19/09/07
Be the best Nelson Mandela you can -
Categories: I have received a fair share of odd emails over the years since the arrival of the interweb. Ranging from an email entitled 'Tiernan?' from Tiernan Deevy asking if I was really another Tiernan as he had never met another Tiernan, all the way to my friends spontaneously written essay on the dangers of the honey badger.
However, yesterday I received a rather unique email from top political comic Mark Thomas, simply stating:
'It is short notice I know but would you like to be Nelson Mandela for 5
minutes tomorrow?'
This is quite possibly the oddest request I've ever had. I wondered if perhaps he had discovered a 'Being John Malkcovich' type portal and I was going to test drive being inside the head of world peace legend Mr Mandela. Upon further reading I discovered it was not quite as nuts and merely involved me doing a reading from Nelson Mandela's speech at the unveiling of his statue in Parliament Square. This did not seem as daunting, until my friend (and Fat Tuesday co-coordinator) Georgie told me I should 'be the best Nelson Mandela you can', at which point I wondered exactly how many ways I could get this wrong by wearing a costume or face paint. Luckily I'm not an idiot.
What actually entailed was more genius from the man Thomas to oppose the ridiculous SOCPA law of central London that requires you to apply for permission from the Police to demonstrate in the Parliament area. Mark has been protesting about this for some time, both in his well documented mass lone protests (if you haven't heard about this then check out http://www.markthomasinfo.com/demo/default.asp immediately and get involved!) which I have partaken in many of, including the mass mass lone demo earlier this year in which 200 odd people all did 20 10 minute long protests each over a whole day. This in turn meant the police were dealt over 2000 forms and it was proved once again what a huge waste of time this law is. I am very ham fistedly talking about this here, but I totally advise seeing Mark's new tour on which he talks about his actions thoroughly.
Anyhoo, today's protest required Mark filling in loads of forms and getting 5 million pounds of public liability insurance (on loan from the CND) just to get agreement from the GLA that we could protest by the Nelson Mandela statue. We proceeded at 12.45 today to hold banners and read extracts from the speeches of Richard Attenborough, Gordon Brown, Ken Livingston and of course Nelson himself from merely a few weeks ago. But why, you might ask. What was the point? Well, many of us were curious too, but Mark didn't let us down. After all the proceedings and wise words, Mark pointed out that we had permission to do such an event, but on August 29th neither Gordon Brown or Ken Livingston had got permission for their unveiling, which means they have broken the law. Again, sheer proof that the SOCPA law is a waste of time if the PM and the Mayor of London can so easily break it. Crazy huh? It also makes you really angry at the extent that the new terrorism laws have infringed on human rights. What say does anyone have if you have to ask the government before you voice your opinion about them? Slightly scary thought methinks.
Now I'm not very political in general. I try to be, but I sadly lack enough understanding to be quite as cleverly pro-active. My parents are both very sharp on politics and so is my brother. For me, I spent years thinking Trotsky was the Russian word for a short stroll, so basically I have no idea of anything. I'm pretty good at music knowledge and what happened in most Marvel comics from the years 1990-1994. Sadly I don't feel that this knowledge will change the world anytime soon. I must endeavour to be a bit more clever about it methinks, and I can only aim to help in more of Mark's antics and try and research other bits I can do. Expect me to be arrested anytime soon for getting it all wrong. However first I will spend tonight playing some xbox with my mate and discussing honey badgers.
Do go check out Mark's website (http://www.markthomasinfo.com) and his tour and the benefit gig "A Seriously Funny Attempt to Get The Serious Fraud Office in The Dock!" - Hammersmith Apollo, Sunday 23rd September. It'll all be ace and well worth your hard earned moolah. And hopefully I'll see you at the next mass lone demo (Interesting protests are best. Winner of recent times is the man from the Monster Raving Loony Party's 'More Use of the Word Globule! Excellent stuff)!
Brief other news (sorry, this is a stupidly long blog!) - possibility of me running another gig in a very lovely room in a lovely area. While this is great, I must try and maintain some sort of line between being an act and not a promoter. Even more so now there are a couple of promoters happy to book their acts at my gig but not give me a spot at theirs. That's not even stevens at all. Is it possible to be regarded as both an act and promoter? Some people do it very well, like Stephen Grant or Toby Foster. I however might lack the organisational skill for this. Watch this space for either a new gig or a full mental spazz out. I wanted to use the word meltdown there, but thought spazz out might provoke higher response.
Word.
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