Goodbye 2010

Hurray! here I am back again, writing a blog, like a twat.

However I won’t bore you with the reasons I’ve not blogged for a while or about my battle with BT to get my broadband fixed or even my delight with the new Virgin 50Mb broadband which replaced it yesterday. No, that is too tedious by far, as those who have followed the story on Twitter can attest.

What I will bang on about, is how the 18 hours of phone calls and utter frustration with BT have made me ill. Not dying, just run down and knackered, which at any other time of the year would be manageable. However the next few days will be the most alcoholic of the year and usually by this stage I will have been eating sensibly exercising a bit to make sure my wobbly body is in tip top shape for the unrelenting waterfall of booze which it will have to deal with. Sadly I have foregone the ‘getting fit for Christmas’ part of the year, for the ‘talking on the phone to BT for so long that I didn’t have time to cook my dinner and had to resort to fast food’ part.

Still it is all sorted now so Christmas is back on and I’m now trimmed to buggery (see picture) and I’m ready to do a quick review of the last twelve months:

This year has been enjoyable in parts and there were some real highlights, when I was drunk.

Edinburgh

Edinburgh was actually fun this year and I was drunk for a large part of it though I met lots of really nice people who I’d been grooming on the internet, these included the poor deluded souls who listen to The Gentleman’s Review, the multi talented Tara Flynn and husband Carl who were delightful,  comedian Andrew J Lederer whose experimental approach to comedy often leads to some incredibly memorable shows and Andrew Collins who I spoke to for a few minutes while very drunk. I can’t remember what I said to him but it must have been incredibly witty and inventive. The same evening I met my comedy writing hero Dan Tetsell for a few seconds as he rushed to the loo, if you don’t know who Dan is then firstly shame on you and secondly go here and here and look at this blog entry, he’s the blue cat.

On top of all this I got to spend an evening in the company of Jim Bob, who is a remarkable man. Not only a fantastic musician but an excellent author, which is frankly a combination never seen before in the history of the world. He was performing in one of the best shows on the fringe this year: Gutted the Musical which also starred Doc Brown, Margaret Cabourn-Smith, Helen George, Colin Hoult, Michael Legge, Sara Pascoe, Lizzie Roper, Fiona Stephenson, Daniel Tawse and The Penny Dreadful . It was written by Daniel Ward and Martin White and even though I’d been drinking all day when I sat down to watch it, it managed to engage me entirely.

My other favourite show was Tara Flynn’s Big Noise which triumphantly brought back the comedy song and left me helpless with laughter all the way through. You can hear it yourself here.

However I’ve not mentioned two people in this section anf they are Andy Wilson who shared my adventures and cause Tara Flynn to come up with the name ‘Frouple’ (friends who act like a couple) to describe us and Tom Stringfellow who took a horrible National Express coach to Edinburgh just to do our special podcast before heading back to Halifax straight afterwards, which is admirable in every way.

Podcasting

Doing The Gentleman’s Review podcast has always been a hobby and I am always surprised to find out that people listen to it. However they do as I discovered in July when me and Andy were invited to take part in the Precious Little live event. Precious Little is a podcast featuring comedian Michael Legge and James Hingly and which became cult listening for a number of people. It was jolly odd and I became very drunk, however I met the lovely Liz Buckley and many of the Podophile/Gentry including king and queen Neal Peters and Nicola Woolhouse. I’ve met Nicola a number of times since and I was drunk every time.

We also recorded a podcast in Edinburgh with a small audience of The Gentry (TGR listeners) wihich guest starred Michael who pulled us out of the poo. My brain had completely stopped working, mainly because I’d started drinking the moment we’d got to Ed and ha

As for The Gentleman’s Review we had an excellent year with record listening figures (for us) and we even bobbed up and down in the charts for a while, until I we dropped out of site never to be seen again. it was at that point I asked for a five week break so that we could spring clean and come up with some new ideas. During this holiday we planned to record the sequel to The Talons of Time which was an audio adventure we did in 2009. However the best laid plans of mice and men oft go to shite and all we did was go to the pub, discuss loads of new features and get very drunk before returning with a new series of theme tunes and the same old bollocks as before.

Sadly our return was met with mostly silence and we only pulled in 125 listeners and I genuinely thought about jacking it in, but last week we released our Christmas special which pulled in 2,347 listeners and threw us back in the charts for two days. So I think we’ll carry on.

We also invented the Dipsocast this year which is a podcast recorded in a pub after a night’s drinking. It is unedited and has no fancy theme tune or end credits and each episode lasts no more than half an hour. They are great fun to record and always seem to start with a discussion about the beer we’re drinking.

Drinking

It has been a great boozy year.

Sex

None

Health Problems

Liver, prostate, hemorrhoids.

People to Follow on Twitter

In no particular order:

@michaellegge

@TaraFlynn

@liz_buckley

@mixmasterfestus

@tetsell

@jeremylimb

@MrPLitchfield

@danmersh

@PLPod

@howlieT

@Wllmtnnnt

@nwoolhouseuk

@porkeye

@CollingsA

@ajlondemand

@jonronson

@tomstring

@drbobchoco

So there it goes, old 2010, a bit rubbish in parts but mostly OK. All that’s left to do is wish you a merry Christmas.

A merry Christmas.