"What we're trying to do really is create a living hell, have people pay admission..."

Okay on the one hand, pranks r the wurst. On the other hand though, the funniest stuff's never written on a blank page.

I knew nothing about Coyle and Sharpe until ten minutes ago but I urge you now to listen. Honestly, you're reduced to spending your evenings looking up celebrity roasts of Ted Knight on youtube thinking you've seen and heard it all yet there's fifty-year-old treasure like this lying around unregarded. Thanks to Robert Popper then for regarding, and to Sam Bain for reposting. I can't tell how you happy this makes me.

Another prank that has made me very happy, by the way, is BBC3's Murder In Successville. Beautifully played by six foot seven inches of Tom Davis, and beautifully shot for tuppence by James de Frond (I understand he had to fork out for his own drone) it's live and mad and corpsey and oh, just lots of things I haven't seen British Comedy be in ages. It's not on Wednesdays any more though but something that still is is Before They Were Famous, and the last of my Henrik Ibsen Christmas Cracker jokes.

 

Henry Gibson.

Now, see, I'd heard of him.

Ostensibly a riff on the writing styles of the greats, the real theme of this show - and what, I suspect I'm not alone in discovering among the new writers commissioned, made the sketches so fun to write - is rejection, and sympathy for the idea of trying to turn the smallest commission into The Great Work.

Coyle and Sharp though!

"ANOTHER BIG SACK FULL OF YOUR CRIES FOR HELP"

The Bible and Darwin are travel writing, the cancer is zombies... 

Chuck and George Stroumboulopoulos both making an effort.

Chuck Pahlaniuk - I found out, while researching how to pronounce his name for the latest episode of Before They Were Famous - is every bit as refreshing an interviewee as Alan Moore. My sketch "Chuck Palahnuik's Prankster's Nook" doesn't even attempt to reflect this, obviously. But sometimes you just have to take Fight Club and a half-remembered Goodies' Criminal Book of Records gag -

 

(Specifically I misremembered this as
"Amaze your parents - Tell them you have cancer")

... and run with it. You've a month left to hear this on iplayer, and I reckon a day left to hear the Alan Moore. I loved doing them. Have I said that already? 'Ere:

- Chuck Palahniuk is the author of “Invisible Monsters”, “Rant”, “Snuff”, “Choke”, and the novel for which he is most famous, “Fight Club”. His themes are cultural marginalisation, self-destructive aggression, crises of identity and the impulse towards anarchy, so it was surprising to learn that he cut his teeth editing the letters’ page of the children’s supplement of the Portland Tribune, under the banner “Chuck Palahniuk’s Prankster’s Nook”.

Hey Pranksters, Uncle Chuck here with another big sack full of your cries for help. Let the pranking commence.

Dear Pranksters,
My name is Vanessa and I am nine. Our math teacher Miss Gimball is really mean and boring, so one day the whole class decided to prank her by stapling a bunch of paper cups into a pyramid on her desk, and then filling them full of water! She made the Principal call our parents but it was worth it. Math is hooey. Does anyone you have more ideas for cool pranks that we can play? Love you, Uncle Chuck!   Vanessa, 9

Hey Vanessa,

Your attitude towards education is symptomatic of everything rotten in this country, and I salute you. Remember kids: The world is selling you a lie. A Chuck Palahniuk’s Prank Club Membership Card and Brochure are wending their way to you as we speak, featuring all kinds of cool deals on products such as the exploding lighter, the electric showerhead, and the bullet-through-the-cheek trick. In the meantime, here’s a cool prank - When the principal calls you into his office, wait until he has your parents on the phone, then punch yourself in the mouth. Punch yourself hard. Keep punching until he hangs up and I guarantee, when your family see your what’s happened to your face, you won’t have any trouble from him or Miss Gimball.

