Selling out is no laughing matter

When I was a teenager I had a couple of mates who were ‘music snobs’.

They knew a lot about the indie scene and would eulogise about bands of which the rest of us had never heard.

Then, when they’d made it big and we had heard of them my mates would drop them like a copy of the Daily Mail from the hands of a socialist.

“They’ve sold out,” they always said. I always had mixed views on that stance. On the one hand I admired them for liking the music in its raw state before producers got hold of it; while on the other I thought the band members wouldn’t lose too much sleep over it now they were raking in the royalties.

I now know – in a strange way – what my mates were going through. I’ve realised I’ve become a ‘comedy snob’.

Down the years I’ve seen and heard many up-and-coming stand-ups at small clubs and pubs or on obscure radio shows; some were never seen again. Others impressed me so much I would follow them to further smaller venues and delight in their burgeoning reputation.

Yet last night, as three such comedians – Miranda Hart, Marcus Brigstocke and Paul Merton – came together on Have I Got News For You, I felt a tinge of envy that others could now share in the joy they had brought me.

There had been some kudos in knowing that, how ever many years ago it was, if I had said their names to my nearest and dearest they would have shrugged and said “never ‘eard of ‘em”. I suppose there’s an element of one-upmanship involved.

But, with the advantage of maturity – and the knowledge that I could do bugger all about it – the envy passed quickly and I realised that who am I to even subconsciously deny anybody else the joy these people can bring into our lives.

There have been others whose name I noted when they were on the bottom rung of the comedy ladder – but I’m now glad to say they’ve made it big and are delighting millions of people through radio, comedy and DVDs (yes, they’ve ‘sold out!’).

People like Mark Watson, Frank Skinner, Punt & Dennis, Jim Tavare, Patrick Kielty, Milton Jones, John Oliver and Rufus Hound, all had an immediate effect on me when I first heard them. And yes, I’m glad they’ve made it to the top of the tree.

And I hope that the likes of Tony Cowards and Patrick Monahan are soon just as well known. It’ll be great to be able to tell people that I think they’ve ‘sold out’…

I'm not funny and I'm not doing myself any favours

I've been really quiet on the blogging front and I'm truly sorry. My head has been turned by another.

We're all tempted at some stage in our lives but I succumbed ... to Twitter. I always used to say to my wife that occasionally I'd get these one-liners come into my head and I had no outlet for them.

Well Twitter has provided that outlet. With only 140 characters a one-liner is exactly that. It has to be pithy. And it has shown me - by the number of re-tweets - that what I think are funny one-liners aren't always funny to anybody else.

This comes as something of a disappointment but not necessarily something of a surprise. It's self-indulgence really - and I suppose I've always been self-indulgent. I thought I was funnier than I am. Making your friends laugh - maybe, it now transpires, out of politeness - in the pub is not actually the same as being able to provide material to Sean Lock or Marcus Brigstocke. Though Michael McIntyre probably would have used it...

Years ago, with a couple of mates - Steve Woodhead and Steve Wemyss (they more than deserve a namecheck) - I launched Frattonise, the Pompey fanzine. And I'm glad to see it has resurfaced on-line recently (e-frattonise) with new contributors. People used to tell us that it was funny. And some of the things they told us were funny came from my pen ... not many looking back, but some.

I went into journalism and won some plaudits for my "humorous" columns and features - I was even nominated for regional feature writer of the year early in my career. But that, it would seem, was the zenith of my comedic flight of fancy. That and being invited to do stand-up at Jongleurs after impressing during an open mic event I was press-ganged into doing by my editor a few years later.

None of the nationals came calling: they preferred the light-hearted banter of Richard Littlejohn or Jan Moir. Sure I penned the odd column for a mate who edits a local newspaper, but it's done because of friendship not 'readies'.

The odd bit of contibution to satirical websites aside, I have now, in my late 40s fallen into Grumpy Old Man mode. Twitter has shown me the error of my ways - I'm not funny any more. I won't achieve my ambitions of writing a comedy script for Radio 4, contributing to the Now Show, or penning that comic novel.

