Two years ago, I wrote a blog post about having just turned twenty-four. I suggested that my blog posts would probably become a lot more refined and sophisticated as I matured with age; no more fart jokes and sexual innuendo. It seems as if I was completely wrong with this assertion, since my first blog post as a twenty-six year old was a long piece about having sex with scores of bus drivers. I wonder what I’ll be writing about at twenty-seven.

I was walking through Stockton High Street last Friday, looking for KFC where I was meeting some friends. I
was about to ask a person a few metres away which way to go, but I became distracted by a loud voice shouting something further down the street. I listened to hear what he was shouting about. He sounded very passionate about whatever it was and he didn’t seem to be relenting to let anyone respond. As I got closer to the voice, it became clear that this man was preaching. He was preaching the word of Jesus; or at least his interpretation of it. “And the lord said”, the man trumpeted. “I am the way, the truth and the light … seek and you shall find …”

No one seemed to be listening. A few youths passed and hollered insults at him, but no-one seemed to be actually listening.

“I am the way … seek and you shall find!” This was obviously a divine sign. So I did the logical thing and asked the man for directions to KFC.

Sadly, the Jesus man turned out to be a bit of a fraud. He had absolutely no idea where KFC was. “But you said seek and you shall find?” I argued. The man had no come back. It was clear that he had been rumbled. Victory for the atheist!

The great thing about being blind – and it’s not quite enough to recommend it as a life style choice but it is a plus point – is that you can get away with doing things that would ordinarily be socially awkward or unacceptable. You can just pretend you’re unaware of what you’ve done. So for instance, I am able to pretend that I am unaware that I have just interrupted a loud, animated man preaching to people about Jesus in a busy street. I can just saunter towards him and interrupt him in full flow with “excuse me”. And then, when he falters in his impassioned speech and comes to a hault say, “o sorry, were you talking to someone? I didn’t mean to interrupt you, sorry”.

I heard a few people near us laughing. They stopped to listen. They assumed, no doubt, that I had inadvertently interrupted this preacher, rather than it being a deliberate comic conceit.
The small crowd in the street were probably laughing at me as well as the preacher. Little did they know that they were my audience and that I was the comedian and the preacher was my comedic prop.

The man was very nice. He apologised for not knowing the whereabouts of KFC but said that he could direct me to another restaurant if that would help. Presumably this restaurant would have been TGI Fridays. (Ha ha ha!) I said that I needed KFC because that’s where I was meeting my friends. I thanked the man and assured him that I’d be fine; I’d ask someone else for directions; I was confident that I’d get there. “Go now, your faith has saved you” he said. No he didn’t say that, but he might say that in the film version of this blog.

I asked the man if I’d inadvertently interrupted anything important. “You appeared to be talking to someone” I enquired, playing innocent. My audience were lapping this up. There were a few teenagers stood round, laughing heartily at this scene. If only they knew that they were witnessing a deliberate comedic construct. If only the preacher man was a bit funnier and played along a bit more; we could have sold tickets and put on a show.
I was doing my best to entertain, but the man was a bit stilted; hardly developing his character as much as he could have been doing.

“Every Friday we go down the high street and me and a few mates preach the word of god to the people” he explained.
“O well, there’s a number of people all gathered round us now” I responded, “so I’ll let you get on”. The poor preacher man would soon see the crowd move on, now that I – clearly the star attraction and the talented one in this arrangement – had gone. He had been given his chance to impress, and had quite frankly failed. Showbiz is a cruel mistress; he might as well learn that from the get-go. I thanked the man for his time and walked away.

A few metres down the road was another preaching man, only he had a much more aggressive approach and was loudly berating us for walking past him, ignoring what he was saying, just getting on with our lives with no regard for the word of God. I wondered whether I should audition this man and ask him for directions, but at that point my friend shouted me over from across the road. I had made KFC.

