to say that the Persians are “othered” in wholesale fashion in this story, while the Spartans are imbued with a simplistic nobility they did not necessarily possess.

The truth is a fairly boring one – these were two vast empires vying for control of territory.

The Persians were would-be invaders certainly, but were not, as some say the story suggests, intent on imposing their culture on the fledgling civilisations of the West. They merely wished to conquer, for wealth, for glory and for power. Such was the philosophy of the time. Great empires conquered.

The Spartans, while a fascinating people, were a particularly cruel race; a people who literally threw the deformed, the weak and the disabled to the dogs. As a warrior race, male children from an extremely early age were subjected to a horrific gauntlet of violent training which forged the few it did not kill into the sinewy super soldier of legend. Yet again, they were not evil as such. They simply applied a philosophy that allowed them to survive as a people at the time.

Given that there were no real goodies or baddies in this story it has been noted as no coincidence by some that the Persian Empire have been forced to wear the black hats by Miller, a writer who has frequently been criticised for his hawkish, right-wing political attitudes.

Certainly Miller is a clever enough writer to have intended the parallel. And it’s not as if it’s unusual for Hollywood to make villains of non-white racial groups.

But of course, it depends entirely on how you want to look at the story.

As a masterpiece of unabashed, testosterone-filled action, the comic book has few peers and the movie promises to travel along similar lines.

But if you happen to be from the Gulf region you might quite rightly wonder why the facts of a historical event have been changed to make white guys look like supermen and you look like a savage intent on forcing your culture on others.

And of course, where Talking Pish leads, others follow.

Taking 300 as its cue, here's a BBC article touching on historical revisionism in the movies.

Monday 19 March 2007

Rocking Your World in Quite a Gentle Way

Last night Jo and I went to see David O’Doherty at The Stand. O’Doherty is a consistently brilliant, funny and inventive comic who should have a much larger profile than he currently has.

The room was about three quarters full, but there should be no reason why he isn’t selling out venues of this size.

In his traditional checked shirt, Post Office tie, jeans and trainers he kicked off the show with a newly written musical introduction. After declaring it shambolic he got on with playing some tried and tested stuff.

He mixes storytelling with quirky songs, telling tales of squatting on his neighbours’ wireless internet, his friend’s misfortune at being called Paul Daniels and his love of dinosaur facts.

This was the third time we’ve seen him and I think my favourite is still his song of people struggling to cope with technology ‘Sent a Text to the Person the Text was About’.

“I’ve never felt so alive and yet so dead at the same time.”

Here he is playing ‘FAQ of the DOD’.

Jeez Oh

Here’s a pretty lame example of what Situationists would call “recuperation”.

One of those pointless “we’ll do all the hard work for you” form filler companies has stuck a page on You Tube contests asking people to submit a “rap” on the subject of taxes. The "best" one apparently wins $25,000. And Vanilla Ice is somehow involved.

Yeah, it’s the kind of thing that probably sounded good in the meeting.

Observe the pointless tragedy.

In particular, I urge you to check out "Everybody's Gotta Pay".

I sure hope you do one day lady.

Saturday 17 March 2007

Odd Mid-Run Glue?

Live performance is always throwing your curve-balls and last night was no exception for the Glue crew.

As we were getting ready, we were pleasantly surprised to hear that we'd done 30 pre-sales, more than we usually do.

When it came to the show however there were problems despite the larger than usual crowd mainly down to the venue.

It's a cavernous room were in which is completely unsuited to what were going.

You can absolutely belt it out in some rooms and feel it coming back off the walls at you - In those places it's easy to get an atmosphere going because you feel the energy in the room as you're performing.

In the room we're in, anything you put out there just dissipates and you feel isolated from the audience - and they feel that to.

The biggest problem last night though was something we had a bit of the previous week. People talking during the sketches.

Throughout the first act we had a guy who I'm informed was completely off his tree and didn't really know where he was just yammering away while we were trying to perform. Some of the audience repeatedly tried to shush him, and I eventually had a word after being heckled but by that time the atmosphere had gone.

We were spooked and, sensing that, the audience were spooked as well.

This I put down to the room as well. As Tom pointed out, we wouldn't have had this trouble in a theatre but as were booked in a pretty divey pub the guys who were causing the problem acted, quite understandably, as they normally would in a divey pub.

Not their fault, the fault of the guy who booked us into a completely unsuitable room.

Realising they had been spoiling the show, the guys who'd been talking left at half time and the second half went off pretty much without a hitch with a lot more laughs and no interruptions.

