This Week's Drinks

 It's tax day today, and it's Brexit day, so Joel Morris and I met this evening for what turned out to be a responsible three and a half pints each. I brought Joel up to date with other drinks I'd had this week, and we both took notes. Joel noted, for example, that there should be a Liff word for the person in a group elected to explain the rules of a boardgame, an observation borne from me recalling how last Sunday I'd tried to explain the plot of the film "Cats" to John Finnemore. (I'd forgotten how easy it can be to make John weep with laughter.) Joel also noted how often he was hearing Tom Petty in pubs these days, and how effectively the pitch of his voice cut through the murmur of a crowd, like the tambourine in a Motown track that makes those songs so ideal for a jukebox. I passed on a Fun Fact I'd learnt in a bar from Mark Steel the night before, attending a recording of David Reed's outstanding podcast "Inside The Comedian", a fact for which I can find no evidence online... Actually before I tell you, think of the thinnest celebrity you can imagine. Okay. Now think of the widest. Okay, now here's the fact: John Cooper Clarke's school bully was Giant Haystacks.

Something else the "Cats" film reminded me of.
 

 What else? We talked about the background noise of vanishing coin, something I'd felt suddenly absent from the second series of "Fleabag" for example, and of the work of freelancers who constantly live with that background noise, and of the creative, commissioning and critical decisions of those who don't, and how so much British Cinema in our lifetimes seemed to be the work of the latter, telling stories that either ignore money completely or contrastingly find poverty fascinating, and I thought that might explain why so many British films are either Boring or Horrible. I was probably on my third pint by then. Cracking chat.

 And here's a neat place for plugs. Joel and Jason Hazeley's "Rule Of Three" podcast serves as lasting proof of just how good at talking they are, and is hearable here. David's podcast "Inside the Comedian", in which guests are not allowed to tell the truth, can be heard here, also if you can get over to one of the live recording at Kings Place I'd really recommend that too. David and I are of course both in Joel And Jason's scandi-nougat "Angstrom" which is apparently available on BBC Sounds forever here. Oh also, David has a scifi comedy pilot out next week here, "Napoleon Moon", which should be excellent. John meanwhile, though not credited as one of the writers of Armando Iannucci's "David Copperfield", is from what I've seen of the trailers absolutely all over it, so we should redouble our efforts to see that too. It looks neither Boring nor Horrible. The photo of Soho is from my Instagram. The image of the 50p coin celebrating the UK's joining the EEC in 1973 and depicting a Ring of Hands is from this video. And finally, not really a plug, but l wrote this post the day before the decision to leave the EU was taken three and a half years ago. I still think it's a dumb decision, and Europe, I love you, and we will be back. Bissous.