Wednesday night was another of those landmark nights in my life so far. Between the hours of 7.30pm and a little after 10 of the clock I did something that I have only once before done in my life.
(Saying that at the age of 39 is quite something). On Wednesday I took to the stage and performed my second ever stand-up comedy gig.
Now, it is a common misconception that I am a stand-up comedian. (This is an extension of the misconception that
I am at all funny.) I am not a stand-up comedian. I hope that I am a stand up guy, but as for the ability to stand on stage and make a roomful of strangers laugh, that is a skill I am still in the process of acquiring. I have done a lot of after-dinner speaking (which is speaking, after dinner.)
I am quite funny after a goat's cheese salad starter and lamb entrée. But that is a subtly different craft from the bald, bold, raw energy of a paying crowd which has come to be entertained.
As a newcomer I decided that compering an evening would be a gentle submersion into the bowel-thinning experience of comedy. My first stand-up gig last year at that festival in Edinburgh had been a compering spot. It feels somehow less pressured. I don't need to be on stage for very long and the acts that follow me always seem much funnier when preceded by me.
Not that there was any quality issues with the bill on Wednesday night. It was a charity gig for the Mental Health Foundation, so attracting big name acts was not a problem. Stephen Merchant, top left, multiple award-winning co-creator of The Office and Extras, was performing, as was British Comedy Award winner Simon Amstell, middle, and the funniest man at the Edinburgh Festival 2007, Brendon Burns.
It was not so much that I was out of my depth, rather I was anchored to the seabed.
However, employing the technique of playing the idiot savant and recklessly abusing a lady called Rebecca in the front row, I managed somehow to make it through the night. I even managed to make some of the audience smile. And the most important thing was that we raised more than £10,000 for the Mental Health Foundation. And that made me smile.
Justin time to kiss this thing hello again After a week of no music I discovered that by purchasing a simple Woolworths lead (cost £2.99) I could override the faulty CD player and use my boxfresh iPod to play my music. Absolute genius. The only problem was that I had to download or upload or sideload music on to my newly acquired piece of iPodery. That in itself is no problem since my 10-year-old daughter kindly explained the process to me, step by step, repeatedly until I eventually understood how to do it.
What was revelatory about the experience was finding a CD at the bottom of a box, a CD that I had completely forgotten that I owned. It was the last Del Amitri album. I impatiently loaded it on to my iPod and sat back and listened as the music crackled out of the speaker.
Now, I don't know about you, but I am particularly well disposed towards bands that come from Scotland, and even more so bands that come from my hometown. Putting that pride and subjectivity to one side, I have to say that Del Amitri were absolutely brilliant. This may surprise some of you, in which case I exhort you to rush out and buy one of their albums.
Apart from Justin Currie's great voice and intelligent – at times, coruscating – lyrics, the beardy guitar-player Iain Harvie can fair make any guitar weep. From soulful, melancholic ballads to straight-up rock numbers, it would appear that this Glasgow boy is more than happy not to be the last to know.
Bee in my bonnet about climate change
We are all painfully aware of the implications of global warming. No matter how inconvenient the truth may be, we are all too often reminded and constantly conscious of how our actions are changing our planet. It's a very complicated issue and requires some hard decisions, some sacrifices and some genuine global leadership. None of these seem widely prevalent at present.
The hypocritical stance of the West in trying to tell India and China to rein in their industrial development is an ultimately untenable scenario. For decades the West has enjoyed so many of the benefits of industrialisation, and prosperity has followed. The East want the same standard of living that the West has enjoyed. And it seems unable to get it without polluting the planet.
America has very limited bargaining power in matters of global planet preservation when they refuse to sign up to Kyoto. There is a genuine lack in international leadership as Bush kowtows to the powerful oil lobby. (I still find it difficult to believe that as a planet we can't make electric vehicles more viable, or am I just being a conspiracy theorist?)
Pollution respects no national boundaries; climate change affects rich and poor alike, east and west in equal measure. Which is why we all need to unite to sort the mess out before the Rubicon is crossed. The challenge is to somehow make these esoteric, political arguments real; real enough to make us all change the way we behave.
I witnessed an incident that was so very real it brought home to me what we are doing to the planet. I awoke on Easter Monday morning, a day in late March, to see snow flakes falling around a bee that buzzed energetically around the newly opened apple blossoms on the tree in my back garden. That has to be wrong, surely?
Talking a load of old molluscs
Overheard Phone Conversation:
Me: Yes, I spoke to a man from
the National Shellfish Society
My friend: They have a society for that?
Me: I know, it's weird, isn't it?
My friend: Weird and narcissistic.
Me: Narcissistic? Why?
My friend: A society to look after selfish people, nationally.
Me: What?
My friend: The National Selfish Society.
Me: No, you idiot. Langoustine and lobster. The National Shellfish Society.
My friend: Oh. Sorry. That's weird too. Shellfish but no finned fish. That's not right.
Me: I'm hanging up now.
The full article contains 1086 words and appears in Scotland On Sunday newspaper.