It's a shame and typical of life that someone from the BBC was there last night to see us. If she'd come the previous week she'd have seen a performance that went down well with no major hitches.

This week she saw us scrape a come from behind draw which can't have done anything to help us convince producers who have been humming and hawing about us for a while anyway.

But onto next week I suppose. There are weak spots we can fix and try and make sure its a tighter show.

Oh yeah, and if you can figure out how to tell people not to fecking talk during the sketches without sounding like an up-yourself wank, leave a comment.

Just as a postscript...

I've watched the show back on tape and to be honest, there was no appreciable difference in audience response from the previous week. They still largely went for it.

Obviously, we all know that our emotions and reactions can have an effect on our judgement of a situation, but it's weird looking back on a show that you have convinced yourself went badly and see no massive difference between that and a show you feel went well.

Anyway, onto the 23rd...

Friday 16 March 2007

A Hundred and Fifty Even

Ken Levine has posted a great excerpt from a Cheers script of his. This one is a Bar Wars episode that takes place on St. Patrick’s Day. Practically every line is laugh out loud funny.

Lazy Bastards


I’m just checking a mate’s blog there looking for an update, but they haven’t done one.

How dare they not have something new for me to read eh?

“Lazy Bastards.” I thought to myself.

Which is a bit cheeky really since I looking because I can’t be bothered doing any work.

I’m at that stage of the day/week/whatever (3.28pm on a Friday) where I’d rather be getting repeatedly kicked in the balls than do one more bit of the same old.

As I type, one of my colleagues is doing that eye flapping thing you do when your falling asleep somewhere you’re not meant to.

Doesnae get much better than this eh?

Wednesday 14 March 2007

The Universality of Ideas

I remember reading in Tom's Raindance book about filmmaking about the concept of the universality of ideas.

Basically if Hollywood produce a conspiracy thriller that bears a more than passing resemblance to your conspiracy thriller, the chances are you haven’t been ripped off – someone’s just had the same idea as you and beaten you to the punch.

Forget about it, junk your idea, move on. If you can’t come up with more than one concept you’re not really a writer are you?

It’s not an issue I've ever though about that much until I noticed that Sandy Nelson and Raymond Mearns had posted this great sketch on You Tube.



As some 'pish readers may know, we also have a sketch where ginger bottles are used as currency. I’ll post it tonight so you can compare the two (Oops. No I won't. Haven't captured it from my camera yet. Will do eventually.)

So, as you see, the universality of ideas comes into play.

Personally I think Raymond and Sandy’s sketch gets to the joke far quicker than ours and is a snappier effort in general.

We’ll probably drop ours after our upcoming performances and to be honest I’m just glad it wasn’t a sketch we really liked this happened with.

Just shows you though – comedy is as much to do with communicating a shared notion of something as it is with originality and I guess the danger of partial duplication of ideas already explored by others is inherent.

Another instance of this kind of thing in comedy is Rob Newman's character Ray from the days of The Mary Whitehouse Experience. Remember Ray, the guy cursed with the sarcastic sounding voice?

Funny stuff, and I'm sure Newman had never even seen the Kids In The Hall sketch recorded a couple of years before that used the exact same idea. In many ways, its fun as an audience just to see what talented people will do with virtually the same concept. Look at The Aristocrats. So it's maybe not such a big deal after all.

And by the way big T, I’ll give you back that book, honest. It’s only been what? 5 years?

Tuesday 13 March 2007

The Mitch Sandwich

These guys plan to commemorate Mitch Hedberg by going into a participating deli and having a ‘Mitch Sandwich’ on the anniversary of his death.

Count me in. Though I guess I'llhave to buy in the ingredients.

The Hedberg Sandwich is his version of the club sandwich. Pastrami on - Bread – banana. Cheese – cottage.

Here’s Mitch on Letterman.

Friday Glue On You Tube

For anyone who was there and indeed for anyone who wasn't, here is a clip from last Fridays Glue show at O'Neills. It's the ever popular "Bertie The Happy Bunny", which we opened the show with.

Check out how brilliantly I'm hidden in this. Seamless eh?

There are a couple more clips from the show here on our You Tube channel, which we'll be updating regularly from now on.

Two more shows to go on the 16th and 23rd, a wee short spot at the No2ID Gala on the 24th and then we'll see what happens from there eh?

Monday 12 March 2007

Katie in The Sunday Times

Speaking of Katie and her blog, while reading The Sundy Times last night and complaining to myself about how little Comedy Festival coverage there was (zero reviews, one half page bit on Tam Cowan and Stuart Cosgrove & a ticket offer), considering they're the media sponsor I noticed something I recognised.

