It is on all over the Country (& Europe) for one night only, Thursday night.

(If you can’t make it, I imagine it will be out on DVD for Christmas).

As it happens, I sat and watched a few episodes of MPFC Series 1 last night. It was rather slow paced but there were still some comedy moments, including Nudge nudge wink wink, arthur (twosheds) Jackson, the man with two bottoms and how to defend yourself against fresh fruit.

(I suspect that it would have told me the same thing if I had reported a bad hangover!)

I reckon I’m back to 80% now but tire easily, the other sufferers took a couple of weeks to get back to normal so that sounds par for the course.
One of our suppliers sent me some Swine Flu jokes, cut & pasted below. They made me smile!

I called the Swine Flu hotline – all I got was cracklingI heard that the first symptom is that you come out in rashers.Another is that you get the trotts.I woke up with pig tails this morning … Should I be worried?The doctor asked me how long I’d had the symptoms of Swine Flu. I said it must have been about a  Weeeeeeeeeeeeeek!Apparently my mate’s got Swine Flu – I think he’s just telling porkies! The only known cure for Swine Flu in humans has been found to be the liberal application of oinkment.  IF YOU GET AN EMAIL ABOUT SWINE FLU DELETE IT AS ITS ONLY SPAM.  This little piggy went to market, This little piggy stayed at home, This little piggy had roast beef, This little piggy had none,   And this little piggy had influenza A virus subtype hemagglutinin protein 1 neuraminidase protein 1. Swine flu however, is not a problem for the pigs because they’re all going to be cured anyway! News Flash …. This just in. The world’s religious leaders have issued a joint declaration that the Swine Flu  pandemic is the start of the aporkalypse. Swine flu has now mixed with bird flu.  Scientists say they will find a cure when pigs fly. I just heard on the news that, “Swine Flu could potentially be a threat to every single person in the world”.  Well it’s a good thing I’m married then, isn’t it? This is not a time for panic. It is no pig deal. It is a mild hamdemic, don’t believe the spam you’re getting.

(Well, it made me smile!)

I wonder how many well meaning people throw in the towel every day, fed up with the increasingly arcane rules? I suspect the number is not trivial.

Still, you’ve got to laugh. I certainly did when I first heard about the title subject.

Today it was revealed that the Police didn’t approve back then. These days, the Police would have much more opportunity to cherry-pick bad law to nobble them. The transcripts don’t do them justice, they were indeed delightfully offensive and often very funny. (Don’t bother with the DVD though, I found it cringe-worthy as their relationship was heading to the rocks).

On the Saturday, I started to watch the show. Some bits of it were brilliant; the rest of it was mostly Ok but the appeal bits became rapidly tedious. Fortunately V2000 videos had excellent picture lock on fast forward so I was able to condense the show down considerably. This was to becomne my approach over the next 21 years- to record it then play it back at leisure, skipping the mockumentary bits.

No doubt there are people who ernestly watch all the poverty, hard luck stories and deprivation then pledge all they can. There will be the righteous who watch it so that they can tell others that they did and there will be little old ladies who give more than they can afford. Each to his own, but I am much more moved to action by a natural catastrophe than man made ones, particularly ones caused by fraud and corruption.

Anyway, it seems that there have been fourteen noses over the twelve events (three this year) and the first one was very simple, just a small sphere with a groove in the back to slide onto your schnoz. The following year, the nose was much bigger, had a face on it and was scented. The event became bi-annual in 1991 as an annual event just felt too frequent, or at least that was how I perceived it. Each event, there is a new nose design introduced and I’ve bought the majority of them although I’m sure there will be a website somewhere with the complete collection of red noses on it to ponder. (David’s first one was in 2001, where its tongue popped out when you squeezed it).

At work today, one of the younger lads agreed to lose his hair and now just has cranial stubble. He went through the transformation from normal, to Thompson Twin, to Mohican, to Tin Tin, to Al Murray in less than five minutes. Some others agreed to wear football tops of teams they hated for pledges. Otherwise it was business as usual, other than the semi-standard dress down Friday which happens more often than not.

(I rarely dress down, tending to dress down somewhat most of the time. At least we don’t have dress-down killjoy bullys who charge £2 if you don’t dress down rather than the £1 if you do, they would get extremely short shrift with me, I already pay out enough involuntary contributions to our incompetent Government).

