YOMG Rehearsal Photos

We have only two rehearsals to come up with the new Glue show this time. There’s a handful of new sketches to learn and with Anne-Marie being absent this time round there’s a few new parts for people.

Below is a selection of photographs from the first rehearsal, last night.

Edinburgh Stand

I made yet another return to stand-up last night at the Edinburgh Stand. So just quickly…I had tea at Zest as recommended by Nicola. It was very nice, I had the Chicken Tikka Masala, but the waiter did try to upsell me at every turn. Obviously he thought ‘here comes money’ as I wandered in the door. Like I say though the food was very nice, though at 12 quid for one course and a diet coke it’s not cheap.

As for The Stand itself it was all right. I was on second, so I didn’t have long to hang about before going on. I went down all right. The polished stuff that I knew worked went down well, but the crowd didn’t really go with me for the last minute or two where I did stuff that I hadn’t worked out quite so thoroughly But not to worry it scores a comfortable 2-1 victory. (I rate all my gigs in terms of football scores as The Housemartins also used to do. Go have a look at the Where Are They Now page, in particular drummer Hugh Whittaker’s entry.)

As for the other acts. There were f course some stinkers. I think Reg Anderson knows fine well that he tells ancient jokes and that’s what makes the audience really go for him. He did one that my Dad told me when I was six. However Reg did also do a bit of (bad) balloon folding.

There was an act on the bill who seriously told the joke “when I told people I wanted to be a comedian they laughed…they’re not laughing now”.

I left before the headline went on in order to get an earlier bus back. below are a handful of photographs including my set list prompt.

Isaac DeLacy Montague, Riverboat Gambler

You really need to see the next underrehearsed You Owe Me Glue to understand what this is about, but here's Isaac DeLacy Montague, Riverboat Gambler.

When The World Says Talk To The Hand...

Even though I’m trying (and currently failing) to quit smoking, I now can’t have a fag most places even if I wanted one. Fine, that’s ok.

Then we find out that because of industrial action, we can’t use the rehearsal facility we booked for the show tonight.

Tom phoned community letting who arrange booking of the rooms and they can’t tell us whether or not the place will be open tonight.

Tom phones but can’t get through.

So to cheer myself up, I go to get a packet of crisps out of the machine. I can’t; its exact change only.

I return to my desk, but can’t be bothered doing any work.

We’re turning into a real can’t do society

Tom has now been in touch with Langside Hall. The Jannie there can't tell him if he's on strike or not. We're to call back after 4. I wonder what they'll tell us then eh?

An Interview with James Burrows

This is a link to an audio interview on NPR with Cheers co-creator James Burrows. Burrows should be familiar to you from being the director on almost every 3 camera US sitcom there's been in the last 30 years.

'A One Man Clash'

Here is an interview with Billy Bragg. He has recently issued a whole load of his old albums on remastered CD and with the odd DVD thrown in.

Radio Sketch Shows

Well done to Cowards, who have landed a Radio 4 pilot. I saw them at the Edinburgh Festival last year and they really do deserve a shot at having a show on the radio and/or the telly.

Radio 4 are also recording The Hollow Men, who already have a TV show in America.

Mamet on TV

I found this on the Writers Guild Blog, linked below. It’s David Mamet on writing for television. Mamet has a new series called The Unit on TV in the States at the moment.

More on Cheers

I’m bigging up Ken Levine’s site again. Following on from yesterday’s post on writing Cheers outlines, today he tells us what all the former Cheers writers are doing.

Remember to have a look at the comments on the posts as well as sometimes there’s some good stuff hidden away in there.

It's Showtime

For Talking Pish’s 1000th post it should be something pretty special. Doesn’t get much specialer than this. Not confirmed, of course but reports suggest Arrested Development has been saved.

From the lips of Jason Bateman.

“Showtime has picked up the show for 2 years at 12 episodes a year with a third year option.”

Have a read at the story here.

In other AD news the season 3 DVD has been postponed, though it can still be pre-ordered.

This is a good 'separating fact from fiction' article about AD from The Hollywood Reporter.

Chernobyl: This Place is Dead

Tommy has posted a really good article on the Chernobyl disaster over at This Place is Dead.

