Dancing & Swine

I am without a doubt the most boring of men.

Rarely do I trip the light fantastic at a nightclub, nor do I go on holiday to exotic locations. In fact I never go on holiday; preferring instead to spend my summer with a laptop in beer garden. The laptop is there to give the impression to passers by that I am in fact writing, when it is actually a cunningly placed prop which allows me to doze in the sun and drink some nice real ale.

So why then did I receive a letter from my local night club offering me free admission to party the night away with my friends? Not only is dancing in public abhorrent to me but my friends don’t go to nightclubs either. They also sit in their homes or beer gardens dozing in the sun and drinking nice beer. They would think me a buffoon of the worst kind if I waylaid them and dragged them into a nightclub. In fact they would call me ‘Mental Martin’ and laugh in my face all day, every day until all of us are dead.

Leafleters should realise that I only accept leaflets for takeaways and minicabs. If any fine person wants to give me a year’s supply of Hobgoblin beer then I’ll waggle my booty on a podium, no problem but until that time  all nightclubs should sod off.

You may have gathered that I have absolutely nothing to write about today and that the words above are by way of a space filler. Normally in these situations I stick a video up from You Tube, but today I decided to create the character of a curmudgeonly man who is loosely based upon me. OK well it’s entirely me but the bit about my friends calling me Mental Martin was a lie. No they’d just have me shot.

Oo have thought of something. Yesterday Stephen Fry posted a link to a story on Twitter. The story accused Twitterers of creating panic about Swine Flu. He also asked that Tweeters be sensible about this. At that point I realised how sheltered my online world is. All the people I follow or follow me are either in the comedy business or lovers of comedy and our reaction to the news was to make various porcine puns about it. Of course it would be silly of me to say that this was exclusively confined to the world of comedy. The British have always laughed at what threatens them. They guffawed at Hitler and I’m sure jokes were made about the bubonic plague even before the first victim hit the ground. As a country, comedy is engrained in our culture. For some it’s a way of life and others it’s a pleasure and it is as important to us as tea or the BBC.

In fact comedy is so important to us, that a lack of it is considered by many to be a personality disorder. How many times have you heard somebody say “I don’t like him, he’s got no sense of humour.” However I bet they do because everybody does.

Steak and mash tonight.