On Colin Hunt and Clive James...

Drawing this, I thought 'too misogynistic', which it is, I suppose, when I was only hoping to be misanthropic.

Speaking of my being misanthropic, it was strange this morning. I received a message via Twitter from a self-publishing author I slightly know who asked me to tweet all my followers with an ad for his book. I should ignore the fact that, except for my @richardmadeley account, I don’t have any followers, except to say that doesn’t it say much about celebrity that people loved my @richardmadeley account but are completely indifferent to the real me? Yet even if I had followers, I won’t retweet his message. If I don’t pester people to buy my books, I’m not going to pester them to buy the books of somebody who tells me that he's selling them by the van load. And, frankly, I can’t bring myself to be that much of an arsehole, even if being an arsehole is what it takes to be a successful author these days. It’s all about getting your name out there: inundating people with your banal tweets, your self-serving message, your big gormless grinning face, your cheerful inane banter, your ceaseless self-promotion. I love the work of writing, drawing, and now animating my work. I hate the idea of sitting here all day telling people how great that work is or that I’m always happy and cheerful. It’s the side of Twitter that I despise: the constant stream of effluent coming from would-be comedians trying to be witty. The Fast Show used to feature a character, Colin Hunt, who thought himself funny and could never switch off. Twitter was made for him. Twitter is full of Colin Hunts and I don't intend to be one of them.

As you can see from the quality of today’s cartoon, I’m running low on my very best cartoons on account of a new animation I’m working on. So far, I’ve drawn and rigged the main character and I’ve animated the opening shot, which has pleased me enormously. I’m now down to the tricky business of getting a script written so I can record it. The big question is whether I should swear or not.

I have a complex attitude towards swearing in comedy. I've always told myself that I wouldn’t do it and, generally, I haven’t. It was a restriction I set myself because I find that swearing usually gets in the way of the business of being funny. Like Jimmy Carr’s edgy jokes, I find it too easy a route to take. However, that said, some of my favourite comedy is very sweary. Armando Ianucci's ‘The Thick Of It’ and 'Veep' are the obvious examples but I also love Peter Cook and Dudley Moore’s experiments in profanity in the guise of Derek & Clive. So, at the back of my mind, I’m wondering if to push my next cartoon out into those same murky waters. If I do it, I want it to be creative swearing and to be making a point. And since my next cartoon might be something of a rant, the swearing would be apt. We'll see...

On a final, sad note, I was really upset to read Clive James’ interview with Radio 4. In fact, I read part of it but could read no more. By the same token that I despise Twitter for the superficiality of the content, the glib attitudes that turn friendship into a mere follow, I like to think that a nobody can occasionally blog something meaningful about a stranger and mean every word. I recently wrote a review of James’ latest book and concluded with the line that he’s ‘a trickster who makes us laugh before fooling us into thinking seriously’. I can think of no better way of explaining what he’s always meant to me and why my thoughts are now with him.

 

Armando Iannucci OBE

I wish I had some well thought out position regarding Armando Iannucci accepting an OBE but I really don’t. In the 24 four hours since I gave an involuntary ‘yipee’ and kissed the dog when I heard the news, I’ve tried to rationalise it a number of ways. In the end, the best I’ve achieved is to nip over into the neighbour’s front garden, rip down their JB Sport’s branded Union Jack, and give it a wave as I sit watching my well-worn DVD of ‘The Armando Iannucci Show’, followed by some ‘Thick of It’ and ‘Veep’.

On the face of it, I should be delighted. There are only a handful of satirists currently working whose work I admire and probably highest on that list is Iannucci. And, as the person behind so much great comedy but himself rarely seen on the screen, he doesn't get the recognition that he deserves. Should he have rejected it to show how impartial he is to the politicians? Perhaps. But, then again, I wish he'd replied when I'd asked him to consider providing blurb to my one and only published book. In the words of Woody Allen, ‘give me a break from all your “could haves” and “should haves”. Like my mother used to say: “if my grandmother had wheels, she’d have been a trolley car”’.