About half an hour later, I reached into my pocket to get some money to pay for my meal, and noticed that there was a little booklet in it. It was titled “Your father’s love letter”. A friend read the contents of the letter and it transpired not to be a letter from my father at all, but a note from God telling me that he loved me and that he knew me very intimately – the dirty deity.

How the heck did this letter get in my pocket? I assume it must have been the preacher man, but I didn’t notice him putting it in. I can’t see how I would have missed him doing it; it was my inside coat pocket. But it hadn’t been there before I saw the preacher man, so it must have been him! The man must be an illusionist. He couldn’t do comedy, but he could make things mysteriously appear.

I had rashly dismissed him for his lack of comedic value, but hadn’t considered any other talents that he may be able to lend to the act. I went back to the place where the preacher man had been. I could do the comedy and he could do the tricks. We’d definitely sell tickets. But the man had gone; perhaps even vanished in a puff of smoke in front of a thrilled audience, once he’d made sure that I – clearly the untalented fool who fancied himself as a bit of a comedian – had left. Damn!

Perhaps this blog post is a kind of modern day parable. Perhaps I shouldn’t have been too quick to judge the man. OK so he couldn’t do comedy but he had great potential as an illusionist. Let this be a lesson friends.

I hope that one day, people will read, translate and interpret this blog post in a variety of different ways and then have wars based on the individually interpreted elements of the blog post that they disagree on. If you are reading this and are thinking of having a war, or are in the process of having a war to defend the sacred purity and truth of my blog post, I want you to know that I’m on your side. You’ve got me on your side. Tell all your supporters – your army – that I am on their side. Be warned however: your enemies will be reading this and foolishly interpreting that I am talking to them; that I am on their side. They will be telling their supporters – their army – that they have me on their side. How fickle, how ignorant they are. They’re wrong, of course. You’ve got me on your side, so go out there safe in that knowledge and kill and get killed in my name. Then when you die, you’ll get to the big place in the sky (which has actually had to downsize a bit due to the current economic climate) and you’ll all discover that this blogger who you’ve been fighting for, and got killed for, doesn’t actually exist. That’s right, the whole blog was written by a ghost writer. Ha ha haaaaaa!

The 106th Young’uns Podcast is finaly here.
This is the description for it:

The Young’uns Podcast 106 (The Itch of the Golden Nit)

The Itch of the Golden Nit is a film
produced by
Aardman Animations
(the people behind
Wallace & Gromit)
and is the creation of thousands of UK-based children. The children chose the celebrities that they wanted to feature in the film.
David Walliams,
Catherine Tate
and
Miranda Hart
are just some of the big names starring in the film. But perhaps most tellingly – indicating that this future generation is clearly going to be a much more enlightened lot – the Young’uns were also asked to appear. Of course it was the children who chose us; not some ignorant researcher who assumed that The Young’uns (based purely on the name) were a folk group consisting of children, only to find out the truth a bit too late once we’d signed the contract.

Some people in the folk world may accuse the Young’uns of selling out, ditching mining songs and ballads about ship wrecks for the more commercially viable (and much more lucrative) film soundtrack work. This is of course complete nonsense. How could we have said no to those children? They would be heart broken if their number one celebrity choices snubbed them. Such a disappointment could destroy a whole generation, and could be the root source of future criminality and warfare. So we accepted – for the kids you understand, and for the stability of our planet – and did the song on the film.

For those people who are still not convinced and are crying “sell outs”, take heart in the knowledge that the money we generated from the project went to good causes that folkies in this country will wholeheartedly support: the majority went straight into the real ale industry, namely the real ale tents at folk festivals – and we were happy to hand this money over in person whilst maybe having a couple of samples of each real ale, just to make sure that we were definitely giving to a good cause. The rest of the money went to
Seth Lakeman;
and you can’t say that’s not a good cause.

The song that we sang for this film was about smelly pirates with hairy knees, and we were singing alongside
Vick Reeves
who played the pirate. You can hear anecdotes about our filming experience, plus the song itself. We also speak to the film’s musical composer,
John Brown
who worked with children all over the country to create the songs. Jim Molyneux from the folk group
4Square
played the drums on the smelly pirate song. We’ll be talking to him about the film and about his group 4Square. We also have music from 4Square and another live performance from the Young’uns.

