April 27, 2006
LIVE NEWS, sort of
DOGS TRUST & BAD AUDIENCES
If you live in the UK and you watch as much bad TV as I do then there’s a good chance you’ll have seen the Dogs Trust advert urging you to pledge funds for a no doubt excellent operation dedicated to taking care of the homeless dog community. There’s something about the shamelessly cloying tone of the thing that gets to me though, as if dog lovers are so simple minded that the combination of shots of dogs with crudely drawn lovehearts and a trustworthy northern voice over intoning the word ‘loove’ will be sufficient to get them reaching for their wallets. Maybe that’s exactly what dog lovers respond to, I just don’t know.
Anyway, being jaded, cynical and pleased with myself I decided I’d do my own version of the Dogs Trust ad to play at the last Out Of Focus Group. It received a fairly cool reception. That said, nearly everything received a fairly cool reception that night, regardless of quality. I always thought ‘a bad audience’ was a myth that comedians peddled to assuage their neuroses after a shit gig but the audience at Out Of Focus Group 10 was bad. I don’t know why. They weren’t particularly thick or for that matter particularly highbrow. They just decided that it was inappropriate to express themselves effusively, which for the acts was alarming. Maybe after seeing my Dogs Trust ad you’ll think ‘well if it was all like that, I’m not surprised.’ That’s your right of course but let me tell you…wait, what was my point? Hmmm, I shouldn’t do these late night posts. I should get on the phone and pledge some money to Dogs Trust is what I should do and I encourage you to do the same!
April 26, 2006
XFM NEWS
RETURN DATES & PODCAST
If you’re a regular listener you’ll know we’re currently taking a summer break from our no award winning Xfm show but it looks as if we may be back as soon as the end of June or early July 2006. Will keep you posted.
In the meantime, I think our podcasts should be up and running very soon (maybe this weekend) so you’ll be able to stick the specially selected nuggets straight on to your I-pods or I-Rivers or Joan Rivers (ha! what?) with greater speed and ease (or ’spease’ if you speak car ad) than ever before. I’ll probably continue to stick chunks of Xfm stuff up here though and maybe offer a few that won’t be podcast at all to give this blog an extra sheen of exclusivity and purpose so stay tuned.
For now, here’s me telling Joe about a horrific improv audition at the BBC and seeing if he can do better with the tasks I was set (from May 8th, 2006).
April 11, 2006
LIVE NEWS
LANDOR AUTO-REVIEW
I unveiled my new character General Tony, the furious alien the other night at Sit Down Sundays, the monthly evening of sketch and character comedy that Dave Skinner organises at the Landor Theatre/Pub, Clapham North. I had spent several days preparing for this although to be honest, most of those days were spent making the costume. I think you have to agree, it’s a peach!
There are three ways I could look at the evening:
THE INSANELY POSITIVE WAY
It was a success! With no warm up or introduction I took the stage at the very beginning of the night so the audience were completely cold. Despite that they laughed quite a bit and certainly seemed intrigued by the character. I remembered all the stuff I’d prepared and managed to make it through the whole of the song at the end (an insane, very fast, shouted version of Five Years by David Bowie) without screwing up. For a very first performance of a new character it deserved some kind of award!
THE SENSIBLY POSITIVE WAY
It was OK. The audience were pretty frosty and there were a few long silences where I had hoped for laughs. That made me nervous and I ended up shouting too much to compensate. I guess I had imagined that the costume and the funny voice (basically the same voice I used to use for the Evil Emperor on our Star Wars toy films in The Adam & Joe Show) would buy me some grace but I may have over-estimated their appeal. Mainly the exercise was completely in the spirit of the night, ie. a proving ground for new material and it was very valuable. Lessons learned: Don’t shout so much. Write some proper jokes. Ditch the song.
