My Happy Now? Tour is underway
(most of the gigs are in the Spring next year – come along and say Hi, it’s
always nice to meet Metro readers at the shows). In answer to the question in the title I am
feeling quite happy now. My daughter Phoebe is now 9 months old and she’s a
little laughter generator.
I am pretty good at
making her laugh too,
, with my
winning combination of funny faces, silly songs and raspberries. If I can make
a baby laugh then surely that I am definitely funny, despite what all those people on Twitter tell me…
But
this week we were out in a café for lunch and every time Phoebe got near the
brick wall beside us, she would pat it and laugh her head off. She was totally
hysterical. Every time. No matter how many times she saw it. Much more than she’s ever laughed at me. So
if I am less funny than a brick wall then maybe the Twitter people are right.
The
brick wall was funny without even trying. And I am so needy and eager to
please. Less is more. That's what the brick wall taught me about comedy. Also,
be yourself. Especially if you are a brick wall.
Now
I am starting to worry that every good stand up gig that I’ve done, I've
unknowingly been standing in front of a brick wall. And it was the brick wall
that was getting all the laughs. It did always feel like there was a delay
between the punchline and the laugh. Like the audience heard the joke, then
looked at the wall, which was just standing there, doing nothing, as if to say,
“This guy, hey? What’s he like?” And it was the deadpan brick wall that was
making the crowd guffaw.
And
thinking about it, whenever I have done a gig when I thought everyone was
engaged and listening to what I thought were fascinating observations about
life and politics, I was standing in front of a freshly painted wall. And the
paint was still wet…..
**
* *
I’ve been singing
lots of songs involving numbers to my daughter and it’s struck me how stupid
and unnecessarily complicated our system of counting is. Once you’ve mastered
the first nine numbers all others should follow, but they don’t, presumably in
an attempt to keep children from counting too high too quickly and blow their
tiny minds.
All logic dictates
that the number ten should be called onety and then having learned the first
ten numbers we would automatically be able to count to ninety-nine. None of
this weird eleven, twelve, thirteen bullshit: onety-one, onety-two,
onety-three. Twenty should be twoty and thirty should be threety. The inventor
of numbers clued up at forty, but was then too lazy to go back and change the
previous threety numbers. And perversely still called 50, fifty instead of
fivety.
If numbers were named
correctly then the minute you could count up to onety-one, you’d be able to
count to ninety-nine. And even further as long as we kept the system going. The
number that for no good reason we call “one hundred” should obviously be one
onety-onety. Which means one hundred and one is one onety-onety and one and one
hundred and eleven is one onety-onety and onety-one. Who could argue that
that’s not a much simpler system? Only an idiot.
One thousand is one onety-onety-onety.
Making 1,111, one onety-onety-onety, one onety-onety and onety-one.
Plus millionaires would
have to describe themselves as onety-onety-onety-onety-onety-onety-onety-aires.
They might be less up themselves.
Songs would be much
improved: “Onety Green Bottles” “The Onety-two days of Christmas” “Only
Onety-Six”.
And the Proclaimers
would have to sing, “And I would walk five onety-onety miles and I would walk
five onety-onety more, to be the man who walked one onety-onety-onety miles to
drop down at your door.” Which you have to admit is awesome.
