Beat The Frog World Series

Last night I went to the Final of Beat the Frog: World Series at the Frog & Bucket in Manchester. This is the climax of a knockout competition between everyone who won a Beat the Frog gong show during the year.

The standard was high and it was great to see some acts I know well really raising their game. In particular I thought Andrew Ryan was fantastic with his Irish take on living in England - he is so likeable on stage. (Even though he was actually completely shitting himself,  you wouldn't have known it.) Andrew came second which was a considerable achievement but he could easily have won it.

The winner was Sam Gore from Leeds, whose continuous improvement I have also witnessed over the past six months. He really nailed it.

It's really encouraging to see people progress. It makes me aware of how good I could get. I was pleased for them both, but if I make the final next year, I hope they die on their arses.

Lessons Learned from the night:

1. Never pinch other people's material - even if the audience don't spot it, other comics will.

2. The later you appear on the bill in a Gong Show the better your chance of winning - drunk people have short memories.

3. I can be as good as these guys if I keep working at it.

THE GAG BANK

In response to Guy's idea that there be a central post against which anyone can add a comment with their comedy idea, here it is.

I started to completely over-engineer this, setting up a forum and all sorts. Then I thought, Bollocks, What am I playing at and just added this post instead.

All thoughts, musings, etc, gratefully stolen...er...I mean...received.

Thanks
Sam

Read the Comments

If you a reading this blog (which you obviously are) then here's a top tip.

Read the comments that people leave. They are generally the best bits.

Cheers

Sam

Everyone has an Opinion

Some of the funnyiest writing is funny because it draws out the absurdity of human behaviour. We really are a bunch of plonkers.

For instance, we are all very good at having opinions. Opinions are great. They are particularly useful in the absence of any knowledge, understand or facts.

Take the "Credit Crunch" for example. (Alliteration is another fabulous thing but I'll save that for another day.) The economy is amazingly complicated and boring. Not even the top economists seem to really understand how it works. Politicians don't have the concentration span to understand it. Bankers don't need to understand it (they get paid anyway). And the rest of us don't give two hoots about it until we are queuing up outside our bankrupt building society trying to withdraw our savings.

Yet, despite this shortage of understanding, the torrent of opinions on the subject never seems to dry up. It's the bankers' fault! It's Gordon Brown! It's Margaret Thatcher! We should privatise the banks! We should go war with Iceland! Blah blah blah.

It's the same with the environment. I don't think anyone really knows what the hell is going on. But there is no shortage of opinions.

Pick any subject - War in Iraq, Education, Madonna's marriage, Kerry Katona's waistline. A scarcity of facts and a wealth of opinions.

Sorry if you were hoping this blog would be funny by the way.

I just wanted to introduce the topic and see if any of you have any thoughts on it before I start to develop this idea further. What do you think? Is there some material here?

Thanks

I really appreciate the support I am getting for this blog and so I'm going to thank some people. If you don't like gushy speeches, stop reading now.

Thanks to Guy for his consistently useful feedback. And thanks to Mary for coming to the Comedy Store.

Thanks to my future mother-in-law, Judy, for her love and for the newspaper supplement on How To Write Comedy which was really good.

Thanks to Sally for her long-distance enthusiasm from Argentina.

Thanks to my mate Tony for listening to my half-baked comic ideas all weekend.

And thanks to Jane for her ever-patient, ever-honest, ever-supportive response to my prancing about the house doing funny voices and asking, "Is this funny?"

And thanks to my daughter Lottie for telling me in no uncertain terms when something isn't funny.

And thanks to my Mum and Dad whose blind faith in my ability to do just about anything seems to be inexhaustible contrary to all the evidence.

New Material

The past couple of days I've been working on some new material.

It's a fun process but it's pretty laborious. I generally start out with some idea or impression that strikes me as absurd. Then I try to scribble down my thoughts on the subject - anything at all that comes into my head. Then, maybe the next day, I sift through the notes looking for themes or ideas I can develop.

Some days I don't feel at all funny and it's like drawing teeth.

Yesterday I was writing about disabled parking spaces. Whenever I go into a car park it's always full - apart from about 90 unused disabled spaces. Why is this? What has Warrington done with it's disabled people?

Or is it forward planning? Are we expecting a massive rise in the number of disabled people over the next few years. Perhaps Warrington is trying to attract disabled people for some reason - maybe it has ambitions to become the Special Olympic Village in 2012.

Any other suggestions welcome.

One thing I found out was that morbidly obese people can get a badge to park in disabled spaces. I guess that's why they make the spaces so wide. And nearer to the shops - less time to get to Greggs.

The difficulty here is that I don't want to sound like I'm having a pop at disabled people. I'm not. It's more of a pensive look at the mysterious world of town planning.

Some other thoughts: it's wrong of me to say that wheelchair users are disabled - they are differently abled. I am able to walk. They are able to park on a double yellow.

Ho hum. It's not easy this, you know.

Peter Kay has lost the plot

Just for the record, Peter Kay's new tv show Britain's Got the Pop Factor and Possibly a new Jesus Christ Superstar Soapstar Strictly On Ice was total pants!

The only funny thing about it was the title.

After that it was overhyped, unimaginative and unfunny. It didn't work as a spoof because whatever they did, it wasn't any more absurd than the real thing. In the end he had to resort to someone choking to death on set in order to do something that hadn't already happened on the real shows.

Peter Kay is a brilliant stand-up and a naturally funny man. But whoever told him this was funny wants shooting.

Maybe he has just been surrounded by too many Yes men.

Peter. Sorry. It was crap. Find some new people to write with.

(I'm free most weekends, by the way...)