A lunchtime meeting with Andrew Collings for
podcast 143 which was slightly sabotaged by gremlins, but which largely survived intact. Quite a lot of guff, but an enjoyable section speculating on the sexual antics and attractiveness of our obscure podcast rivals at Answer Me This. They were kind enough to give us
copies of their enjoyable (but just copied off their podcast) book in return for this abuse. Hopefully we can create a Blur versus Oasis style rivalry that will propel us all from obscurity to relative success. If you want to see us win the war then
buy our DVD (all new stuff + exclusive video of Cardiff gig). It will be delivered in time for Christmas.
Orange Mark kindly provided us with updated download figures for our podcasts. Our most popular recent episodes have had a record breaking (for us) 34,000 + downloads and incredibly the Edinburgh AIOTM has been downloaded over 47,000 times. Slowly but surely we are accruing new followers. If you don't want to buy any of our stuff then we would appreciate you just spreading the word to friends who you think might like this shit.
Even better if you want to buy them the DVD to show them what they're missing out on.
Or tickets to the tour. Or
the Hitler Moustache DVD.
Perfect Christmas gift - put them on the list you give to Santa. NB Santa and Jesus are both fictional characters. Bring down their twisted hegemony of evil and refuse to participate in their sham of a festival. And then buy my merchandise to celebrate their overthrow.
This evening was the annual meet up of me and my friends from University. This has been going on annually for around about 20 years now and we're all starting to look a bit fucked. But none of us say anything out of respect for each other. Only one other of my friends remains unmarried and all the married men present this year have two children each. I felt that they had betrayed the promise we had made to each other as teenagers that our friendship was more important than anything else and we would never sully it by having relationships and children. They pointed out that we had never made this promise. Perhaps not directly in words, or indeed in thoughts, but it was surely implied by becoming friend in the first place. Bros before hoes. I love the Goss twins band and always will and think that that particular garden implement has very limited use.
I think my friends were a bit disappointed that I was not drinking, mainly because it meant I would not say anything ridiculous and offensive. But I managed to rise to the occasion despite my sobriety.
We were discussing the recent story about the man who is alleged to be involved in the murder of his wife in that taxi. One of my friends commented that the amount of money that is reported to have exchanged hands was surprisingly small. He seemed to be joking that it would be relatively cheap to rid himself of the commitments that he had foolishly lumbered himself with.
I said "Look fellas, if you wanna get rid of your wives I am happy to kill them for £5000 a pop." There was no direct interest, but no one dissented about the morality of such a statement. "And if you want to be truly free then I will also murder your children for £10,000 each. The money is higher because of the disgust I would feel at killing a child." Again no one really objected to the sentiment. Which seemed odd given the horror of what I was suggesting. So I pushed things a little further in order to test their hypocrisy. "If you want me to rape your child before I kill it then that will cost £15,000".
It was only now that my friends castigated me, appalled at the suggestion. Though they had not been appalled by the idea of their offspring and spouse being killed. Though both crimes are awful, surely murder is worse than rape. Why were they suddenly angry?
"I am like Frankie Boyle," I said over their objections, "Except I was exposing your hypocrisy and so my joke had some purpose beyond being needlessly offensive for its own sake. And you should be thanking me. I have shown some morality there. Because it costs more for rape and murder than it would for simple murder. I would only be morally reprehensible if the price came down if it included rape. I don't want to rape your kids. You'd have to pay me more. You should be thanking me."
There was thus more thought and satire behind this off the cuff piece of unnecessarily offensive nastiness between friends than there was in the premeditated comments made by Mr Boyle on TV this week. Plus I didn't broadcast this information into other people's homes. Though maybe the other diners in the restaurant overheard.