Now, a complaint: 

Mr. Palahniuk, my name is Wendy Gunderson. This morning I came downstairs to find my kitchen in disarray and my eight-year-old son James looking for a litre of vinegar. When I asked him what it was for, he directed me to an item in the “Cool Things To Try” column of your Prank Club brochure entitled: “How To Turn Your Skin into Soap.” Is this behaviour typical of the club’s activities? Please cancel my subscription to the Tribune. He is eight.    Wendy, 26

Dear Wendy, 

Please be assured, we here at the Prank Club are just as mad with Jamie as you. What he has done completely contravenes Club rules, as set out on the membership card. It clearly states: The first rule of Prank Club is: You do not talk about Prank Club. The second rule of Prank Club is: You do not talk about Prank Club. The third rule of Prank Club is: Always be a pranky neighbour. I am sorry for him, and I am sorry for you, but I am not sorry not for your kitchen. Here’s a more appreciative letter. It’s in block capitals:

DEAR PRANKSTERS, PLEASE CAN I RECOMMEND MYSELF FOR MEMBERSHIP OF THE PRANK CLUB, I AM 47 YEARS OLD AND LIVE WITH MY MOTHER AND YOU GUYS ARE THE ONLY THING IN MY LIFE THAT MAKES ANY SENSE RIGHT NOW. PLEASE DON’T LET THEM FIRE YOU, UNCLE CHUCK. IF THAT HAPPENED I WOULD DIE. YOU GUYS ARE LIKE A FAMILY. PLEASE. I HAVE NOWHERE ELSE TO TURN.

                                           ROBERT 47       P.S. I HAVE NEVER KNOWN A WOMAN.

Dear Robert, welcome. You are in a safe place now. I will give you a new name to celebrate your joining us. “Robert” was not helping you. “Robert” is no more. Kids, let’s all welcome our new recruit by sending in suggestions for what he should now be called. Personally, I like “Worthless Bob.”  Hey, I recognize this next prankster:
                                          

Chuck, this is your editor Kevin. Stop telling children to punch themselves in the mouth. I’m really serious about this. I’m going to have to take you off this page if it continues. You need to see someone. This isn’t cool.         Kevin, 38

Hey Kevin. You should let go a bit more. I feel your job is ruling your life. Don’t you live in the same building you work in? Hey kids, the address is up there at the front of this paper - why not come over and buck Kevin up with some surprise pranks? 

Finally, Prank of the Week. Let’s see who’s won the $5!

Hey Chuck, my name is you. I would like to nominate myself for Prank of the Week because I have just set fire to your house in a psychotic fugue. Now you are free, free from your catalogue-chosen hell, free to be who you are, which is me.    You, 23

Congratulations, Chuck! Cool twist. I don’t remember that happening at all. Well, that’s it for this week’s Pranksters’ Corner, kids. 

And remember: Nothing of this.                             

 

Ikea 2013 catalog (sic)

"ALL THIS... I SNIFF."

Isn't he great? He's so great. 

When producer Claire Broughton sent out a list of possible authors to spoof for the third series of Ian Leslie's Before They Were Famous I can't have been the only writer excited to see Alan Moore's name on it. How much of an overlap actually exists between fans of 2000AD (I smuggle John Wagner in there too) and Radio 4 comedy is another matter, but on a purely, selfishly personal level – considering this is the first time I've performed my own stuff on the radio, and possibly the first time the great man's been impersonated on Radio 4 – I couldn't be happier with how "Alan Moore's scripts for Fred Basset" turned out. Hey, Dave Gibbons tweeted me today! The artist of Watchmen? Yeah, him: "really funny (and accurate!)" he said - JUST SAYIN'! Sorry... But this is exactly why I've left it so long to write this post - I can't write charmingly about it, I'm too obnoxiously happy! 

Anyway, it's available to listen to for another month, with great work too from Marc Haynes, Abi Burdess, Benet Brandreth and Alex Lowe as Alex Graham. 

 

 And here, for posterity and the deaf, is that bit in full:

- For one extraordinarily prolific period in the 1980’s, Northampton-based writer and cartoonist Alan Moore spearheaded a revolution in comics with such “graphic novels” as “Watchmen” and “V for Vendetta”, both of which would later be turned into big budget films from which Moore immediately disassociated himself. His correspondence with artists often ran to hundreds of pages in length, providing evidence of a garrulous polymath with a flair for the esoteric, driven to push both collaborators and the boundaries of his chosen genre to their absolute limit. One of Moore’s first correspondents was the Daily Mail’s Alex Graham, who was looking for new blood to take over writing duties on his popular dog-based cartoon strip “Fred Bassett”. Moore’s strips were never published, but his scripts survive...

