Comedian and Folk Singer. Winner Edinburgh’s Spirit of the Fringe 2024, Best Variety Show Leicester Comedy Festival 2024, Nominee Best Show Edinburgh Fringe 2024. As heard on BBC Radio 4’s “The Now Show” and seen on “Rosie Jones’s Disability Comedy Extravaganza”. From three-time BBC Radio 2 Folk Award winning band The Young'uns.
I’ve Dolloped from the Royal Albert Hall, I’ve Dolloped From The BBC Springwatch Studios, But Now, finally, The Moment You’ve All Been waiting For … Today, I’m Dolloping From The Coop shop!
Today is the day you’ve all been waiting for, and don’t even try and pretend you haven’t. Springwatch was a mere distraction from the main event, which is finally upon us. It’s time to give the people what they want – or at least give one person what he wants. That person being Dollop regular Michael Wackington, ardent proponent of the cooperative. As promised, today is the day that I visit the Coop. Find out how I got on by listening to today’s audio Dollop. Needless to say, it will be full of excitement and incredible drama. Hopefully you can control your shaking hands enough to click the download link.
We go on another walk together, upon which you’ll notice that, as a result of my appearance on Springwatch last week, I’m unable to walk down the street with the same kind of anonymity as before.
Very rarely, I get a notification from my webstats app informing me that my “website traffic is booming!” Last night, my stats were seemingly booming so much, that I received two notifications yesterday, one which came an hour or so after Springwatch, and another that came a couple of hours later. Normally I get numbers in the low hundreds, but yesterday, it was over a thousand. I’m quite surprised by how many people clicked onto my website, baring in mind I only spoke a couple of sentences, one of which I stuttered, and the other you couldn’t really hear.
Granted, a lot of those extra views were due to people Googling things like ‘The Young’uns blind,’ or ‘is one of the young’uns blind?’ So it’s likely that most of these new visiters will simply click on my website, find the answer about whether I’m blind or not, and then click off, never to return again. But there might be a few new people who click onto my site in order to find out whether I can see or not, and end up getting sucked into the amazing drama and comedic brilliance that Dollop regulars have come to no and love. For the benefit of anyone Googling to find out whether I am blind, the answer is: well, not really, but I pretend to be in order to garner more interest from people and lure them to my website; it’s basically a clever marketing ploy.
Of course, there is a chance that the number of views is due to Michaela Strachan. I assumed she was just humouring me when I drunkenly told her about the Daily Dollops, and she said she would check them out. Maybe she enjoyed our conversation a lot more than I thought. I thought that in the main, it was just small talk, but perhaps I was much more interesting than I remember being. I suppose the problem could be that I am just so naturally gifted at being interesting and entertaining, that I don’t appreciate the fact that even my small talk is highly illuminating and riveting. Perhaps, the first thing she did when she got home that night was to visit my website and start reading or listening to the Dollops. Maybe that was the reason why she promptly left the pub after our conversation. I assumed she was just desperate to get away from me, as I drunkenly blabbered on about my Dollops, but perhaps it was actually because she just couldn’t contain her excitement and wanted to start reading and listening to my genius creations straight away. Maybe, Michaela has decided to spend the weekend having a binge Dollop listening/reading session, perhaps going through every Dollop from episode 1 to 155. If you see her on Springwatch on Monday, and she’s cracking jokes about her kettle, or talking about her encounters with supermarket staff, then we’ll know that she’s obviously been inspired by my Dollops.
On the way back from Suffolk last night, we decided to post a status on Facebook immediately affter our Springwatch broadcast, including the links to the programme, and attach a few photos. We decided that we should incorporate as many wildlife puns as we could into the post.
Sean was using Michael’s phone to make the post, because Sean’s phone doesn’t let him atttach photoes, and Michael was driving so couldn’t do it himself. But it soon became very clearly that Sean had no idea about how to use Michael’s phone, and the post ended up taking about three hours to write. We more or less spent the entire journey back from Suffolk writing the Facebook post, meaning that by the time we eventually published it, we’d completely lost the immediacy aspect, as the programme had finished over three hours ago. It was taking ages for Sean to type on the phone, plus one of us would keep thinking of another pun, which meant that Sean would then have to try and make edits, delete certain bits, and change the order of things to make it fit.
