Funny is fiercely competitive with winners and losers and toxic jealousies all too common. Comedians compare themselves with each other almost continually and this is easily done along any number of very tangible parameters. How many gigs? Which gigs? Running order? Size of rooms? Size of fee? TV slots… and on and on it goes.
Having never produced a physical DVD of my stand-up I was unaware that the market for comedy DVDs has long since collapsed.
Here in Dubai for a few gigs I have just been asked to answer a few questions for a local blogger and I happily agreed. Why not?
Now, it is reasonable to expect that what people want to know is not about me but about my offspring. I get this and no problem.
My bags are packed. Shorts, flip-flops and my act. Have jokes, will travel…
Will blog from Dubai and back home again in 10 days.
Onwards…
Some friends and lots of acquaintances getting in touch abuzz with excitement because they had no idea that the new Spider-Man happens to be the eldest Holland child. Really? My blog and book Eclipsed has some reach I think to myself! These are people I know…
Tonight is my last ever gig in my forties and fittingly is a no fee gig at a school to run in some links and a new routine. A good full stop then to what I refer to as my lost comedy decade!
As I explain in my book, Eclipsed, all comics and most people I meet in show-biz are in the process of writing or ‘developing’ some project or other. In order of ambition; a screenplay, TV sit-com, radio sit-com or play, TV treatment, a children’s book… and in the main, with absolutely zero success.
Harry joins Tom in Brazil today – to make some videos for Tom and record his extraordinary world tour for Homecoming – beginning tomorrow. Tonight, the remaining Holland’s are taking in Guardians of the Galaxy at our local cinema – I’m telling Paddy he can have anything food related and can even go large. Back at ya Sao Paulo!
On a busy main road a little along from where we live are a series of scruffy shops and cafes with car parking at right angles on the pavements only adding to the general unsightliness.
I have never had a nice car. Too many kids to transport about the place and as such my cars have always been trashed anyway. At any one time there has always been enough discarded food in the seat pockets and footwells to feed a homeless person for a week. Then Tess came along so add dog treats and pooh bags…