Frosties, Cornflakes and Comedy Nuggets...

Here's a blog then to get things going in my new home for blogging. I shall be adding new and recycling old blogs into this section of my website. So here's a quick and not very funny one...

I got into a bit of a spat with someone on Twitter (@JoffThompson – follow me) this week over a campaign against Hull City’s owner changing their name to Hull Tigers. I pointed out the fact that over history many clubs have changed their names – Dial Square, Newton Heath LYR, St Domingo to name but a few. Even my own team changed their name from Headington United to Oxford United in order to become a bigger and more successful club, which is pretty much why Mr Allam wants to change them into breakfast cereal ambassadors. So it’s happened before throughout history but when something like this happens now, all that is conveniently forgotten and it becomes the “scourge of the modern game”. I understand where Tigers fans are coming from and it is a rather American thing to do, but I think some have overreacted. It’s hardly the worst thing that could happen to your club. I’ve even seen some hysterical types calling it a “crisis”. Yes, what a terrible crisis to have at your football club: your rich chairman who got you into the premiership wants to change one half of your name to make your club richer… Yes, terrible crisis. I’m sure Coventry City fans are having a whip-round right now. I’m not a business guru of course, but I really don’t understand how changing half of their name can make such a difference. I mean, who are these investors that look at Hull City and think “Nah, I’m not putting money into a club with the name City, if only they’d change it to some sort of wild animal. Then I’d be more than happy to piss my money away”. In any case, I’d have thought it was the first part of their name that would put off any potential investor, and not being called ‘City’…

I actually feel a bit sorry for DLT. There, I said it…

If you have read one of my previous blogs – specifically ‘Should I just sit down for good? ‘– and why wouldn’t you have, you‘ll know that I have in the past dabbled in stand-up comedy and my general lethargy towards it irritated me. So this New Year I have decided to make a bit more of a fist of it and make the effort to do some more gigs. So far I’ve done three: one inadvertent, unplanned performance at Youngblood Comedy (in Oxford) as the booked acts were running late, a proper pre-booked set at Huzzah Comedy (hey! Also in Oxford) and a five minute slot not in Oxford. Youngblood Comedy is nothing to do with 80s soul-pop pup Sydney Youngblood, but is in fact a comedy night created by the slicker-than-a-lightly-oiled-badger, Jonathon O’Neill. Do haul yourself along to the next one if you’re able to, or even the third one after that. Whenever you like. Just go along and see Jonathon and the gang. But not Sydney. As for the Huzzah gig - another show that you should get yourself to - well I was doing things properly there, although what was practised as a nine minute set, somehow ended up being fifteen minutes which I hadn’t anticipated and hope didn’t piss anyone off. The night itself began with me beinginterviewed for something or other by what a drug-free Pete Docherty might have looked like and someone who didn’t really look like anyone at all - but the word ‘tweed’ enters my head as I type. This pair asked me a few questions about myself and comedy, whilst trying to hide the contempt they so clearly felt for a mature Brookes student – I’ll do the Brookes funnies thanks - and when they signed off by enquiring if I felt nervous, it occurred to me that actually, I didn’t, which rather surprised me.Perhaps then that impromptu Youngblood gig proved to me that I can actually do it, especially if I do things more calmly and at a less frenetic pace, although as you now know that now adds an extra six minutes to the set. Some of the bits of audience that I had brought with me remarked that it was the best they’ve seen me do, which was nice. I think it probably is. Which by no means meant it was great, it was just the best I’ve done so far. I’d very much like to be there again – and also a full-length set at Sydney’s would be ace - but at the moment I’m having to look further afield. I have done one this month outside of Oxford, which went fine – I was happy with my bit anyway, as were the audience. It was just the bloke who organised it who seemed to think that turns who had very little material, or were extremely amateurish, or had jokes fall flat, or forgot parts of their sets, or were reading off A4 pads, or mocked and destroyed another act’s set for not being true, were far more worthy of making the clap-off final than I was. I’m not sure why – perhaps he was a fan of Mrs Brown’s Boys which I took the piss out of in my first joke.

Anyway, that was January’s gigs. And also my first blog for my website, which I’m beginning to realise hasn’t turned out to be as funny as I would have wished, which is a bit of a poor show seeing as the bulk of the blog is about comedy. Let’s hope then that the laughs come thicker and faster in my next blog about the laugh-fest that is suicide…