John Turturro @ the NFT

Another writing link. Here’s an interview with John Turturro at the NFT after a showing of his new film Romance and Cigarettes.

Screenwriting Links

I've been meaning to post some of these links for a while now. There’s some interesting stuff about screenwriting at Alligators in a Helicopter.

Danny Stack has a lot of good and informative stuff on writing for television in Britain. And this guy is one of the writers on Green Wing.

This is perhaps the best of the links on offer. There are lots of interesting writing links at the excellent Writers Guild Blog. This includes interviews and competitions.

And from it here’s a link of note. Rob Long’s podcast. (Though that link may only work if you are using Firefox.) Rob Long was, along with his writing partner Dan Staley a writer on Cheers. He wrote a book about his screenwriting experiences called Conversations With My Agent. I saw it turned into a play at the Edinburgh Festival several years ago.

Some of you may remember this site, Query Letters I Love. I think we were all on this before the days of Talking Pish. A producer takes the most amusing query letters and screenplay pitches and posts them. There's always some gold in there.

Logline: A street racer uncovers a broken artifact while working in a museum warehouse, which releases a banished ninja spirit into his body. They must learn to work together in order to prevent a ninja sorcerer from unleashing an ancient demon plague upon humanity.

Things They Won't Tell You at Film School does what it says on the label and provides some interesting insight into the world of trying to get a movei off the ground.

Finally, for now on screenwriting, here is Complications Ensue. I may put some more writing links on in the next day or two.

Hello Paedos, Please Leave

I’m beginning to wish that I hadn’t bothered trying to find out where our readers came from and what the most popular links are. Have a look at the picture below for yesterday’s stats.

Can I just say here and now, if you have arrived here during a search for anything of a less than legal nature, please leave. As much as you may enjoy our daft links and caustic patter, please leave. Herring worker lovers you are very welcome.

Official - Beards are Cool

Here’s an interesting article from the New York Times all about the resurgence of beards. Ironic since that I have just shaved mine off.

Happy Glueiversary

You Owe Me Glue was first performed at The 13th Note a year ago today.

Several dozen copies of the DVD from that show are still available for purchase.

Our next show, on the 31st of this month at Blackfriars promises to be the usual mixture of poorly rehearsed hilarity, drinking and nervous exhaustion.

Weekly One Neck

Here is the second of our regular One Neck cartoons. All comments on the Neck's work are welcome, but remember to leave your name. And if you are One Neck yourself, stop pretending to be your own critic.

Rehab for the Fat Guy

I came across this guy on the BBC and thought it was an interesting thing, so I’m posting it here. Steve Vaught is walking across America in order to lose weight, though he’s made a few other discoveries in the course of his journey.

It makes my decision to get the bus instead of walking into work this morning seem pretty gutless.

Have a read at his reasons for doing it. It makes for some eye opening reading.

Breaking Cheers Stories

And we're back to Mr Ken Levine's site to see how he broke Cheers stories.

Since I'm now linking to him almost daily I thought I would post a bit more about him. Here's his writing, producing and directing resume, as found on Site and Sound.

He's promising Cheers stories for the next 3 days.

TELEVISION PRODUCING

Co-creator, Executive Producer 1995-1997 Almost Perfect (CBS)
Producer - Cheers (NBC) 1982-1984
Head Writer - MASH (CBS) 1976-1979

TELEVISION WRITING

Over 100 episodes for such shows as
Cheers
Frasier
MASH
The Simpsons
Wings
Almost Perfect
The Jeffersons

TELEVISION DIRECTING

Frasier
Wings
Just Shoot Me
Fired Up
Darma & Greg
Jenny, Ask
Harriet
Lateline
Almost Perfect
Pearl

FEATURE SCREENPLAYS

Volunteers (with Tom Hanks and John Candy) 1985

AWARDS

Primetime Emmys - 1 award, 7 nominations
Writers Guild Award for Best Script of the Year - 2 awards,
8 nominations
Humanitas Award - 1 nomination

Skip to the End

Simon Pegg says he’d like to bring Spaced back for a one hour special to "tie up all the loose ends".

This is news on his new film Hot Fuzz, including a video blog.