While reading 'Recycling in Maryhill' I thought, 'Katie wrote about this,' only to discover it was indeed Katie's blog that was being quoted. Go have a look.

First Comedy Fest Show

Thanks to everyone who came along on Friday night to see the first You Owe Me Glue show. A reasonable turn out and what seemed to be a well received show.

Pretty much all the new stuff went over well, better than expected in some cases. The above photo is of Darran and Alison waiting ‘backstage’ an elaborately arranged curtain in front of the DJ booth.

You’ll all now be filling your days at work watching the newly uploaded old Glue vids. For anyone saying that they can’t watch the Glue YouTube vids online, you can download the videos to your PC or iPod by using this link. Just put the URL in, it will convert it and you can download the converted file. Easy and free.

Hopefully there should be some sketches from Friday's show online in the next day or two. We will let you know.

Some other Glue based internet news, I noticed this comment on Limmy’s site. What a great thing to say. Shame it wasn’t us.

• Crafu Says:
March 9th, 2007 at 1:10 pm | Quote
You Owe Me Glue - I think I saw them on the telly a couple of weeks back.
If it was them, they were great.


Also go along to Katie’s blog to read her experience of trying to book shows to go see us. It wasn’t straightforward.

I should also say a big thanks to John, who lugged my huge bag of props, costumes and a laptop, down Sauchiehall Street to his car parked at Cineworld, just to save me carrying it home.


Mind and come along to see us if you haven't already. Fridays 16th or 23rd of March.

Sunday 11 March 2007

Glue On YouTube

Hurray! At last we have figured out how to upload video to the internet!

It only took almost 3 years!

Here we are performing some sketches at Blackfriars in November 2005.

Some serious beard action from Tom there.

Go here for more online glue action and be sure to pass the links on to all your muckers.





Friday 9 March 2007

Fat Club

At the start of the year Nicola and I joined Scottish Slimmers. So far we’re both doing well, but I won’t go into detail until we’re a bit further along.

I just thought I would use it to link into the tale of Manuel Uribe. Manuel has experienced weight loss Nicola and I could never comprehend. He’s shed an amazing 28 stone. A shame then that he still weighs 60.

To celebrate his weight loss he has now ventured outside for the first time in 5 years.

Six people pushed Manuel Uribe’s wheel-equipped iron bed into the street, as a mariachi band played and a crowd gathered to see the man who once weighed more than 88 stone (1,200lb).

I hope he reaches his target weight of 18 stone.

Thursday 8 March 2007

Glue Rehearsals

Go have a look at the full set, if you're interested.

Everythings Coming Up Glue

Hooray for us today, as You Owe Me Glue is named in the Evening Times as one of the “10 Things To See At The Magners Glasgow International Comedy Festival”.

Nestling cosily between Ardal O’Hanlon and Rich Hall, this is the kind of menshy in the papers we’ve been moaning about not getting for over 2 years now.

Big Scott Agnew is in there as well.

Not only does this put me in the unique position of having nothing to moan about in the run up to a show (yet), but it also has us wondering if it will make any difference to crowd size. Canne hurt eh?

Great stuff - rehearsals tonight and then we’ll beast right into it tomorrow night. Ooooh, exciting.

Tom will stick a piccy from last nights rehearsal on here later and some more besides.

Two Bams Don't Make A Riot

You can argue about the relative merits of this incident all you like.

For me, it looks like a case of over zealous policing while subduing a bam, who wouldn’t have come into contact with the police if she hadn’t been smashing up someone’s car while pished out of her tits.

An unfortunate incident certainly, but one that repeats itself hundreds of times over every weekend throughout the nation I would imagine.

The sickening aspect of this case for me is the way that certain bodies have engaged in cheap political point scoring off the back of what happened.

Liberty have chimed in with their usual useless, unhelpful remarks and local “race relations manager” Ruggie Johnson has been doing his best to turn the incident into Britain’s answer to the Rodney King affair.

Trying to engineer something like this into a race issue is downright despicable.

This was clearly not a racially motivated incident. The girl was not arrested for being black, she was arrested for being a bam.

Whether for his own ends of out of some misguided concern for the local community, Mr Johnson and other in positions of influence should really stop acting as legitimising advocates for people who engage in recreational crime simply as a matter of course.

Kids from poor communities have it tough, but most manage to get through the weekend without wrecking other folk’s stuff.

Or perhaps Mr Johnson plans to organise a million bam march, after which they can be addressed by Louis Farrabam?

