BLOG
Hello everyone! - May 19, 2006
I’m currently in New Zealand for the final part of the tour. I’d like to thank all the people who came to the shows in Australia. They were some of the biggest and best shows of my career. Melbourne was, as always, a fantastic festival, and I’m lucky to have made a whole heap of new friends this time round.
One of my personal highlights was the impromptu ‘rap battle’ up at Trades Hall, on the final Saturday of the festival, which saw myself, and fellow comics, Jason Byrne, and Mark Watson take on the almighty Freestyle Love Supreme comedy rap outfit. It was real David and Golliath stuff (or rather, MC David and DJ jazzey Goliath – yip, I’m down with the kids!).
The odds were fairly heavily stacked against us, and it showed. When the ‘mic’ was ‘passed on’ to Jason Byrne for the first time he conjured up less of a rap, and more of a cross between shanty town and Shane Magowan. Mark Watson fared a little better, with a natural gift for rhyming words, but a less obvious ability to do it with rythym (more ‘nursery’ rhyme, than ‘busta’).
However, both did considerably better than me. I’ve discovered recently that regardless of the genre, I tend to sing everything in the style of Elvis. This usually goes unnoticed at a karaoke bar at 2 in the morning, but is less well received in a ‘rap battle’ against some of the finest rap improvisers in America. Most of my attempts to ‘lay down some riffs’ ended with an embarrassing cough followed by muttering “respect”, which was probably a little insulting. Anyway, it was easily one of the funniest nights of the tour so far, and I’d like to thank the boys from Freestyle Love Supreme for being such good sports.
I’m currently 5 days into the New Zealand tour, and I’m really starting to feel homesick. I get back to Edinburgh on June 10th, just in time for my mum’s 60th birthday the following day. Then, I plan to spend the next 7 weeks working up the new Edinburgh show. I’m back in the Music Hall at Assembly again this year, which I think is the best venue of it’s size for straight stand up, without losing the intimacy by going any bigger (‘keeping it real!’ I believe is the expression).
I hope to do another largely fruitless tour of England in September and October, and then there are plans to do some shows in New York later in the year. As mentioned, I also hope to have a DVD out by the end of the year. I’ve filmed the show, but I’ve still got quite a lot of DVD Extras to shoot.
Finally, I have now had a few complaints about some of the religious material I have been doing in the show of late. Please note it is not there to offend, or deride any particular religion. It is interesting that all the complaints have been from people claiming to be Born Again Christians - I had no idea my previous shows had been so reverential.
It is more important now, more than ever, that we learn to relax a little, and be able to laugh at our own culture and religion. If we show we don’t take it too seriously, then maybe the more extreme sections of society will realise they don’t have a mandate to kill or maim, on our behalf. If that sounds like a rather simplistic view of things, that’s because it is.
I apologise if you were one of the tiny minority that were offended, but I don’t have any regret, or remorse about putting my point of view across. And if Mrs. M. Willis from Adelaide has a problem with that, then she can fuck off!
Respect.
