27/03/07
Up late with Gary Barlow -
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I've been awake for about two hours now after an extremely valiant effort to sleep normally. I would stop short of saying that I am insomniac, when I try to go to sleep I usually do but staying asleep is another matter entirely and I jolt awake in the middle of the night with no hope in hell of getting back to the land of nod. It's more like a perpetual state of jetlag.
All down to the job of course, comedians effectively work nights and it's tough to get into a routine that suits you being integrated into normal life in any acceptable way, when most people are fast asleep in bed I am to be found wandering around looking for something to do whilst everybody else slumbers. Then when normal humans are arriving at work and grabbing their first coffee of the day I pull down the lid of my coffin. Kind of like a tag team.
Added to all this I have very achey muscles (there are muscles underneath I promise you) due to the fact that I have finally started to use my home gym regularly, but have rather stupidly chosen to begin with an 'Intermediate' training programme as I am too proud to acknowledge that enough time has passed since I was last in training to warrant me being in actual fact a 'Beginner'. How can I possibly stay asleep with muscles this big?
When people have spoken to me about my job (as people almost always want to), one of the list of envies they put forward is the fact that I can sleep during the daytime. "I wish I could stay in bed all day!" they say, normally adding something along the lines of "but some of us have to work for a living", before asking me where I get my ideas from etc etc, but if they could see me now they may change their desire. They forget that when they are relaxing at home in front of the TV, I am either at work or on my way there. I didn't get to see the week before last's 24 until the hour before the latest one on Sunday (that was actually quite cool though - for once the real time was an issue to me as well as to Jack Bauer), and when they are tucked up in bed, I'm sitting in my office trying to revive any lost previous interest I had in internet pornography. It's a bit rubbish to be the only house in the street with a light on sometimes.
There's usually somebody or other knocking about on msn to help pass my time, but tonight I'm the only light on there too. I've exhausted all my dvd extras (tonight I did Eddie Murphy Delirious, Tenacious D in The Pick of Destiny, and aptly Extras series 2) and I'm not in the mood for a movie.
I've also, very weirdly for anyone that knows me in real life, watched Take That's "Shine" video a lot on YouTube.
I have always been very anti-Take That, mainly for personal reasons. On the final night of the fringe in 2005 I appeared on that 28 acts in 28 minutes show at the Pleasance Dome and used my allotted sixty seconds to decapitate a life size cut out of Gary Barlow with a golf club to rapturous cheering.
I maintain to this day that this was the most exceptional one minute of my performing career, it was literally perfect. I didn't speak a word, walked onto the stage with the cut out, walked off, returned with the golf club, the audience began a ten second countdown - completely un-prompted by me too - I swung the club, took his head off - clean off in one shot mind, no fannying about - picked up the head, gave a sad face and my minute was up.
To the outside eye it was very funny for being so childish, and back then Gary had been absent from the public eye long enough for his appearance as a cardboard cut out to be genuinely random, but deep down it was utterly cathartic for me as Gary Barlow once pretty much ruined my life.
Completely unknowingly I might add in the man's defence.
See, when Take That first started they were, as is well documented, given the instruction to dump their girlfriends. It took a while for them to take this decree seriously, but when Gary did that with his girlfriend she walked straight into my arms. All well and good you may say, but the thing is, the order was the only reason their relationship ended, despite now being in a relationship with a funny little fat drama student, she was still taken with the millionaire pop star for some reason.
It's never easy being in a relationship with somebody who isn't over somebody else, and it's perfectly natural to end up jealous of one's partner talking about their exes, but when you add to that the fact that their ex is plastered on the front of every magazine and newspaper, and more or less constantly on the tv and radio, then you start to develop what can only be described as abject hatred for the previous partner. The dude had done me no personal wrong, but his goading face was driving me insane. The only delight I ever got was in his (very rare) misfortunes - the people of the north west found out about Mr Blobby beating Take That to the Christmas number one by the sound of me cheering.
Naturally my relationship with that lass ended in time, but even then, the sight of Barlow was always enough to curl my lip ever so slightly, and I only really got proper closure that night in Edinburgh when I took his head off. He wasn't coming back to goad me.
Then last year he was back with the reunion, suddenly he was on the front of magazines again, back on telly and on the radio.
So all those feelings of mine came flooding back right?
Not a bit of it.
After watching the reunion documentary I found myself in the utterly alien mood of actually fucking rooting for the guy. I think part of the threat to me had always been this idea that he would one day leave Take That and go fucking major global, but as we know that didn't pan out and he was barged out of the spotlight by that Robbie one. So when he came back he was the underdog, and if you've learned just one thing about me from this here blog it is surely that I can't help but root for the underdog (unless they are playing St Helens in rugby league of course...actually, scrub that, even then, I have never begrudged a lower league side beating us because I remember when Saints were underdogs in the eighties and early nineties, and what it meant to me on the occasions when we came out on top).
So, the reason I have been watching the new Take That video, is because I think it perfectly encapsulates that idea of the underdog winning - you really should watch it, it's a fucking brilliant song and video anyway, but you can see into the souls of all four of them in it, and it's hard not to have your heart warmed when you see that after those years of rejection and living in the shadow of the one who got away, which must have fucking hurt for them, they are back doing what they do and receiving the deserved plaudits for it. Gary Barlow must have experienced with Robbie Williams what I experienced with Gary Barlow, and I know how much it can eat away at you, so I'm fucked if I'm gonna resent the man his moment of glory this time round.
I can be gracious from time to time. It did feel good knocking his head off that night in Edinburgh though, not gonna lie to you.
It's the Fopp comedy night again tomorrow/today (Tues), at the store in Tottenham Court Road, London where I am resident compere (by the grace of god), so if any of you down there fancy it, the invite is open as always. Simon Munnery is headlining so it will be worth a punt. And I don't want you people in the North feeling left out so if you positively have to see me do a gig soon I am doing my Edinburgh 2006 "Out of Character" show for the very very last time (if I can remember it - it will be a version of it anyway) at the Doncaster Civic Theatre on Thursday before a weekend at the Frog and Bucket comedy club in Manchester on Friday and Saturday.
Gonna sleep now, my muscles are burning. Gary Barlow's ears probably are too...
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