John Inman 1935-2007

Celebrated comedy actor John Inman has died. Most famous for his Are You Being Served? character Mr. Humphreys (all right, only famous for his Are You Being Served? character Mr. Humphreys) Inman was also a stalwart of pantomime, playing the Dame on many occasions.

He undoubtedly blazed a trail for people like Graham Norton, showing that high camp was funny in a time when approval from audiences ran along the lines of ‘he’s quite funny…for a poof’.

It’s a little known fact that Inman was considered for the Roger Moore role in The Wild Geese. The film’s star Richard Burton had requested Inman personally as he was said to have compared Inman and Molly Sugden’s sparring in the hit BBC show with his and Elizabeth Taylor’s performances in Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?

In the end Inman decided that the South Africa based shoot would, ‘place havoc with my feet’ and he decided instead to concentrate on the Are You Being Served? feature film. Or maybe all that didn’t happen. Might have.

Seriously though, Inman also made an LP, ‘John Inman With a Bit of Brass’, if you can find it in a charity shop sometime (like a flatmate of mine once did) snap it up, cos it’s absolutely hilarious. In fact you can hear it right now, by downloading the tracks via this site.

Wednesday 7 March 2007

Glue Say No 2 ID

With two days before the first full You Owe Me Glue show of 2007 I thought I would plug another wee gig first. I was at a meeting last night regarding the NO2ID Gala Benefit.

Appearing at the Old Fruitmarket on Saturday 24th of March, in addition to YOMG are Lucy Porter, Phil Nichol, Rich Hall and Glenn Wool alongside several other names far too unconfirmed to be mentioned. There will also be video from Limmy and Des McLean.

Tickets are a mere £10 or £8 concession. Considering you’ll get about ten acts for your bucks, twice the amount on at your average Saturday night at The Stand, it’s a good deal. Of course you’ll also be supporting the NO2ID campaign. So get your tickets here.

We should be performing for about 15 minutes and should also have a couple of new NO2ID specific sketches.

Monday 5 March 2007

What's The Opposite Of "Tonic"?

The news that Coldplay are preparing to shite in our lugs once again has done nothing to lift my Monday depression.

I notice that Chris Martin has finally succumbed to the chanting of all the tin eared mopes who can’t stop going on about how brilliant he is by declaring one of his compositions “genius”.

Yes Chris, in the same way that Ebola is a “genius” disease.

For true genius, try this instead.

Friday 2 March 2007

Tell Me Again...

...why ID Cards are a bad idea.

The Home Office have learned their lesson. This time. Honest. Won't happen again. Not again again anyway. Unless it does.

That's the great thing about systems - they always get fucked up by the people who end up bored to tears through working on them.

BBC Four Does it Again

Once again this week BBC Four have came up trumps, this time last night with the excellent documentary This Film is Not Yet Rated. An exploration of the secret process behind the American ratings system.

Director Kirby Dick attempts to discover what criteria gets you the much hated NC-17 rating. He finds that sexual activity is the main crime, especially if that shows women enjoying themselves and extra especially if it contains two people of the same sex.

Using a private detective he attempts to track down the unknown members of the board that seems to answer to no one other than the big studios.

He speaks to directors and actors effected by the ratings system, and falls foul of the ratings board himself.

It’s very engaging and asks some awkward questions of a board who really don’t seem to like being challenged.

A Week to Go


You Owe Me Glue
Originally uploaded by thom_brogan.
Only a week to go until YOMG @ Glasgow Comedy Festival 2007. Only a handful of rehearsals left.

The pressure is on.

If you care, go have a look at this set of photographs from last night's rehearsal.

Mind and come see us as well. Fridays 9th, 16th & 23rd at O'Neill's on Sauchiehall Street. Doors open at 7.30 or 8pm depending on who you listen to.

A mere 6 quid for 100 minutes of (hopefully) laughs. How could you go wrong?

And The Winner Is....Shit Music!

Last night was that most spectacular celebration of musical mediocrity, the NME Awards.

This is where dumplings who need a magazine run by tin-eared, gravy train riding plums to tell them what to listen to vote for the “best” of the 10 or so bands they’ve ever heard of.

“This is the verdict of the real passionate British music fans, the ones who keep the music scene alive at gigs up and down the country week in and week out," NME editor Conor McNicholas said.

Yeah, these people voted for Muse and awarded the cataclysmically stupid “God like genius” award to a junkie and his pet baboon.

Run of the mill drivel as voted for by spoon fed drones nationwide. They should all have their fucking ears cut off.

Thursday 1 March 2007

Red Raw

It's not the best quality video, but if 'Got the bitch' amused you from Fizzy's description of Tuesday night then have a look below. This isn't from Tuesday, but last year.