The only people who seem to have a problem with his award are certain journalists who are using it to remind the rest of us that they too could have had gongs but rejected them. It’s a fair if rather self-satisfied point that they make. But it’s also good to see the establishment finally recognise its most talented satirists. A country is only as great as its ability not to take itself seriously. Yet I then begin to wonder that if the establishment is so comfortable in its sense of entitlement that it can laud the very people that seek to undermine that entitlement, perhaps those people are not doing a good enough job trying to undermine it. Would my admiration for Iannucci be higher or lower had he told the establishment to stick it in their slightly inbred ear?

Is recognition by the establishment even a good thing? How often does the establishment choose the worst poets of the day and make them poet laureate? Is it actually good that you’re recognised by the very same people who have ennobled Gary Barlow and knighted Kenneth Branagh for his horrific Shakespearean warbling. (Apparently, it was Julie Birchill who coined the fabulous putdown that ‘Stephen Fry is the stupid person's idea of what an intelligent person looks like’. Well, less snappily, I think that Branagh is the stupid person’s idea of a Shakespearean actor.)

And so, I continue to doubt my judgement that Iannucci’s award is a good thing. Yet if Alistair Campbell has a good point about Iannucci taking a reward from the very establishment he’s made a good career mocking, does anybody really want to take Alistair Campbell’s side on anything? And if Wodehouse could take a knighthood and so could Chaplin, then I don’t see any problem with modern comedians accepting these shiny pretty things. And so my rationalisations continue… Perhaps the OBE will help Iannucci in his dealings with the BBC. If it leads to him being made head of the BBC comedy unit, I’d be delighted… Does it give him more power being inside the establishment or does it further go to show that the media really is dominated by a powerful few?

In other words: I really don’t know how the hell I should feel except that I’m genuinely pleased that he’s pleased. It leaves me in no way disappointed, just a wee bit chuffed, but still monstrously conflicted and baffled. I’ll leave any grumbling for another twelve months and the day when the same bauble will go the way of James bloody Corden. That’s when I’ll suggest that Iannucci should get a knighthood. Not only that. I will bloody well demand that he takes it too.

[Afterthought:

No sooner had I posted the above, it was pointed out that when Ben Elton, Stephen Fry, and a few other comedians I could mention, all took gongs or joined the establishment, I was the first to point out that they’d ‘sold out’. Well, that’s certainly what I’d said but there is a big difference this time. I like Iannucci and his work. So, at least the hypocrisy in this instance has a totally rational foundation and I don't feel like I need to make an apology about being an apologist.]

New MacBooks...

Apple have done it again. Just when I think I’m past caring, I fall for another of those videos where they explain the innovations in their newest gizmo and leave me lusting after something I’ll never be able to afford to buy and for which I really have no need. This time it is the new Macbook. Sod the Retina display. This Macbook has asymmetrical fans in which the blades are offset so they spread the sound over a range of frequencies, making the Macbook quieter than ever before. If only they could fit asymetircal fans to my neightbour's kids who woke me at 6.30 today acting out what I can only assume was the the Siege of Carthage.

Woeful England performance yesterday against the French, though I think expectations were so low that a draw is considered a victory to rank alongside Agincourt. From the perspective of somebody who witnessed what Hodgson did to the attacking instincts of a relatively talented Liverpool team, I’m not filled with hope. But I am willing to give him the tournament to change my mind. Perhaps this year is the year when super defensive strategies will win. It worked for Chelsea, so why not England?

Sat down and watched the last episode of Veep last night. Disappointed I didn’t get to see the President. I was sure I’d heard some big star was lined up to do a cameo. Still, a great series finale, probably attributable to the fat it was written by Jess Armstrong and Iannucci , and still better than nearly everything else out there. I just wish Iannucci would do more 'Armando Iannucci Shows', which remain one of the best sketch shows the BBC has ever comissioned.

