The nice reason there's a "Suicide Hotline Phil" on my phone

 Realising I was never going to make it in time to the Wandsworth screening of "Paddington 2", I got off the train at Vauxhall instead, and went for a riverside walk, past the chrome crates towards Putney. That weekend was a wet state, the inside of the pockets of my parka had become soapy from the rain and maybe also from antibacterial hand gel I keep there to stop everything, and I finally found myself standing opposite the flats where we'd filmed "Suicide Hotline" back in 2016, before heading back home. In the evening, I coincidentally learnt that the film's director, Philip Clyde-Smith, had just put the whole thing up online (you have to wait for a film to do the festival circuit first, although of course I was allowed to use some clips for the show-reel) and, as the weather's a little cheerier today, I thought I'd finally share "Suicide Hotline" with this blog. It was a great gig. I learnt a lot, and got to keep the shirt. Filmed in a single take, I suspect both the light and my blocking improved as my performances grew more self-conscious, but we used a later take, and that's my story and I'm sticking to it. Mike Fairclough, on the other end of the phone, killed every time. Trigger alerts: nothing graphic, just gloom. Enjoy. And thanks again, Phil.

Everything is fire

  A recent timeline of insomniac thoughts, illustrated by "The Mitchell Beazley Joy of Knowledge Library's Book Of Man and Society":

2:05am – "No labels"... What’s the difference between “labels” and words? Words themselves can stop communication, because their associations are so much stronger than the work they’re being put to do.

2:09am – Language is like fire.

2:11am – Not just language. Jokes as well. I'm thinking of the reaction to the Gorilla Channel tweet. Of course Trump doesn't spend seventeen hours a day watching a specially constructed compilation of gorillas fighting, broadcast from a secret transmitter on the White House lawn. Of course it's fine to share that joke. Of course this isn't "fake news". And yet, I know people – friends on facebook – genuinely scared of sharing that joke, not because it will give offense, but because it might now be believed.

2:20 am – Everything is fire. Everything that defines us as separate from animals can destroy us, if allowed to run unchecked: jokes, language, money, homes (and therefore property), love. All of it can become too important. Being human demands an attention to the equilibrium. Nothing can run unchecked. The past year has been a real lesson in that. I hope. A lot of people are newly terrified, but the threat's always been there.

2:28am – “Intelligent life” is too rosy a description of what we are. Intelligence is a part of what humans are, sure, but maybe it’s this capacity to create systems which endanger us that should define us, and define what we have in common with whatever we hope to make contact with outside of our own planet, so not “intelligent life” then, but... what? Dependent? Processing? Enhanced? Trapped? Artificious? Harvesting? Is there a word for this most fundamental human quality? What’s the label I’m now looking for?

2:29am – There are definitely people who will have written about this. I should read more.

3:08am – Leia gets nothing to do in "Empire Strikes Back". She’s the driving force of the films either side of it. It is not the best Star Wars Film.

3:10am to 5:25am –

Ear Plugs

But first, a belated...

Or not. We'll see. I'm going to try and use the blog a lot more this year at least. I wrote nothing last year, not just here but in general, unless you count the slew of comments about The Last Jedi I posted on Joel Morris' f*c*b**k page over the Holidays (WHY EVEN BRING BB-8?) so in 2018 I hope to be less reactive in my internet activity, and more... I don't know... hermetic?

Before I get to work on that insomniac mind-punch however, this week sees me clowning around NOT ONLY in London's glittering and highly monitered West End BUT ALSO in TWO consecutive pleasings on the Radio 4, so let's rinse out that bin and FISH OUT THOSE PLUGS!

THIS EVENING, at half past six, you can hear Angstrom... pronounced "ARNGstrom", and narrated by ME! Half of the retakes were because I pronounced it wrong. I also play Angstrom's boss "Bols Aashol" - a further third of the retakes were me buggering that name up too. Here is a picture of the Swedish Meatball Hot Wrap I bought in the lunch break to research my accent:

And TOMORROW EVENING at half past six you can hear the second episode of series SEVEN of John Finnemore's Souvenir Programme. Go on, kiss your ears! Here is a picture of the effect episode one had on the internet:

("Stinkkalk"?)

And if twenty-three and a half hours is too long a wait between those two doses of me, why not ALSO buy a ticket to tomorrow's as-yet-unsold-out matinee of our London run of The Hound of the Baskervilles?

Or, if you can't get a ticket, why not listen to all SIX episodes of the Wireless Theatre Company's Adventures of Drayton Trench, recorded at London's Museum of Comedy which is smaller than the Radio Theatre?

OR download my appearance on International Waters back in September recorded in a big egg on Dean Street?

OR listen to the thrilling latest episode of the now AWARD-WINNING Monster Hunters - "Queen of the Yeti Men" (which I'm not in)? Here is the award!

Yes! I won an award! AND why not vote for Time Spanner over on the British Comedy Guide and give me another one? EH?
WHY NOT? WHAT'S THE MATTER WITH YOU? AND WHAT THE HELL WERE THESE?

End of plugs. Heartfelt details to follow.

Wireless photo by Mike Tomlinson

Happy New Year image care of this.