Cheers and Sports Part Two

Here is Ken Levine’s second part of his Cheers and the best sports episodes story. Hi story about Wade Boggs is particularly amusing.

Keep going back to Ken’s site as he’s promised to tell how he would go about writing a Cheers episode.

Comedy Weekend

I saw some other comedy at the weekend. While helping out Alan with some comedy chores, on Friday night I got to see Brendon Burns play at Bluu. He performed what was more or less his Edinburgh Festival show from 2005.

The show revolves around the break up of his engagement and his quest to get Glastonbury high on legal mushrooms. The funniest bit though was maybe when he described the time he went down on a woman who had a kidney removed. He explains why that makes the situation awkward.

Afterwards I went along to the City Halls where Brendon Burns did a second set as part of Late 'N' Loud. This was a different set, some of which will become his 2006 Edinburgh Festival show.

A lot of this centred on his recent spell in rehab, where he found that in a room full of nutters he was chucked out for being the nutter.

He was probably funnier at the late show. He was a little bit looser and I would say less hostile towards the audience. Though having said that he did hang about and meet folk after the first show as he punted his CDs.

Below are some photos of him in his nun’s outfit at Bluu and then racism’s favourite comedy promoter acting as compere at the City Halls.

The Late 'N' Loud crowd were quite funny once they had a few drinks in them. One guy chatting to Alan about Belle and Sebastian. “I don’t even like them”. And a mad woman dressed as a leprechaun who practically stole the show.

On Saturday I went along to see the final recording of Sabotage, again at the City Halls. They didn’t use any of our sketches for this recording. Of the cast, Grant is easily the stand out. He nicely captures that thing that Kevin McDonald says he does ‘I don’t say funny things, I say things funny’. Of the sketches Bampot High was probably my favourite.

All in all they used 6 of our sketches for recording. Which is about 50% of what we submitted, I guess that’s a high hit rate. The first show will be transmitted at the end of June.

More Triumphant Festival Glue

I think we all had a good time doing our last Glasgow International Comedy Festival show on Thursday there.

It was a good turnout and everyone seemed to like the stuff, with the usual heavy hitters like Bertie and Wrestler Guy showing up as usual.

“Waiting For Fridge Repair”, which I wasn’t sure about, and only came to life when Tom did a fix on it, also went over big as did our re-vamped version of “Fight Night On The 40”.

It was tremendously disappointing night in terms of media interest as usual, or it would have been had our friend Michael not got a bunch of his pals from SMG to come along, including actor Steve McCole (Rushmore, Rebis, and of course, Post Mortem).

He was nice enough to congratulate us after the show, and was laughing heartily throughout.

So, all in all an enjoyable experience, but we still have to work how we get this show seen by more of the “right” people.

Glue Photos

I think Fraser is going to do a You Owe Me Glue post later, but we felt it was a success. Below are some photographs. The show was filmed, so hopefully we should soon have some DVD captures for your enjoyment.


Our hi-tech lighting system.


Daz just can't stop rockin'.


This was the last night of Dazza's mullet, as he was getting it chopped off the next day.




The girls during the interval.


Fraser and 'The Arsense Wenger of Racist Comedy Promotion'.


Finally here's Moira with 'Little Baby Aileen'.

Pish Search

Last week I put some tracking code onto the Pish template, to see where our readers are coming from and what links are the most popular. It’s there for no reason other than my own curiosity really.

Anyway the picture shows some of the searches from Saturday that led people to Talking Pish. Click on the picture to have a look.

Sons Of The Rock

Congratulations to Dumbarton FC for highlighting the plight of Burmese prisoner Ma Khin Khin Leh.

Their match against Forfar will seek to raise awareness of the case in conjuction with Amnesty International of the seriously ill teacher jailed for having the audacity to ask for democracy.

Cheers and Sports

Here’s another article from one of my new favourite blogs. Ken Levine gives some insight into his career on Cheers.

It includes the revelation that Sam Malone was originally intended not to be an ex-baseball player but a former football star.

There's also a few other good wee tidbits and part two is up tomorrow.

The Comedy of Hate

As you may or may not know Bernard Manning played the Barrowland on Saturday night past. Alan Anderson, the guy who’s promoting our shows for the comedy festival also put on Bernard.