Okay, today I’m hoping to finish the animation I’ve been struggling on for about a week and had previously considered abandoning. I rewrote it yesterday, improving it in the process, and recorded some woefully acted dialogue. In the meantime: have a cartoon straight from my sketchbook. It's not well drawn but I quite like the gag...

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My Post-Veep Blues

I’ve spent a week animating something that I might have posted to this blog if it were anywhere near completion. Hence the reason I’m writing something instead. It’s a good excuse to do something different. I keep telling myself that I’ll post more, even if it’s going to be my usual gripes about the state of comedy in the UK or the extent to which I find myself thinking that the internet is utterly abhorrent. I have so many grumbles that I might as well release them like Mr. Burns releases his hounds. I'd even do the Mr. Burns voice if I could. Only, as I've established this week, I have a complete inability to do voices.

I’ve always been wary about throwing things out onto the web. Most of what I do I do because it amuses me but I’m increasingly aware that my sense of humour isn’t shared by other people. The other day, I stumbled across somebody referring to one of my earlier versions of this blog as 'a crap spoof website'. Well, to coin a phrase: sod it. If comedy amounts to whatever emerges from Miranda Hart’s mouth, then we’re more damned than I already think we are. Hieronymus Bosch might have had some impressive visions of what Hell looks like but my vision of hell is Miranda Hart in jogging pants, falling over, and goofing into the camera as all of hell’s minions laugh and start to hand her BAFTAs.

But is this what happens when you get older? I can handle the hair loss and the increased tendency to find beauty in the older woman (hell, it explains my current thing for Julia Louis-Dreyfus). What is worrying me is my inability to figure out what makes people laugh.

It’s a worrying thought. I’ve written comedy for so long yet I can’t even remember the last time I watched good comedy on the BBC. Technically, the forthcoming ‘Veep’ would class as one of theirs. Though it’s made in the States, it comes from the same team as ‘The Thick of It’, which is probably the last good comedy I did watch on the BBC. It’s produced by the peerless Armando Iannucci and, for what it’s worth, I’ve been enjoying it as much (if not a little bit more) as ‘The Thick Of It’, though it’s very different in texture. It’s less grey, grubby, and as biting, but it makes up for these deficiencies with Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Tony Hale and a good dose of mid-Atlantic profanity. I’m not turning this into a review other than to say if you haven’t seen it, watch it when it starts its run on the BBC. I recommend it more than I recommend life itself.

Anyway, back to this animation I’ve worked on for the last seven days and I’m now considering consigning to the big ‘failure’ bucket. Watching something as good as ‘Veep’ fills me with hope that there’s still room for good comedy, even if it also leaves me feeling awed by the high standards. I can’t even fill two minutes with something funny when the only person I have to rely on is myself. I hit a brick wall when I realised that can’t do impressions. I sat there all week at a microphone, trying to make voices sound reasonably similar to certain real life people only for everything to sound uniquely like me. It’s really thrown a spanner in the works. I suppose it’s good that I learn this now before I waste any more time on something that’s bound to failure.

Which brings me, apropos of nothing, to mentioning that I watched ‘Monster in Paris’ tonight. It’s a likable movie, though it has a minor character deluded into thinking he can sing. He couldn’t, of course, but he kept telling himself that he was merely not suited to the mainstream. It hit home a bit, I think. I saw myself, wondering if my humour is just too left of centre for its own good. I sometimes wonder if my comedic sense has just slackened. I just have these big blind spots, such as Miranda Hart, where I don’t understand comedy. I don’t find Lenny Henry funny yet the guy has made a great career out of it. Walliams and Lucas. I abhor them when the nation laud them. Where Stewart Lee stands, however, I find genius, just not a popular hit. I don’t get it. I don’t get any of it.

Ah, I repeat my new favourite phrase: sod it. I’m not sure what I’m trying to say other than to lead up to a doodle from my notebook. It made me smile, which is a rare event lately…

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