Plus: What do female Morris dancers get up to in toilets?; a live musical performance from a choir who we happened upon in a takeaway; The Young’uns have a new idea for a cover song to add to their set (see what you think), and there’s another report from an Indian restaurant.

Click here to download.
Click here to listen
The above download link is a temporary link and will probably only work for a couple of months, before new podcasts take its place. If the link doesn’t work then you can download the podcast from our archive site
here.

The reason I provide both links is because mobile phones might struggle downloading the archived file. It’s all technical, clever stuff. Nothing for you to worry your pretty little heads about.

You can subscribe to the Young’uns Podcast in Itunes
here
or in Google
here.

Warning, the following blog post contains strong language (in case you hadn’t gathered that by the title.)

Before I start ranting: just a little note to let you know that the 106th Young’uns podcast will definitely be available from the beginning of next week.

And now: my rant.

I set off from my house for work at the usual time. My most loyal readers will be aware of what time that is.
I’m not going to tell the rest of you; you’ll have to trail through my entire blog to find out. That’ll teach you for being a part-time reader.

There is a double set of traffic lights that I have to cross before I get to the bus stop. Today, I reached the traffic lights and went to press the button, but it had been taped over with a big cardboard sign.

For blind people, signs are a bit useless and can actually pose more of a hindrance than a help to us. I’m thinking in particular of those big, self standing signs that say “caution! wet floor!” Firstly, such a sign is completely redundant for someone who can’t see it. But in addition to that, the signs often tend to get in the way of a blind person’s path. I have been walking along a corridor, unaware that there is anything in my way, and then collided with one of these “caution! wet floor!” signs. Once or twice, I have crashed into the sign and have been sent skidding along the wet floor at a much greater speed than I would ever have done if the sign hadn’t have been there. I have skidded across the wet floor with my shoe laces caught on the sign and then ended up face down in a puddle of whatever wet stuff the sign was trying to warn me about.

This particular sign, taped on the traffic light box, may have been explaining that the lights were automated or were not working at all because of the roadworks that were in progress on that road. I was aware of the road works because it had taken me two minutes to cross the road just before the traffic lights which normally would take me a few seconds to cross, meaning I was running a bit late. There was also a lot of loud drilling going on which suggested that there was either a new alfresco dentist who had just set up by the road side, or that there was roadworks. Those are the only two plausible options I can think of, and I challenge you to think of a better one. No, you can’t, can you? Keep reading and leave the advanced detective work to me.

At the bottom of most traffic light boxes there is a little stick that protrudes down. This spins round when the green man appears to alert blind people that it is safe to cross. But that was also blocked by the cardboard sign, so I’d have to determine when it was safe to cross using my own initiative. This was made even more difficult by the loud drilling sound. After a while I decided to chance it and crossed.

Did I make it across the road alive? Well yes, of course I did; I’m writing this blog post after the fact, so what a silly question that was. I couldn’t write this blog post if I was dead; unless I’d decided at the roadside to write this blog post first, then send it to a friend who could publish it in the event that I was killed crossing the road. But surely I’d write something a bit more interesting than this nonsense if I knew it was going to be my last post? Thank goodness I survived, otherwise this blog post would be an embarrassing and very disappointing swan song, hardly in keeping with the amazing legacy I had helped develop up until this point with my previous blog posts. People would be so disappointed. “To think, that he would leave us with such a banal and mundane blog post
as his final parting words to us. This, the same man who once regularly thrilled us with his amusing anecdotes from the 36 bus; this, the man who sang about smelly pirates with hairy knees alongside Vick Reeves; the same man who enthralled us with a detailed exposition of his satnav! … And he leaves us like this?!”

With an enterobang?! where the whole sorry thing started?!

My god, that was some tangent. I’m sorry. I’m not dead. The blog continues.