THE UNHELPFULLY NEGATIVE WAY
As I was in the corridor packing up my stuff while the rest of the evening was still underway, two young blokes emerged from the theatre having just snuck out. They limited their exchange to giggles as they passed me but when they were at the bottom of the stairs I heard them explode, “Christ! That was SHIT!†‘Fair enough’ I thought. I was all over the place!
What the fuck was I thinking? An angry alien?! And instead of putting any kind of new twist on the old ‘everyday life from a different angle’ shtick, I just did a load of jokes about how “we have been monitoring your Earth broadcasts and have found the 3rd series of Little Britain to be a little too needlessly gross in places†etc.! Jesus H Macy!! And the shouting! It must have been intolerable, just being shouted for at 10 minutes by a nimrod dressed as a rubbish version of one of the properly funny aliens from Mars Attacks! Why can’t I get it into my head that as soon as you’re dealing with an elaborate costume and props for a bit of stand up, loud alarms should be sounding and if they’re not, you’re coasting for a roasting.
I can’t believe I went ahead with the song too. Towards the end of the act I was thinking ‘well, this is going badly, why don’t I just drop the song and cut my losses?’ but of course I ignored my sensible voice and ploughed on with something that had made me laugh once when I was on my own in my studio one afternoon. Needless to say the audience looked baffled. Even Gareth Tunley who was sat in the front row smiling supportively throughout, folded his arms and looked down at that point. I was shouting the words over my bad guitar playing so fast that it just turned into a non-stop stream of tramp-like bollocks from a kind of Oliver Reed in fast forward.
The best thing you could say about this kind of performance is that it may have inspired a young comic to go out and destroy everything I represent (which isn’t much) and start up an important new comedy revolution, like the punks who saw Peter Gabriel dressed as a sunflower and thought ‘fuck this, it’s time to take an exciting shit on the music scene!’
The truth is probably a combination of The Sensibly Positive Way and a bit of The Unhelpfully Negative Way. I still think it’s a funny costume though and I may try to do something else with the character, after some re-tooling. I’m actually not down with people who hate costumes and props anyway. I thought Peter Gabriel looked excellent dressed as a flower. It’s ebb and flow innit? You just have to keep doing your stupid shit and if it’s any good at all, its moment will come. Although that moment may be a while off for General Tony.
April 7, 2006
FROM THE ADAM & JOE VAULTS
ADAM & JOE’S AMERICAN ANIMATION ADVENTURE
I’ll try and post as many of these as I can over the next few weeks but it took a while for me to digitise just one off my old VHS copy, de-anamorphicise it, convert it and upload it so it may take a while. Obviously if I had more net skills it probably would not be such a problem but I’m still learning…Here is Voice Agent split (for easy up and downloading) into Part 1, Part 2 and Part 3. Thanks to Gregor at Worlds End Productions for letting me stick these up. Stay tuned for the full set! What full set? Let me explain…
Back in Autumn 2001 as the world was preparing to become ‘a more frightening place’ Joe and I were busy making a series of 6 short programmes for Channel 4 about various aspects of the animation scene in California. This was a sort of spin off series from a programme we made a year previously called Adam & Joe’s World Of Animation, a one hour special about modern animation (or ‘cartoons’ as they were once known) which we had presented as children’s TV presenters in the style of shows like Smart.
In those days I was obsessed with the notion that we should not become regular TV presenters. This was partly out of snobbery and partly because I didn’t think I was any good at it (Joe is much better at that kind of thing and I didn’t want him to show me up.) So it was decided that we should present each of the six shows as different characters. Herewith a list of those extraordinarily ground breaking programmes:
Cal Arts featuring Pavel and his brother Yuri
This was a look at the experimental animation course at The California Institute of the Arts. It was the second outing for my character Pavel (the first being a brief appearance in Adam & Joe’s World Of Animation). I remember being extremely pissed off that the make-up lady in LA provided me with a wig and beard so rubbish that I looked like, well, a man with a rubbish wig and beard. I suppose she could be forgiven for not thinking that it actually mattered. It was a very hot day though and I was so uncomfortable that improvising lines as an irritable twat came easily. Our host, Maureen Selwood ( a real tutor at Cal Arts) was a great sport and dealt with the comedy grumpiness far better than we had any right to expect.