When we first started writing the punning post, we were having a great time, but as the minutes turned to hours, we began to regret trying to do such a long and involved post on a phone. The phone also kept trying to predict what Sean was typing, and correct things that were puns, because they weren’t real words but wildlife-based modifications of words. At one point we needed to paste a link into the post, so Sean switched to the Internet app, only to realise, upon trying to return to Facebook, that he’d accidentally closed the Facebook app, meaning that our post was lost. We then spent another 90 minutes trying to joylessly remember all our puns, in the order we’d done them. But Sean would get halfway through, before one of us would remember that we’d missed one, causing Sean to have to try and re-jiggle everything around time and time again, which was proving very stressful for Sean. Then there came a point where the whole thing became massively hysterical, as the realisation dawned on us that we’d spent three hours trying to write one Facebook post, which we’d wanted to publish immediately after the Springwatch broadcast, but had still not posted over three hours after the show had been aired, because we’d spent all the time trying to write loads of puns.
There was a heart stopping moment when we eventually hit publish, and breathed a sigh of relief, only to see an error flash up on the screen telling us that the post could not be published due to no Internet connection. Fortunately, there was a retry button, and the post sent on the second attempt.
Here is the result of our three hours’ work: “I know we’ve been chirping on about this but just in case you haven’t yet bird the news we’ve just been on Springwatch Unsprung. We dunnock know how it happened maybe it’s because we’re very cheep and we wouldn’t eat into their budgiet. What a real badger of honour although let’s just hope we didn’t make tits of ourselves. You can watch the whole thing here And watch the full version of our song Lapwings (featuring Frank Gardiner) here
Hope you pike it. The whole thing has been a bream come true (sorry the last two puns were a bit fishy).”
I’m sure you’ll agree, it was well worth the effort, and you new readers of these Dollops will be coming back for more, time and time again.
The majority of yesterday’s Dollop was very hastily written, and was frantically typed up on my laptop, precariously perched on my knee as I sat on the dodgy swivel chair with the wheel missing in the BBC Springwatch production studio.
After we’d recorded our show, we went to the pub with the Springwatch team, as we did the week before. The recording didn’t finish until just before 10, and so we didn’t get to the pub until 1030. I still hadn’t finished the Dollop, and the fact that I’d been typing it whilst spinning and wobbling around on a broken swivel chair, meant that I had made loads of typos. It was standing room only in the pub, so I had to be very anti-social and sit on a bench outside the pub with my laptop.
I sat there for about an hour, and in that time a couple of people from the production team came out to bring me beer, which while very kind of them, resulted in making me feel guilty and rather stupid for not joining them in the pub. But, as I warned you at the start of this project, I have the kind of obsessive personality that means I would rather sit in the cold and the dark on a bench, ignoring my friends in the pub, than allow this consecutive daily blogging challenge to fail. Nearly half way through!
I was also feeling a bit self-conscious. Because we’d come to Springwatch straight from the project we’ve been working on this week, I had my big bag with me which contained all the bits of equipment I needed. I probably looked to people like a very eccentric homeless person, sitting on a bench outside a pub, with all my worldly possessions in a bag by my feet, drinking beer that was being brought to me by benevolent and sympathetic customers, while I typed on a laptop computer, which, because I am blind, didn’t have the monitor turned on. So it would have looked to people as if I was typing on a laptop that wasn’t even switched on. Perhaps people assumed I was a struggling writer, who was struggling so much that he didn’t have a home and spent his days sitting on a bench outside a pub, hoping that someone would buy him a beer out of sympathy, while he drunkenly typed on a broken laptop, perhaps too drunk to even realise it wasn’t switched on or working.
Eventually, I got the Dollop uploaded, and made my way back into the pub. But the pub was so packed that I couldn’t get through or work out where anyone was. Fortunately, Someone came to my rescue and guided me through. It was quite a long walk into the room where my fellow Young’uns and the Springwatch team were sitting, so I had quite a long chat, consisting of trivial small talk, with the person guiding me. It was only after she’d gone that I discovered that my rescuer had been Michaela Strachan, who we’d not met on the Springwatch Unsprung set, because she only does the main Springwatch programme. So I had a five minute bout of small talk, and walked hand in hand with Michaela Strachan, without having any idea who she was.
I did however speak to her for another five minutes later that evening, and she asked me what I was doing outside, by myself, on the bench with my laptop, so I told her about the Dollop. I drunkenly told her that she should give it a listen or a read, and, presumably just humouring me, she said that she would. So, just in case she is reading or listening, hello, I hope you’re enjoying this, you are very welcome. Feel free by the way, Michaela, to send me an ASMR audio comment, maybe comprising you imparting wildlife facts in a sensual whisper. Feel free also if you want to get Chris Packham involved too.