So, I managed to cross the road without
coming to any harm whatsoever. Glad we established that.

As I reached the other side of the road, I saw my bus overtake me and pull into the bus stop. I started to run, but it had been raining all night and the ground was wet which caused me to slip and skid out of control along the path. What were the council thinking? You’d have thought they’d have had the common sense to put up a wet floor sign! My skidding eventually stopped when I collided into a bush which soaked me and gave me a few complimentary stings too. I quickly regained composure and sprinted the few remaining metres to the bus stop. Fortunately the bus was still at the stop. I was just about to step on the bus, which still had its door open, when the bus pulled away.

I was so close. Surely the bus driver could see my frantic attempts to reach the bus stop? All that effort: dicing with death by crossing a road without the ability to see or hear if there were any cars coming; the frantic sprinting; the skidding, the soaking and the stinging. Despite all my efforts I had missed the bus and would now have to travel miles out of my way and I’d be about an hour late. I was furious that the bus driver hadn’t waited that extra second. There is no doubt that he would have seen me.

I’m not proud of what I did next. I’d like to think I was innately conscientious enough to at least subconsciously check to see that there weren’t any children around before doing what I did, but I was too enraged to care. My immediate reaction to this frustrating situation was to lift my head up to the sky and then shout, at some considerable volume, “fuck! fuck the bus driver! Fuck all bus drivers! Fuck you all!”

Writing about this now makes me feel and sound pathetic, but at the time I was so annoyed at the bus driver and aggrieved by the soaking and stinging I’d received on my frantic sprint, that this outburst seemed justified and reasonable. I don’t know why I chose to tarnish all bus drivers with the same brush just because of this one particular bus driver, but that is just what impulsively burst from my mouth in my state of fury.

As soon as I had made this loud outburst I immediately knew that I’d overreacted. I turned to see whether there was anyone else around, hoping that there wasn’t. I didn’t see anyone, but about thirty seconds later a man came up to me and asked me if I was OK. I wasn’t sure whether he had heard my cursing or not. I said that I was fine and explained about my ordeal. He sympathised with my plight and told me that he certainly would have waited for me if he was the bus driver. He then informed me that he in fact was a bus driver. He would be driving the next bus and was waiting for it to arrive at this stop. It transpired that he’d be the driver of the bus I was about to get on.

I started to feel a little bit uncomfortable. Had this bus driver heard my “fuck all bus drivers” comment, and then came over to me and initiated conversation as a result. Perhaps he was trying to prove that not all bus drivers were bastards, disserving of being “fucked”. Or maybe he was setting the groundwork for some sweet revenge: he would lull me into a false sense of security by being all matey and sympathetic with me, only for his bus to arrive and for him to dash on it, quickly close the door and speed off down the street, laughing evilly as I stand on the road side having been tricked by yet another cruel bastard of a bus driver.

Or maybe he heard me shout “fuck all bus drivers!” and thought that this proclamation was a sexual pledge. Perhaps when he heard my declaration, he thought: “o, that’s interesting. This man obviously finds bus drivers so incredibly sexually alluring that he has an overpowering urge to fuck us all. It’s obviously a very overpowering urge because he’s more than happy to shout out his desire in public, despite the fact that there might be children around to hear. Hmm. I suppose I do quite fancy him, to be honest. But I’m not sure that I really want to be having sex with a man who has subsequently had sex with scores of other bus drivers before me. I’d feel dirty and used. If he’s going to try and have sex with me at some point in my life anyway, then I might as well get in their first while he’s still a bit fresh. Plus, there’s less chance of getting a sexually transmitted disease if I do it now, and at least I wouldn’t feel as disgusted by the act. I better go and introduce myself then.”

I’m sure you can understand why I was getting nervous.

The conversation was polite. He didn’t seem as if he was aroused in anyway. But maybe he was expecting me to make the first move. After all, it had been me who’d made the bold declaration. He might have been confused that I’d suddenly got all shy after my initial boldness. He might even be feeling rejected. Perhaps I should have sex with him, just in case. I wouldn’t want him thinking that I’d made a pledge to universally “fuck all bus drivers”, but had found this particular bus driver so sexually unappealing that I’d decided to make him an exception to this rule. How do I get myself into these situations?