Hullo Alex! 

Great to hear you’re interested in running an eye, or preferably both, over my as yet pretty much let’s face it about-as-untested-as-a-chat-up-line-in-a-bordello efforts. Shall we crack on then? Fasten your seat belts, as the actress said to the aeroplane, and eyes down for a full house..

 Panel I: 

Our hero, Fred Bassett, dog, indoors, paws on windowsill, staring glumly out at a rainy day. Thought bubble: “IT'S RAINING OUTSIDE... COLD, FAT DROPS POUNDING DOWN UPON A HUNGRY EARTH, TURNING INTO VIOLENT, BRIEF AND RECIPROCATING SOUP THE MUSTY INSECT CARTRIDGES THAT LITTER THE GOLF COURSE. THE WIFE OF THE HUMAN WHO CALLS HIMSELF MY OWNER SWERVES IN THE RAIN TO AVOID AN OBLIVIOUS FOX AND, FOR A SECOND, IS REMINDED SHE TOO IS BURSTABLE. THREE DOORS DOWN, A SLEEPING CHILD BREAKS INTO A COLD SWEAT AS HE DREAMS OF A SCHOOL OF SHARKS, EACH WEARING THE FACE OF HIS FATHER. ALL THIS... I SNIFF. DOGS CAN SMELL FEAR. IT IS 10.37 AM.” 

 Panel 2 -

Dear Alan,

Thanks very much but I don’t think I’ll be able to get all that in the one bubble. Have you anything with fewer words? I like the idea of Fred looking out of the window though.          

Yours in anticipation, 

Alex Graham

Hullo Alex! 

Uncle Alan here. Point taken. Let’s go wordless. Comics are a visual medium, and the absence of thought bubbles frees us from having to pretend a dog thinks in sentences which, to my mind at least, seems marginally less likely than a human thinking in smells. If you’re sitting comfortably then - 

 Panel I: 

Fred looking out of the rain-swept window, his nose glistening. Behind him, a newspaper torn to shreds, the remnants of its headlines still visible. The word fragments "-UCLEAR" "-MEGEDDON" and "IMMIN-". 

 Panel 2: 

We pull back. Thirty feet above the house, Fred still visible in the window. Next door a barbecue is being rained off. 

 Panel 3: Pull back. We are above the clouds now but the weather is clearing, The Swan visible in the gaps, its drunken patrons searching their pockets for car keys. On one of the clouds: a lip-stick-tube-shaped shadow. 

 Panel 4: Pull back. The Earth -

Dear Alan,

I don’t really want to draw that.

For one thing it’s a hundred and twenty seven panels long, Fred Bassett traditionally runs to three or four. For another, we’re outside the known universe as early as panel thirteen, and I’m not comfortable drawing backgrounds on the best of days. Shall we give it another go?

Yours,
Alex Graham.

Hullo Alex! 

Message received. Onwards and upwards then, here’s the new script. Roll up your sleeves, gird your loins, send the ladies out of the room, pull up a chair, hoist the main brace, check your mirrors, press your trousers, pawn the silver, hide the vicar, declog the veeblefetzers, check down the back of the sofa, fire up the engines -

Alan, Alan…

That letter was four hundred pages long and I was still on the introduction by page 103. 
In happier news: The BBC has now said they’re interested in a television show with no less a talent than Lionel Jeffries providing the voice of Fred. I hope you’re as excited about this development as I am.
Looking forward to something a bit shorter,
Alex Graham.

- Complying with Graham’s request, Alan Moore’s next letter ran to just one sentence…

Burn what we have wrought, Alex, burn it to the ground and we can but hope from the resultant scorched earth a purer form may bloom.

- Graham turned next to a fellow Scotsman famous for the terseness of his scripts. A colleague of Moore’s, John Wagner would later create the ultra-violent, twenty-second century lawman "Judge Dredd"...                              

Fred Bassett. 

Panel I: 

Owner to dog: “SAY WOOF, BOY. SAY WOOF.” Dog: “SHAN'T.”
Panels 2-4: 

Owner shoots dog in head with a complicated gun. 