Upon being ushered into the TV studio, I was immediately set upon by a couple of people, one of whom, a woman, whispered something to me, and then began to stroke my face with a soft brush. In fact, it was kind of like a physical manifestation of my sensually whispering feathered friend on the ASMR podcast we listened to on Dollop 150. The other person was a man, who was pulling up the front of my shirt, and fondling my lower back. I thought the BBC were trying to stamp out the whole molestation in the studio thing, yet here I was being touched up by two people in full view of everyone else. But I soon realised that the whispering woman stroking my face was actually applying makeup, which needs to be added so that the cameras pick faces up properly. The man with one hand up the front of my shirt, and the other hand grappling around the back of my trousers, was attaching a mic to me, the wire of which went up the inside of my shirt in order to be inconspicuous on the cameras, and a small power unit was being attached to the inside of the back of my trousers. The reason for their whispering was because Chris Packham and Michaela Strachan were just metres away finishing off that day’s live broadcast of Springwatch. Both the man’s and woman’s hands were rather cold, and so the viewers of yesterday’s Springwatch were very nearly treated to me shouting out in shock, possibly exclaiming something profane, but fortunately I managed to stop myself reacting to the sudden surprise of cold hands being thrust onto my skin.
The whole TV studio experience was quite odd for me. I didn’t really feel able to say anything, as I didn’t know where the camera was pointing and who it was focused on. There were cameras darting around the place, and people with cameras shuffling low down on the floor. There was a point when I was going to say something, but this was when Chris Packham was at the other side of the studio looking at Sean’s drawing that he’d been challenged to do by the Springwatch team, and I wasn’t sure whether if I said something, it might have resulted in a mad scrum of cameramen to have to come quickly crawling along the floor in order to get me in the shot and properly focus on my face. The other two could see where the cameras were pointing and react accordingly. It’s also very fast paced, and there isn’t really the time or opportunities for interjection, especially from someone who doesn’t have a clue where to face, so I left it to the other two who did a fine job without me, and it was a really good interview with Packham.
I found the whole studio applause thing a bit weird. As I mentioned yesterday, the audience were made to practise their applause beforehand, and coached about how to do it properly. During the show, there is someone who directs the audience when to applaude. The opening music will play, and he’ll count the audience down from ten, and then they applaud. It almost makes the act of applauding seem a bit ridiculous and redundant, as surely the idea of applause is to denote audience appreciation? But in this case the audience were being told how to applaud, when to applaud and for how long; Yes, he was even directing the length of the applause, and the audience were instructed to stop when he gave the sign. It basically makes the applause meaningless in any real sense, and it’s simply just a studio gimmick. At least they didn’t tell the audience when and where to laugh, and didn’t coached them beforehand about the sign given to indicate a hahaha laugh, as opposed to heeheehee or hohoho. It wasn’t quite that regimented.
I also found it a bit odd when it came to some of the things the audience were being instructed to applaud; the kinds of things that don’t really warrant applause. The audience were directed to applaud things like the various little videos, such as the video near the start, where they reviewed what had been on the show during that week. It didn’t seem like the kind of thing that you would naturally applaud. When you watch the TV at home, or go to the cinema, no one gets the urge to applaud the ”previously” section, but for some reason, the audience in the studio are instructed to applaud every little incidental thing.
Before we sang our song, Chris Packham read an extract from a World War I soldier’s diary, which inspired our song, Lapwings. It’s a very moving an evocative entry which reads:
“Following the geese, came a couple of lapwings, and then about half a dozen more. It was the call of spring. In a few hours time those same lapwings might be wheeling over English fields. I watched them go by, in scattered pairs, small parties, and larger flocks. All were journeying in the same direction. My thoughts went with them, to the level fens of East Anglia, and the North country mosses that I knew so well. I was still watching the lapwings passing when the relieving sentry appeared. It seemed barely possible that two hours could have slipped by so quickly. Back once more in the dugout, I dozed off to sleep. My dreams were of English fields, horses at work ploughing, and the spring cries of the Peawits.”
When we perform this song at gigs, we read this extract out before hand, and there’s never applause, because applause is an odd and inappropriate response. Often the audience respond to it with a plaintive sigh, and sometimes there are tears; it’s quite an emotional moment. But, in the peculiar TV studio environment, when Packham had finished beautifully reading the diary entry, the director immediately indicated for the audience to applaud, and they duly did, which doesn’t at all fit with the mood of the piece. But this is a world where everything, from a short introductory video clips montage to the musings of a dead soldier, fearing for his life and desperately longing for home, is met with the exact same response: effusive applause.
But regardless, it was a great opportunity for us, and we had a great time with the Springwatch team, both in the studio, and especially afterwards in the pub, or at least once I’d eventually joined them after an hour of being anti-social and sitting by myself on a bench outside the pub. And thus, hear ends today’s Dollop. Cue applause.