Just as I was considering my next move, the bus pulled up. We both got on the bus. Then he said to me, “stay on the bottom and sit at the front and I’ll tell you when to get off”. O dear! Well that confirmed it. He’s deffinitely after sex!

There’ll be some of you out there reading this, not as streetwise as me, who’ll naively assume that this was an innocent comment. “The bus was a double Decker. If you sat at
the front of the bus on the bottom deck then the driver would be able to tell you when to get off at your stop. Surely that’s all it could mean David?” You poor, naive fool. It was obvious what this bus driver was insinuating. “stay on the bottom” is an obvious sexual reference; he is stating a sexual position and is obviously requesting that I am the giver in this situation. Then there’s his comment, “sit at the front”. ok, granted,these two statements seem to counteract each other. How can I stay on the bottom and sit at the front at the same time? “So surely that means that he was definitely simply suggesting that you sit on the bottom deck of the bus, at the front. Surely?” O you poor, innocent fool. I dread to think how many bus drivers you’ve let take advantage of you. He was obviously just so excited that he wasn’t thinking straight (in both senses of the word), and in his sexually aroused state he just blurted something out. That’s the only obvious explanation to his statement.

Plus, there’s that other statement: “and I’ll tell you when to get off”. Again, that’s an obvious sexual suggesttion. Even if I had felt sexually inclined towards this particular bus driver, he had ruined any chances of me and him having sex. It was clear that he was a selfish lover and evidently liked to be the dominating partner; telling me what he wanted, with no consideration of how I might feel about it. Also, i thought this was a bit presumptuous on his part. Since I’d been the one who made the bold statement “fuck all bus drivers”, surely I should be seen as the person in the position to call the shots here, to stipulate how, where and when I want my bus drivers. He’s got no right to assume that he’s suddenly running the show. He’s not the ring leader, I am (and yes, you could interpret that as another sexual pun, if that’ll make you happier).

So the driver ruined whatever small chance he might have had with me. And of course, I sat on the top, right at the back. And I’m talking about my position on the bus. Obviously. Seriously, I can’t believe the way your minds work sometimes.

Due to the overwhelming surge of popularity for
the Young’uns
following our epic televisual debut, we’ve decided to sign up to Twitter – give them some extra business. I’ve personally not done anything on their yet and perhaps never will, since apparently you have a limit of 140 characters per post which (as regular readers of my blog will understand) might prove a bit of a challenge for me. I will however – should you send an email to webmaster@theyounguns.co.uk – be only too happy to continue to reply in a needlessly lengthy fashion which you won’t even bother reading because of the fact that your intimidated by the unnecessary length of the thing, but primarily because you were hoping for a response from either Mike or Sean. Well now you know that if you want a reasonably concise reply to your message without the risk of me getting in touch with you, then you should use the Twitter option. Although, I would appreciate the occasional email from a real human as it will come as a welcome break from the usual spam mail that we get on the Young’uns account.

It can be a bit disconcerting when the Young’uns mail account gets spam, especially when you get emails saying, “sexually satisfy your woman with this proven technique”. Baring in mind that all three of us get this email, the inference is that the Young’uns share the same woman and that all three of us are attempting to satisfy her sexually. Perhaps even at the same time. There’s no knowing what the dirty spam bots are thinking (and that’s actually what they’re called: spam bots. That’s not a euphemism or an affectionate name I have for them).

I am ignoring the spam about penis extensions that go into my personal mail account in the hope that perhaps we can get a three for the price of two deal if the Young’uns get their penises extended at the same time. But I hope they’re not expecting the three of us to share the same penis, because that’s not going to happen. Unless it’s detachable, in which case I might consider it. You’ve got to think frugally in this economic climate.

Anyway, the upshot of all that was that The Young’uns are on Twitter. We’re called theyoungunstrio.