Pours petrol on dog. 

Lights match. Caption: ”WOOF!”

 You’re welcome.

  

 And of course Moore was actually a wiz at the animal-based comic strip. Of course he was...

(From Philip Sandifier's exhaustive and ongoing history of Moore: The Last War in Albion.)

Chris Grayling Rejohnfinnemembored

So farewell then, this guy. Not John. Chris Grayling.

It's been a bit of a weekend for Greatest Hits: old policy announcements and fire station closures reposted on Facebook, protests in Whitehall, complaints about a media blackout (again on Facebook), think-pieces warning against a drift to the left (of Labour's pledge to spend even less on the NHS than the Tories, presumably), even the resurrection of the Hipster Cop meme from 2011's Occupy Wall Street (although our Hipster Cop is far more hip), so I make no apology for posting this classic monologue from 2013 to mark the change of Lord Chancellor. It's alright though, he's being replaced by Michael Go-*sets fire to self beneath a placard that says "Past Caring"*.

Oh. and I've started following Louise Mensch on twitter: Man... that's opening the door to a bathroom that's had the plumbing ripped out. I tried to counter her retweets about the protests in a civilized and enquiring manner, but ended up just relaying details about the Ben Stiller film "Flirting With Disaster" which was on Film4.

Well, whatever gets you through, as Mensch herself has written.

Have fun. Continue.

 

Fun Fox Facts

- This is one of the first sketches I wrote. It stars David Mitchell, Robert Webb and James Bachman.

- The seed of the sketch was not in fact the fox-hunting ban, but the case of Armin Miewes and Bernd Jurgen Armand Brandes.

- I wasn't alone in finding the idea of somebody voluntarily turning up to someone else's house to be eaten funny. My friend Will's favourite detail of the case is Miewes accidentally letting Brandes' severed penis burn on the stove in pepper, wine and garlic because he was so engrossed in a Star Trek novel. Will liked this thwarted attempt at Hannibal Lecterish sophistication. (Ironically, the casting of Mads Mikkelsen as Hannibal probably has more to do with the Miewes case than it does any previous incarnation of Lecter. I haven't seen it. Is he into Star Trek?)

- The fox is named "Grace" after the Jeff Buckley album. This line was cut. Also cut was the line "Drop the cheese", fox slang for "Show me the money". As I say this was one of my first sketches.

- According to Wikipedia, Miewes has since become a vegetarian.

Post-Mortem

Morning!

 

This clip has fascinated me for a while. Who was right? Tony with his theory that the mountain was just too high, or Ken with his theory that nobody trusted Labour's sums? Or secret Tony with his secret theory that Labour weren't centrist enough? 

Well, we know Tony got it right in 1997 because he was elected Prime Minister by a landslide. But then we also know Ken got it right because he was elected Mayor of London by an even bigger landslide in 2000.

But maybe that's just London.

Watching the results come in this morning in 2015 I witnessed Labour - which I've recently joined - lose no time in blaming the electorate. Neil Kinnock stood there in a strangely brown, smoke-filled room, essentially accusing the voters of being cowed into compliance by a campaign of fear. But blaming the electorate didn't work for him in 1992 and it won't work now. Blaming me won't work either. Okay, I never went leafleting, but who likes leaflets? Not putting people off is a very important part of campaigning. No, for all Miliband's achievements in opposition, Labour had five years to campaign and did next to nothing apparently in the belief that Conservatives are just people conned by the media into believing they're Conservative, and that if you take on the media the spell will lift. That's not how fear works. "How to be radical and still get elected" - that was the plan, but you do have to get the electorate on board, and in hindsight Miliband's biggest mistake was most concisely illustrated by what he said to Russell Brand six minutes and fifty seconds into that second game-changing "Trews" (game-changing in London, I mean):

"Tories are a sort of Virtual Party these days, so they sort of exist with advertising and money but they don't have people."

Do you see where he went wrong? It turned out they do, Ed. Lots of people. All over.

 

I like London.

EXCITING SPACE ADVENTURE 14

 

"Wait! Wait, Z'dan! Z'DAN! She'll need this!!!"       

   from They Weren't Very Good At Rescuing