There was a mild furore, stirred up by AA a month or two ago, when the comedy festival rejected his application to have Manning on as part of the festival.

In this review of the show it states that...well just read it to see what it states. It won’t take long.

Now a few days after the fat balloon has performed, the comedy forums of Chortle are bristling with furious diatribes against Mr Anderson. Some of them of course are funny and some of them are really hate filled.

The choicest cuts are

“Utterly contemptible”

“Idiot or money grabbing cunt? Probably a bit of both I suspect.”

“The Arsene Wenger of racist comedy promotion”

“I genuinely hope one day Alan, that your insistence on triumphalism in the stirring up of racial hatred gets you the prosecution you so richly deserve”

“Surely by putting on this show you have compromised your position as a promoter in showing that you have no respect for your industry.”

“I truly feel that you have let both yourself and comedy in Glasgow down hugely by putting this show on and coming on to this forum defending yourself and your actions just makes you look like an idiot”

He’s also been compared to Vidkun Quisling and pretend historian David Irving.

These are all just the opinions of a handful of comedians and other comedy promoters of course. For my part I don’t really have a problem with the fact that he put Manning on, though I’d rather he’d put on Adam Hills or Daniel Kitson or any other funny and decent act that he’s promoted in the past.

I’ll save any hatred and bile for Alan when he fucks up something to do with our show. Not that he would, pro that he is.

I was always more impressed that he landed the Barrowlands as a venue. However it’s also a bit sad that they’d go for it. I’m sure ten years ago, when every big name touring act was playing there, they would have laughed at the suggestion.

How Do You Want Me?

I stumbled upon Dylan Moran’s website today. I’ve not linked to him before so I thought I’d put it up. Have a look at the section about the largely forgotten sitcom he did How Do You Want Me?

Written by Men Behaving Badly writer Simon Nye it was the story of a photographer who marries into a family who want to kill him. It wasn’t a conventional sitcom. It was filmed on location, had no laughter track and was pretty dark.

It’s also notable as the female lead was the late Charlotte Coleman of Marmalade and Four Weddings and a Funeral fame.

The show isn’t available on DVD, which seems a shame considering that Duty Free is.

Hidden

I’m looking for Mr Hosie here to possibly help me out on this post. Jo and I went to see Hidden last night and although we were both enjoying it up to a point, we came out frankly baffled. Mr Ho have you seen it? do you have any theories? Suggestions? Comments? And indeed if anyone else has please help me out.

It’s a slow moving film, but nothing wrong with that, Daniel Auteil is good, but he has to be as he carries the whole thing. Juliette Binoche is probably underused. I went into the film knowing very little about the plot, but basically a couple are tormented by an unknown stalker who sends them video tapes shot outside their home.

It’s hard to say whether I enjoyed this film or not. It’s kind of like going out with a girl, you think it’s going fine, then she chucks you and you forget what was good about it in the first place.

To say the film was unsatisfying would be an understatement. Jo and I both attempted to offer various theories on the way home, but nothing seemed to stick.

To me I don’t think it was a deliberate attempt to be clever I think the fact that it tells an incomplete story was a failing of writer and director Michael Haneke that he’s managed to pass off as art. I’ve searched on the net for a bit to see if anyone can explain what happened, but no one really can.

Hidden ended up being a real disappointment as it could have been one of the year’s best films if only it had a complete story.

The Passion (Fruit) of the Williams

This morning at work we were treated to a slice of Graeme’s freshly baked passion fruit cake. The fact that Graeme bakes and attends a cookery class is surprising when you know he’s our resident king of death metal.

The cake was very nice and was enjoyed by all of us, including our Big Boss who seemed more than impressed by his skills. Landry pestered him all day yesterday for one of his passion fruits. We all made sure he knew that could have ruined the cake for all of us.

Next up is Landry’s promised chocolate and strawberry cake.

Hun Seeks Tim For Cock Suck?

Can it truly be a coincidence that a few days after gutting myself at Big Scott's bit about inter-Old Firm loving, someone sent me this?