I am writing today’s Dollop in a bit of a rush, so forgive me if I’m not on blistering form in this Dollop. I’m afraid you might just have to make do with two jokes every paragraph on this occasion. We’re about to go on Springwatch, and are currently sitting in the production studio. The seat I am sitting on is a swivel chair which has a wheel missing, and I nearly fell off it when I first sat down. I have warned the people at the BBC about this rogue chair, because I am worried that someone like the culture minister, John Whittingdale, might one day be in that studio and sit on that chair, and if he should fall of it, it might spell the end of the BBC, as he launches a massive health and safety investigation into the corporation. He is seemingly looking for reasons to close it down, and this could be the thing that pushes him over the edge. I hope the producers I warned about this will heed my words, because this might be the chair that brings John Witingdale, and consequently the BBC, to its knees.
We’ll be going on set in the next ten minutes. At the moment, there is a Broadcast assistant teaching the studio audience how to applaud. They’ve been practising their cheers, their clapping, and their whooping. If you watch our Spring watch appearance tomorrow, listen out for the audience reactions, because they are something special, having been properly honed by a BBC Broadcast Assistant.
I hear that the wildlife is also coached about how to behave. I probably shouldn’t reveal this, but … You think that everything you see is just the birds and the animals behaving naturally in their natural habitats, when in fact, it’s actually all directed by a BBC Broadcast Assistant. To be honest, it would be much more fascinating if they just spent the programme showing you how this is all achieved, seeing the Broadcast Assistant coaching the owls how to hoot propperly for the microphone, and attempting to demonstrate to a bird how they should most effectively dismember and eat their prey in a way that will be most camera friendly.
A few days ago, I was pleased that regular Dollopees (still waiting for a better collective name for you all) Claire and Catheryn, inspired by my walking audio Dollops, created a little walking audio Dollop comment, which I played out at the start of Dollop 150. Sadly though, no one as of yet has seemingly been inspired enough by my ASMR Dollops to create their own ASMR audio Dollop comment. Whether it be you cuddling a dummy with Latex gloves, or nibbling an imaginary body part, your ASMR audio Dollop comments are welcome.
This week has been very busy, and has probably posed the biggest challenge to getting these Dollops released. I’ve been out every evening, and have been busy during the days, working on a project with some of England’s finest young musicians, and I’m not referring to Michael and Sean. The age of the musicians ranges between twelve and nineteen. They are so enthused by and obsessed with making music, that even in their rest time, they are relentlessly creating random music. For instance, in the cantine, they will make up songs, or they will use their cutlery to create complex rhythmic pieces, which they discuss in great detail before hand:
“OK, so Georgia, you bang your fork in 4/4, andante, and I’ll add a cross rhythm in 6/8 with my knife, meanwhile Emily, how about adding a bit of syncopation with your spoon? We’ll build to a crescendo at bar 15 shall we?”
I was a bit taken aback today when a few of them came up to me and told me that they’ve been listening to my Dollops. This is a little bit awkward for me, given that I’m trying to play the role of responsible, professional teacher, and my efforts are being somewhat sullied by them listening to me on the evenings being nibbled and fondled by a woman. If you’re one of the people who only reads the written version of these Dollops and not the audio, then I appreciate you’ll be massively confused. Check out Dollop 150 to be, enlightened, for want of a better word. So I have started creating alternative Dollops, featuring lots of family-friendly, erudite, educational thoughts. Basically, I’ve developed a system whereby there is a programme on my website that can access the visitor’s webcam, identify their age from the photo, and then show them the family-friendly content if it identifies you as one of my students, or a family member. Ironically, in order to set this up I have had to break lots of privacy rules, and have to essentially illegally access people’s webcams; but, this is much more preferable than facing the awkwardness of having students and family members reading and listening to things that I’d rather they didn’t.
Anyway, must dash, I shouldn’t keep Chris Packham waiting any longer.
Continuing my week of audio-only Dollops. This evening we were in the pub celebrating The Young’uns very own Michael Hughes’ birthday. It got to about 11pm, and still today’s Dollop had not been recorded, and so here is an emergency drunken Dollop recorded from the pub. But don’t worry, because despite this being an emergency, drunken Dollop, my natural wit and creative flair will obviously more than adequately carry us through.
This week is a crazily busy week for me, and so, rather than sitting at a laptop and writing today’s Dollop, I thought I’d unwind by going on a walk. And I thought it would be nice to bring you along with me. And so we walk together through rural Suffolk, and along the way on this audio adventure, we come across some unusual things taking place in the shrubbery. To find out what’s lerking in the bushes, as well as hearing a story about something that happened to me today concerning nipples, Download today’s audio Dollop here