Speaking of incompetent Governments, an email went around work late last year saying that some people had not been granted an entitlement correctly from a few years back for child allowance and it was worth writing to the Tax man. I did just that in January and heard nothing. The deadline was the end of Jan and it occurred to me that they would probably just send me a form to fill in then reject it as being outside the claim period. However, a week or two back, I was pleasantly surprised to receive a £600 cheque from the tax man. Not a bad return for a 27p stamp!

I first saw Hattie on Saturday Night Live and then met her at a show at Wyvenshawe Forum in 1989, where I was doing some work for their brand new Computerised Lighting Desk. Hattie had been one of the acts in the first half (I don’t recall who was mainlining, I keep thinking it was Julian Clary but that can’t be right as I actually ended up working a fokkow-spot that show and can recall Hattie & Co. coming into the control room to watch the second half. She was very bemused when I told her that my Mum thought she was the best alternative comic on the telly because she didn’t swear…

Five on so years later, I was heavily into Red Dwarf and went along to what was possibly the first  Dimension Jump in Northampton, which featured Rob Grant, Doug Naylor and Hattie. This was my first exposure to obsessives, although many of the crowd just regarded this as light relief and they werel really hardline Trekkies. (I heard several different Trek Convention stories over the weekend, including someone being sick over Gene Roddenberry in a lift and what an obnoxious shit William Shatner was).

Totally Looped is a very popular American improv show where the comics make new plots and lines to famous movie clips.

Alas, it didn’t really make the transition over the atlantic too well, being a little too contrived and overly reserved. (I have seen some hysterical improv in Disneyworld Florida). There were some funny moments however.

There was also a very strange moment as well. There was a  sketch about a narcoleptic bus driver that was so-so (hindered somewhat by the distinct lack of buses in the film clip). However after it had finished and they were gathering inspiration for the next clip, someone shouted in a gruff Yorkshire voice that she was  a narcoleptic and that it wasn’t funny. Somewhat taken aback, the host comedian asked her to clarify and she said something about having been coming to see them for the last two years (which was slightly odd as this is the first airing of this format). He assured her that they had indeed moved on from that theme and they carried on, but the audience was slightly subdued after that. I wonder if they were thinking the same as me? That the reason she waited so long to complain was because she had dropped off?

(In case you don’t know, Narcolepsy is a condition where the sufferer may fall asleep unexpectedly. I have known two sufferers and they both had different manifestations. The first one was a tired during the day type but the more affected of the two worked for a European PTT in the 80s and was a brilliant Engineer but could fall asleep instantly for variable periods pretty much anywhere so he couldn’t drive of course. He would simply slump his head and be out of it for a while. He would do it in meetings and a colleague even remembers it happening in a Restaurant. The strange thing was that he could immediately resume what he was saying if it was a short bout and he was obviously used to taking stock of where he was and what had changed).

Hattie was great and still looks pretty much as she did twenty years ago. There are various comedians on the tour, the three other mainliners being Phil Jupitus, Marcus Brigstocke and Sanjeev Bhaskar. Regrettably, it is only a variable 5 from 10 perm with one or two of the big names.

Not many dates left…

Watch “Little Howard’s Big Question” starting Thursday the 8th of January 4.35pm. CBBC on BBC1. (13 eps)

Nice one, Sky+ set…

It is going to be funded by Ernie’s Widow, Doreen Wiseman.

I was in the Town Hall a couple of months ago and noticed some concept art by the sculptor who did the two Town Hall statues, Terry the Miner & Judith the weaver.

The design and the location are not agreed yet, but I suggested outside the Morley New Pavilion as that is where Ernie made his stage debut in a talent show (although it seems he performed with his Dad in the clubs as well).

Failing that, it should go in East Ardsley, the nearby district where he actually lived.

No prizes for working out the inspiration for this particular pose!

Normally, a Wasgij shows a mirror image view of what the people you can see can see, but in this case it is more like a two frame cartoon. Here is the jigsaw now complete:-

I haven’t finished reading this yet, but as a public service anonyblogger apparently highly read within scuffer police circles, this makes an excellent companion to PC Copperfield’s Wasting Police Time, being written from the perspective of the Boss rather than the worker.

