Mistaken identity and Addiction (with photos!)
After a bit of a lay-off, this weekend was a full weekend of gigs.
Firstly on Thursday I was at the world-famous 100 club on Oxford Street, which has played host to many incredible bands and, I’m sure, its fair share of bedroom nurdlers and music butchers. It’s a lovely club and a great gig; the reason I mention it is because of the backstage area. It’s little more than a corridor and store for empty beer kegs, but the walls are absolutely covered with graffiti by previous occupants. Here’s a section:
I’m not sure I’ve chosen exactly the right portion, but you get the idea.
You can infer from this the following:
1. If you’re going to do graffiti, take a white pen. It stands out more.
2. If you’re actually a good band, you tend not to write on walls.
3. People in bands just LOVE drawing dicks. I wish I’d done a wider photo. I counted upwards of twenty separate male appendages of varying size/shape. Everytime I looked up there was another one like some kind of penile hydra.
4. Small tits apparently rule. That was the only ornithology-based scrawl.
Friday to Sunday was spent in Brighton, a City (Town? City? Commune?) that I’ve got an enormous soft spot for. Yes, per head of capita it’s got the world’s highest density of fifty year old skateboarders, but it’s pretty and the smackheads don’t really bother you too much.
My mission was to teach my good friend and fabulous comedian Lloyd Langford how to play Backgammon. Now I love Backgammon, but it’s not much fun to play on your own and I haven’t really crossed paths with enough Backgammon players. So I’m trying to make new ones.
As you can see, he bloody loved it. Or that might have been the Whisky that was so strong I verged on the cusp of blindness. And lost heavily at Backgammon. What a teacher.
We were staying in a Premier Inn (that’s the background of that photo, in case you were wondering what edgy new nightclub we’d wandered into). We were the only non-stag/hen/toilet stains there. Despite that, Lloyd still got reprimanded by the management for looking too scruffy.
With time to spare, we popped down to the aquarium that was more full of Spanish teenagers than a clap clinic in Barcelona.
The aquarium is the most expensive attraction I think I’ve ever visited. Especially when you consider their prize exhibit is the water. Honestly, if you can’t think of a single fish that’s more interesting than the water you shouldn’t be running an aquarium. You should run a museum of water.
Despite their boasts there were some rare fish. I desperately wanted to buy a rod to walk in with, but apparently that was bad form.
After that a trip to Brighton Pier to be ‘entertained’. In the context of a pier entertainment comes in the shape of being jostled by large women with perms and bags of coins while their kids cut themselves on the corners of badly made machines.
Nevertheless, I had to feed my gambling addiction. I only have one and it’s Twopenny Falls. I think they are called Twopenny falls, but Lloyd calls them Tuppeny Nudgers. It’s probably something to do with his being foreign.
I followed the time old tactic of following around some witless child as they pour their pocket money into the machines, wait for them to leave then empty out all their coinage and keep it for myself. It’s half a step removed from just taking it straight out of the kid’s pockets, but perfectly legal. Take that, the law!
At one point I tried the Tenpenny Falls (I don’t know what the Welsh for that is – Farthing Nudgers? Tenpenny Jostlers?) but the excitement nearly gave me a nosebleed. I stopped myself just in time.
Oh, and by the way. Brighton Pier specialises in disgusting flavour combinations. Tuna? Yes. Cheese? Yes. Classic sandwich fillings. Tuna and Cheese? Get out of my kitchen. What else do they do, Prawn and Peanut Butter?
Sunday’s gig at the Komedia club was a bit different. We were performing with another Welsh comedian, who goes by the name of Dan Thomas. He looks a bit like me. Well, I don’t think he does, but the audience certainly did. When he was introduced on stage they heckled him immediately, not believing that it was a new act. They thought they’d been duped, that I’d gone off, had a shave and returned like a charlatan. So when Lloyd was introduced, I went back on wearing sunglasses. Fuck it. It’s not often you get to gig with someone who doesn’t look like you but people think does. I think that’s how the old saying goes, anyway.