Jimmy Johnstone Memorial

I went up to Celtic Park last night to have a look at the memorial for Jimmy Johnstone. He was my Mum’s favourite player, from the days when my Dad would take her to games. Whenever Celtic are on the TV she still looks to see who’s wearing number 7.

I took some photographs. See below.

Rock Balancing

Here’s a good article by the always entertaining Dave Gorman on Flickr and digital photography. He comes at photography from the same angle that I do. He really likes taking pictures but doesn’t know what to do with them afterwards. Which leads us to Flickr.

He makes the point that digital photography and sites like Flickr allow you to take photographs of things that you previously would have ignored. I’ve discovered that in the months that I’ve had a digital camera. I find myself taking pictures of trees and rocks, things I would never have thought of looking twice at before.

You’ll also see some photographs in the next post that I would never have thought to take had I not had a digital camera.

Here's the link to Dave Gorman's Flickr page.

Bob the Musical

This is an interesting post from the screenwriter John August’s website. He ponders over which project to commit to doing a re-write for – Bob the Musical or a hard hitting biopic.

Weekly One Neck

Talking Pish are nonplussed to present a regular cartoon from the man known as One Neck.

Each week One Neck will appear on these pages with an exclusive cartoon. Why? We don't know? Let us know what you think about the cartoon in the comments section.

Once You Got to the First Building That Wasn’t on Fire...

I’ll possibly add some more links to this post later on. To start off with though, here’s Ken Levine talking about one of his first starts in writing, when he and his writing partner put on an evening of one act plays.

Next up, here’s an interview with David Chase about the final season of The Sopranos.

Then with V For Vendetta set for release, here is an interview with author Alan Moore.

If Your Faith Is So Strong, Why Can’t We Laugh At It? (Or “Oh My God, They Killed Discourse!”)

Well, it turns out that “king of cool” Isaac Hayes is a double standard applying hypocrite, having quit veteran US cartoon South Park because of an episode that lampoons his ridiculous cult, Scientology.

Co-Creator Matt Stone puts it better than I ever could:

“In 10 years and over 150 episodes of South Park, Isaac never had a problem with the show making fun of Christians, Muslim, Mormons or Jews.

"He (Hayes) got a sudden case of religious sensitivity when it was his religion that featured on the show."

With various religious groups attempting to claim that any kind humorous reference to their tenets are disrespectful or worse, blasphemous, shows like South Park are fighting a valiant battle against morons seeking to force their beliefs beyond satire or indeed, any other kind of criticism.

It is interesting to note that religious groups in the West, particularly in America and the UK are adopting aggressive, fundamentalist tactics more usually associated with extreme Muslim organisations.

These idiots have no idea what faith constitutes.

These various groups, (Scientologists in the States, Christian Voice idiots over here), are becoming increasingly militant and regard anyone with probing questions about religion as the enemy.

And God forbid these questions give anyone a laugh. Literally.

But as the power of these various religious groups continues to grow, it won’t be long before the enemy becomes anyone who doesn’t think as they do.

Hotting up in the Fantasy Leagues

Things are getting interesting in the various Fantasy Leagues Tom and I are involved in, especially the Cheerybananaship, where Tom lies a mere 9 points behind my Big Fanny Failures side. Ronnie’s brother sits a further 7 points back in what looks to be a 3 horse race.

In the Iomart Championship, which Tom’s not involved in I have jumped from 10th to 5th in 2 weeks, thanks mainly to the resurgent form of Tierry Henry.

I’m still a little of the pace at the very top, but my colleague Innes, who lies 17 points ahead in 2nd place, will feel his bum twitching a little after I pipped him to the title on the last day of last season. Who knows, maybe I have timed my surge just right?

As for European honours, It’s looking good for me there too. With only 3 players left in it after practically no-one took account of the rather odd UEFA rules, a good first round of knockout matches sees me with a healthy lead. Tom lies in third place behind recently departed colleague John Kennedy. But this is an odd league, with quite an unusual and fun system of scoring, so it could easily all change next round. Plus you have to “spend” points replacing players who have been eliminated, which constitutes about half my team, so you never know.

Will I pull off a remarkable treble to go with my two doubles in recent years? Or will Tom swoop in and claim a title as he’s been threatening to do all season?

Time and no doubt one of the two of us, will tell.