I particularly chuckled at this letter sent by the Publisher to the Home Office Minister of State for Security, Counter-terrorism, Crime and Policing, the Right Hon. Tony McNumpty MP.

(Inspector Gadget’s Blog and the Monday Books (Publisher’s) blog)

David liked this, but said that his favourite song is Animal, Swedish Chef and Beaker singing Danny Boy, which he found on Youtube.

I’ve never seen it before… and that is an omission that has made me always in the kitchen at parties. I perhaps need to watch the other series as they get released.

(Hat tip City Varieties myspace page, that also features my wobbly column!)

(Hat tip: Steve (Ripple effect) Harper)

Click on the pic to make it all become clear. If you are easily offended, then you might be easily offended.

Hat tip: Team Japan

Tonight, as he was being put to bed, he came out with a classic:

It turns out they don’t lay eggs…

Just in case you wondered what Firkin the cat looked like, from yesterday’s comics posting.

The live ebay lot is here, I won’t be bidding for it as Karen wouldn’t really approve of such frivolous purchases and I’m not called Kevin.

(“So let me have a look at this porn mag you bought…”)

When I was in high school, one of the lads called Snakey (Paul Snaith) loaned me two underground comics, namely Oz Magazine and Nasty Tales. This was at the time of the Oz obscenity trial so it must have been 1971 when I was in the 2nd or third year. These were rather subversive and certainly would have been confiscated if the teachers had found us with them.

During by 6th form years, a lot of the roadies would have comics with them to while away the time once they had everything set up and I saw quite a broad selection, including American ones. (Some of the roadies had some quite bizarre porn mags from their European tours as well, but we won’t go there…)

When I went to work for the GEC (as a thin sandwich style Technician/Engineer Student) and lived in the GEC halls of residence, there was a slush fund for buying weekly & monthly magazines by the house committee and there was a vote on what should be bought. This boiled down to car & bike mags, electronics mags and mucky books. (The former and latter were the most popular unsurprisingly, with fifty or so testosterone crazed eighteen year olds). The Magazines were signed out for no more than two days, although the average retention time of the porn was probably just twenty minutes).

One of the Magazines was Fiesta, a fairly soft porn title at the time (unlike say Whitehouse which was more akin to a Turkish Butcher’s window, as Billy Connolly says). Whilst many of the lads would claim that they read it for the articles, there was one feature that I particularly enjoyed enough to check it out each month. It was a very funny cartoon of a rather manky cat called Firkin who had various adventures exploring human sexuality.

Fast forward several years to 1983 and I settled down in the Town of Maidenhead. Here there was a particularly good privately owned record shop that also sold underground comics. This is where I first discovered Viz Comic which was just starting to go nationwide (but not yet mainstream). I also started to explore the back catalogue of other publications like The Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers and Fat Freddies Cat.

I eventually discovered Hunt Emerson (the Firkin artist) and his other creations. I was delighted when he made compilations of Firkin the Cat available as well.

Viz spawned many competitors, most of which were rubbish, one trick ponies.

Now, having moved house several times since that time, they were all lost, thrown out or given away along the way. So why did I suddenly find myself remembering them at a Deer Park in Norfolk?

We were on a tractor tour off to see the deer and the driver was telling us about the sheep. He told us that the Ewes had been through their “Tupping” with the Rams and the orphan Lambs were in the barn being hand fed. He explained that they weren’t actually orphans, it was just that any Ewe that had more than two Lambs couldn’t successfully rear them sue to a teat shortage. When he explained how there were two “tupping” seasons once the Rans had got their stamina back a distant memory stirred, of Firkin the Cat explaining animal breeding. The claim (by Firkin) was that when the Ewes were in heat the farmer gave each ewe a quick diddle with a tupping stick in order to get them keen on what was to follow.

Now I have no idea if this is actually the case or not, but I thought i’d have a look on ebay to find if there was any Firkin stuff about and there it was, A quick buy me now later and after a delivery lag, I’m now happy to be reunited with this hugely amusing (and rather saucy) book of past Firkin strips.

I’ve been through it to check on the tupping stick reference and it isn’t there- he did do some softback collections as well so it must be in there.

As Firkin would say… See Yaaaawwlll!