Today I was potentially going to be taking part in the final of the BBC Radio 4 New Comedy Award, but as we established in my last blog post,I didn’t make it through. So instead I am now on a plane heading out to spend two weeks touring in the US. Oh, woe is me!
However, I have now worked out what actually happened at the BBC Radio 4 New Comedy Awards and I understand why I didn’t get through. I’ve received a few comments of recent from people saying that they were slightly glad that I didn’t proceed to the next stage of the competition. They were worried that a victory might mean I’d dedicate more time to comedy, resulting in the break up of the Young’uns.
And then it all started to make perfect sense. The judges of the competition were all clearly massive Young’uns fans, concerned that crowning me winner might cause the breakup of their favourite band. So, despite the fact that they knew full well that I was clearly the true champion, they decided not to put me through, for the good of folk music.
Now, in reality a Young’uns breakup was never actually on the cards, but I except that they wouldn’t have known this. It is now clear to me that they were acting in a truly noble manner, allowing the comedy world to suffer in order to spare the folk world. And when you look at it like that, which surely you must, it all makes absolute sense, and actually, I am both excepting of and humbled by their decision. They risked their own reputations, their own credibility as comedy judges. No doubt they were ridiculed by their peers for their seemingly ludicrous decision not to put me through, yet nevertheless they were willing to sacrifice themselves for the greater good. Thank you Director of Leicester comedy Festival Geoff Rowe, comedian Angela Barnes,and editor of BBC Comedy whose name I’ve forgotten, I am truly humbled. I urge you all to thank them too: get yourself to an Angela Barnes gig and give her an extra big cheer when she comes out on stage for her honourable actions; get tickets for the Leicester Comedy Festival, and make sure you pay your TV licence, for what they did on that night was truly a public service.
We (The Young’uns) have just set off on our first US tour. Thankfully we managed to get our work Visas sorted just in time. This involved us having to justify that we weren’t going over there simply to steel a job that an American could just as easily do. We had to explain why three Americans couldn’t essentially replicate what we did. However, the more I thought about it, the more I started to like the idea of three Americans being drafted into serve as our transatlantic tribute act. They could spend a few intensive months watching videos of our gigs, listening to all our podcasts, reading our book (still available to buy here),absorbing every interview we’ve ever done, having extensive phone conversations with us in order to become as authentic a replica as possible. Then we could just sit at home and get a share of the money without even having to get off our arses. Or even better, we could go and do another tour of the UK or Europe whilst our American counterparts were generating an extra income for us.
Perhaps we should have seriously considered this option. It would have negated us having to fill out the litany of long, complicated forms to prove that we are, what the US government rather grandly call, “An Internationally Recognised Alien Of Extraordinary ability.” We’re just coming over to sing some folk songs, mate, but fair enough, I’ll take the title if you’re offering it.
I’ve now started wielding this moniker about in various situations. If I’m having an argument with my girlfriend and I fear that she might be getting the upper hand, I remind her that she’s in the presence of an internationally recognised alien of extraordinary ability, and she soon shuts up. After all, she knows that if she wants to continue having an internationally recognised alien of extraordinary ability on her arm, then she needs to buck her ideas up, otherwise she’ll be lumbered with one of those ordinary humdrum blokes like all her other friends. The only slight dampener is that Michael and Sean have also been given the status internationally recognised alien of extraordinary ability, which makes it feel a lot less special.
During the security checkpoint at Dublin Airport, both Sean and I received a beeping sound when we’d passed through. Previous to this we’d been standing in the queue for ten minutes and we hadn’t heard anyone else getting beeped.
“Nothing to worry about”, the lady said, “it’s just a random extra security check that we do, occasionally, from time-to-time.”
Well she says there’s nothing to worry about, but in my opinion there’s quite a lot to worry about. If they only do this extra security check occasionally, from time-to-time, then they have surely just significantly increased the chances of them not catching an actual terrorist, because I know that I’m not a terrorist, and I’m pretty sure that Sean isn’t a terrorist, unless he’s playing one hell of a long game.
He’s got into a folk band in the hope that one day we’d be sought after enough to be asked to play the US, and then finally he’d be able to commit the terrorist act he’d always planned on executing. In the meantime he’d just have to bide his time, writing and singing folk songs, steadily progressing from small folk clubs to art centres, to theatres and then festivals. He’d be asked to play all over Europe, then Australia and Canada, until finally the call to play the US came, and then, at long last, he could deal America the blow he’d been waiting to deliver all these years. He was so close. All he had to do was to convince the US government that he was an internationally recognised alien of extraordinary ability (which shouldn’t be that difficult, I mean, he’s a folk singer for goodness sake) and finally his moment would have arrived. There was just one concern: he was prepared for the standard security check, as he was pretty sure that he’d get his secret hidden, deadly device through undetected, but he was a little uneasy about the prospect of one of those random extra security checks. But he should be fine, after all, it was something they only did occasionally, from time-to-time. However, if he did get a random extra security check then his whole elaborate fifteen year folk veneer had all been in vain.
I was pretty sure that Sean wasn’t a terrorist, and I knew that I wasn’t, therefore I knew that they were wasting their time doing a random security check
on us, whilst an actual terrorist might be swanning through, unbothered by the very thing that might otherwise have thwarted them. I thought about pointing this out to the security person, but I realised that this might be interpreted as the desperate protests of a guilty man, and so I stayed quiet. After all it would be a shame if Angela Barnes and her comedy cronies had valiantly clubbed together to save their favourite folk band, only for us to be arrested and detained, unable to play any music.
Fictional bonus paragraph: Alien Probe
It’s hard to conduct small talk when you’re receiving an anal cavity search, but in fairness the security man was doing his best, perhaps in a bid to try and loosen me up a bit, which obviously makes the arse probing somewhat easier.
“Are you here for business or pleasure,” he asked, whilst his finger ploughed deeper into my anus.
“Well, both, I suppose”, I replied. “And you?”
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