Because of the level of fuckwittery by a tiny minority on here I have decided to take a break from Twitter. I am genuinely sorry it has come to this. Back in an hour.
Every so often, it behoves the blogosphere to acknowledge that the Twittersphere can, sometimes, contribute something truly entertaining.
When I was younger I also blamed Jewish people for all my problems and thought they were part of a conspiracy to control and ruin my life. Turns out they were just being good parents.
I got to this because I follow Stephen Pollard on Twitter. The more serious point is that Pollard tweets a lot about the anti-Semitism of Corbyn and his followers. Good for him.
Here‘s something I wrote about that last year, for Samizdata.
From comedian Johnnie Casson:
“You’ve put on weight, Johnnie.”
Johnnie Casson: “I’ve had a lot on my plate.”
Me too, lately. Like I said, brief and perfunctory.
I don’t know where this was. Someone was sitting there with his laptop, with headphones on, and he started laughing. The rest of us demanded an explanation.
A little snatch of video. Won’t take you long at all. I encountered it here, and you can too.
It made me lol and maybe it will make you lol too. Or maybe just smile a bit. Or not, even if you do quite like it. Or not, because you don’t like it. The decision is yours.
On the left here, John C. Reilly, shown enacting one of the Sisters Brothers, Eli, in the graphics advertising the movie of that name. On the right, Ian Hislop, editor of Private Eye, and star of long-running BBC comedy quiz Have I Got News For You? My instant reaction, when I first saw that advert for The Sisters Brothers, was that Reilly looked like a homicidal and weather-beaten version of Hislop:
I can’t be the only one now noticing this. Yet googling “John C Reilly Ian Hislop” yielded only information about either John C Reilly or Ian Hislop. There was no mention of any physical resemblance between these two persons.
Well, I sat down to do a blog posting for here after a hard day doing this and that, but, while I was doing that blog posting, I was also half telly-watching, and I chanced, on my television, upon the classic episode of Porridge in which Fletcher keeps on being disturbed and ends up pushing the padre off the balcony (into a safety net). Fletcher gets punished with three days in solitary, and the final line is him asking the governor if he couldn’t make it a fortnight.
Instead of a regular blog posting, let this be a recommendation.
Recently I and Patrick Crozier visited the Grafton Arms. I rather like this pub. These guys also like this pub, because of the Goon Show. Apparently the Goons wrote some of their scripts there, in an upstairs room.
A fact commemorated by this mirror behind the bar, which I only noticed on this visit:
If you look carefully there, you can see me and my camera. Well, it is a mirror. I should have tried to include Patrick.
What took Patrick and me to the Grafton Arms was that we had just been doing one of our recorded conversations, and we needed refreshment. Tune in to the latest one, by going here.
My favourite of these conversations so far has been the one we did about WW1, concerning which Patrick is something of an expert. Our next, or so I hope, will be about transport, concerning which Patrick is also something of an expert.
I just watched Dominic Frisby, accompanying himself on the ukulele, singing a right wing comic song, recorded live at something called Comedy Unleashed.
I watched it on Facebook. Here is a link. Does that work? Does it work only if you are on Facebook? Does it work only if you are on Facebook and a “friend” of Dominic Frisby?
I have just suggested that this video be stuck up at Samizdata. If that happens, I’ll add a link to that here.
Anyway, whether you get to see this video or not, it did make me think about that mythical beast that keeps on being talked about as something that exists or could exist, but which is now so seldom actually sighted. I’m talking about right wing comedy. In Britain.
What distinguishes Dominic Frisby from what you’d think a right wing comedian would be like is that he is so nice. When he does comedy, at the usual comedy places, and as he has been doing it for years, he clearly fits in. He is part of it all. He likes – or does a damn good job of pretending that he likes – doing it, and the people he is doing it for. He is mates with the other comedians, or comes across as that. He has been following the time-tested rule for all challengers of the status quo, which is to start by thoroughly acquainting himself with that status quo, and showing that he is perfectly capable of winning by its existing rules. That way, he learns his craft, he learns his audience, and he proves that he is not dissenting from orthodoxy merely because that orthodoxy is something he cannot do. The new product he is offering is not sour grapes, but a new sweetness.
In this particular song, Frisby does not clobber his audience with confrontational opposition to assumed lefty wisdom, which he assumes his audience all shares and which he hates them all for all sharing. No, he starts, in the manner recommended by noted philosopher Karl Popper, by summarising the case of those he disagrees with in the most respectful possible manner. Only then does he suggest, in the most modest possible way, that there just might be another way of looking at the matter (maybe Tommy Robinson has a point, maybe Trump’s not all bad), and in a way that suggests he isn’t the only one who has been having these heretical thoughts. He is leading his audience in a direction he really thinks they might follow him along. It’s all done in the manner of George Formby, with grins and hints and merriment, with enjoyment simply assumed.
I never thought I’d hear a comedian get a laugh with one note played on a ukulele. But that is exactly what happens, in the intro to verse three (which says that maybe Theresa May should get the sack).
More about right wing comedy in this, if you can decipher it. It’s a photo of a big Sunday Times spread.
Let me try to make it easier to read:
On the right of all this, not included in the above, this:
I saw a woman in a T-shirt that said “Smashing patriarchy!” on it. Nice to see that some of them appreciate the hard work we put in.
That’s not Frisby. That’s another right wing comic. As you can read above, there’s a whole bunch of them.
But this is Frisby. It’s another song called Secretly In Love With Nigel Farrage. Sadly, the sound balance is all wrong and I couldn’t hear the words properly. I hope Frisby has another go at recording that, on some future comedy occasion.
I’ve been a Frisby fan ever since I first heard of him, and I’ve not been wrong. He even did a couple of my Last Friday meetings, doing very early try-outs of future Edinburgh shows.
Another comedy bullseye from Titania:
Good to see Jess Glynne & Ed Sheeran tackling ginger prejudice. Gingers should be treated in exactly the same way as normal people.
I really did LOL. And again, at this.