Pavel trivs: The name of the character was coined by comedienne Lucy Porter, who was working on the show with us at World’s End Productions.
Rugrats featuring Andy & Peter
Andy (Adam) & Peter (Joe) are 2 rubbish kids TV presenters (a brilliant joke/tribute to Andy Peters of course! Ha ha ha ha ha! OK then) doing a report on the Klasky Csupo animation studios (home of Rugrats, The Simpsons, Duckman, Wild Thornberrys etc.) Joe and I pretend to be having a competitive struggle for prominence in this episode that was actually fairly close to how we sometimes behaved around this time. Well, I did anyway.
Voice Agent featuring Billy Bapstiste (Adam) and Martin Drew Phillips (Joe)
Billy was a stand up comedian trying to make it in LA very loosely based on Lee Evans. If I recall correctly his agent Martin was quite tightly based on Jonathan Ross’s agent, Addison Cresswell. This episode was about the people who provide the voices for some of the most popular animations in LA. In it we got to meet amongst other top voice talent, Billy West, the voice of Fry in Futurama which looking back on it is kind of amazing. This episode is also notable for my character Billy coming out with the catchphrase “I’m a lady!†a good 3 years before Matt & Dave popularised it in Little Britain. Did they steal it? Well, no I very much doubt it, but it’s a chance for me to associate myself with 2 much more successful comedians so I’m taking it.
Gunboy featuring Nick Knox (Adam) and Mick Knutz (Joe).
Nick and Mick were a couple of horrid post Lock Stock chancers who were trying to sell their craply violent animation ‘Gunboy’ (“He’s got a shooter for a hooter!â€) to I-Film, the biggest net outlet for amateur film at the time. These characters were based on a couple of lunatics I saw on a documentary about the making of a very bad sounding gangster flick featuring shit gangster Dave Courtney. God I wish I had it on tape, but it’s just a lovely very funny memory. Nick Knox and Mick Knutz were part of my attempt to preserve that memory. Maybe the real Mick and Nick are amazingly successful now. Apparently madder things have happened. Again I’m ashamed to say that I was in a rotten mood for much of the day we shot this so most of my supposedly comedic outbursts were more or less real.
Fanimation featuring Fred (Adam) and his best friend McJ (Joe)
A parody of MTV’s Fanatic wherein teens got to meet their heroes and oscillated wildly from euphoria to frightening bouts of over-emotionalism. It was basically an excuse to meet John DiMaggio who was the voice of Bender in Futurama and a brilliantly generous, funny chap. I remember Time Out reviewing this show and complaining that we ruined a potentially interesting profile of DiMaggio with our low rent clowning. To this day I don’t know if that’s fair. I think it’s quite a good spoof of Fanatic and you also get to meet the real Bender! Everybody wins, surely! No? Fuck you then.
Right Toon Reply featuring Louis Goiter and Jerry Thompson
Louis Goiter is a concerned dad convinced that cartoons like Family Guy are a corrosive influence on children. Jerry Thompson is a commissioning editor (a very funny, accurate rendering by Joe in my opinion) trying to present the case for the defence. This was another parody, this time of the sometimes pointless to and fro often found on Right 2 Reply, the Channel 4 viewer’s opinion forum presented by Roger Bolton. Roger does a top turn as himself on this one (having already done another Right 2 Reply spoof for us in series 3 of The Adam & Joe Show). Seth MacFarlane, creator of Family Guy is the star interview of this episode.
April 4, 2006
FAMOUS GUY NEWS
LISTEN TO THE WHOLE PLAY
My play Famous Guy went out this morning on Woman’s Hour! Jenni Murray said my name in her bored, patronising voice! I’m the king of Women! Just a reminder that I wrote it, Joe plays Manthea, I play Guy and it was produced by Claudine Toutoungi.