I have ended up, as all failed would-be humorous writers will end up in the 21st century: Tweeting and/or writing a blog. I will file the buff file labelled 'ambitions' in the same box that contains my 40"-waist trousers, my curriculam vitae, all my polo shirts and the audio tape from 1983 which saw me fronting - albeit briefly - a band. The box will be labelled "Do Not Open until my death or my first published novel - whichever is the sooner".

Save for a full head of hair, I am, to all intents and purposes Wally from Scott Adams' superb series of Dilbert cartoons: an office worker existing on large doses of caffeine and cynicism in equal measure.

I will continue to blog (occasionally) and Tweet (pointlessly) but don't expect to laugh. I will simply be chronicling my slow demise into retirement and a wicker coffin at the East Hampshire Sustainability Centre.

*But if you do want to laugh, check me/Wally out here.

No more heroes any more

Name-dropping alert

WARNING: IF YOU DON’T LIKE CELEBRITIES THIS ENTRY WON’T BE FOR YOU

I’ve heard it said that you should never meet your heroes, for they seldom live up to your expectations.

I was reminded of this idiom yesterday, when a friend of mine – having read Tuesday’s blog – asked which of my heroes I had met, given that I was too young to have shared a pint and a bag of pork scratchings with Isambard Kingdom Brunel.

And, he persisted, did I still feel the same way after meeting them?

It got me thinking – and that generally ends in me writing a blog entry. So who have I met, who was (before the event) or still is, a hero of mine?

Well, I met George Best a couple of times, and despite the fact he was as the newt on the first occasion it didn’t damage the esteem in which I held him. Probably because everybody knew he enjoyed a quick one – or 10 – anyway . . .

I interviewed Jasper Carrott and he was very pleasant and humble; I met the late, great Jimmy Dickinson (Pompey legend) and he was everything I expected him to be; the much-missed Oscar-winning film director Anthony Minghella, was also a thoroughly decent chap in the flesh; the legendary Eric Sykes, a truly gifted comedy writer who is as warm and friendly as his on-screen persona suggests; and of course my colleague Henry’s old man, Peter Alliss, is as avuncular in person as he sounds on the box.

One of my heroes will mean nothing to most people. I grew up reading the Portsmouth News, which had an award-winning columnist called Keith Newbery.

I loved his style of writing, his wit and his intuition. He inspired me. And it was Keith who was my first editor when I started my career in journalism. He didn’t disappoint; in fact he far exceeded my expectations. He was – and remains – a huge influence on my journalistic career.

Indeed, I regard many of my friends as heroes – in one way or another they’ve nearly all inspired me. But that’s far too maudlin, so I won’t dwell on it. You want celebrity name-dropping . . .

I’ve looked up to actor Bryan Marshall - whose name may not mean much, though I’m sure you’d recognise his face – ever since as a young kid I was a guest at a charity football match and found myself sitting next to him in the dug-out. He couldn’t have been nicer though he had far better things to do than nursemaid a kid he didn’t even know.

Rick Wakeman is great company – a self-deprecating, self-confessed grumpy old man – and I had the pleasure of spending a morning with him at a charity golf event.

There have been counterpoints of course: people I’ve met who disappointed me. Hampshire and West Indies cricketer Gordon Greenidge, was hugely grumpy when I spoke to him; golfer Sam Torrance was brusque and aloof; and football writer Brian Glanville, whose talent inspired me, came across as very arrogant when we met, albeit briefly.

There are heroes I never got to meet – mainly in my second love of comedy: Eric Morecambe, Tony Hancock, Tommy Cooper, Spike Milligan and footballers Duncan Edwards, Bobby Moore and anybody who was in Pompey’s 1939 FA Cup-winning team.

And there are heroes I still hope to meet: comedians Mark Watson, Rhod Gilbert, Punt and Dennis, Marcus Brigstocke, Paul Merton and David Mitchell; actor Martin Sheen and anybody else who starred in the brilliant The West Wing; Homer Simpson and the world’s number one golfer Tiger Woods.

No musicians anywhere you notice. Comedy and sport have always been my rock ‘n roll. However, I would quite like to meet Chris de Burgh, though I might well spend the rest of my days in a prison cell if I did.