In other news, I’ve finally done a deal with the robots and the Young’uns Podcast is now actually a podcast.You can subscribe to the podcast here:
in ITunes”
Or with Google

The 106th Young’uns Podcast will arrive this week.

The Itch of the Golden Nit – the film that I wrote about
(see this blog post)
featuring myself and the Young’uns singing a song about smelly pirates with hairy knees alongside
Vic Reeves
– is being aired this Saturday on bb c 2 at nine oClock in the morning. I’m not sure whether it’s in 3D or HD, but I hope it is. It would be good to get the pirate’s hairy knees in high definition, plus the finer nuances of our smelly pirate song might be lost if it’s not in surround sound.

DAVE Gorman,
this is your last chance! If you want to collaborate with me in a surreal sketch show featuring my robot friends then you better get in touch with me now, because once this film is aired (featuring
David Walliams
and
Catherine Tate
no less, Mr Gorman) you’ll regret your choice to ignore my invitation! But when the film is showcased it’ll be too late for you to reconsider because then there will be a deluge of offers coming in from other comedians.

The 106th
Young’uns podcast
will be coming soon and will be an Itch of the Golden Nit special. It’s the only podcast that Itch of the Golden Nit fans need listen to. You’ll get all the important information about the film, in spite of the fact that we’ll more than certainly not be featuring an interview with any of the stars:
Miranda Haart,
Catherine Tate, David Walliams, Vic Reeves and the fact that I only remotely know some tiny detail about the thirty seconds that we feature in it. But it will be the best thirty seconds!

It’s strange to think that this will probably be my last blog post as an ordinary member of the public. From Saturday, everything will change. I might have been a bit optimistic about the Dave Gorman/thought for the day thing, but I’m certain about it this time. Saturday will be the first day of the rest of my life! See you on the other side.

The Young’uns Podcast 105 is here.
Click here to download
Click here to listen now.

This week’s Young’uns podcast is a bit of a rollercoaster. In the emotional sense: as the podcast will inevitably have a big build up, only to come suddenly crashing down, leaving you feeling a bit sick and sore. But in addition to that allegorical rollercoaster, we feature an actual rollercoaster on the podcast (so I hope you appreciate the brilliance of that opening sentence; It works on so many levels – a bit like a rollercoaster really.)
Good news Mr. Harding; the audio treats continue. Following on from the roaring – or rumbling – success of the stomach noises item, we take things to their logical conclusion and move on to snoring.
Michael Hughes makes a urinal based observation.
Our special folky guest is
Gavin Davenport.
We’ll be finding out what makes him tick – although we won’t be bringing you the audio of that ticking on this week’s podcast (maybe next time). and We’ll also hear a couple of songs from him.
The Young’uns are joined at the Gate to Southwell festival by Doctor Who and the Daleks.
It’s an unwritten rule (although that’s about to change because I’m about to write it) that the Young’uns must have at least one Indian meal at every festival or gig they do. This week is no exception, and so we bring you the first in a series of reports from an Indian restaurant.
So I hope that all that curries favour with you (and yes that was a deliberate pun).

An Addendum to my last post

As an addendum to my last blog post: it transpired the next day that the potted plant was a gift from Aisha’s flatmate’s boyfriend – not for Aisha, for his girlfriend, Aisha’s flatmate; the story doesn’t get that exciting. The man with the speech impairment was the delivery man, not Dave Gorman or a young gormanesque comedy upstart. I find this hugely disappointing as now I won’t be appearing on the telly as part of a new comedy programme. And I’d spent all last night preparing lines for the show.

My friend Aisha rang me last night in hysterics. She recounted the following tale, which I shall duly recount to you in blog form. If you want, you can recreate her recounting of the story fairly accurately by reading this out loud amongst constant girlish giggles. This is also an important director’s note in case radio 4 are thinking of turning this story into a miniplay. Once I’ve got my foot in the door at Thought for the Day HQ, there’ll be no stopping me. They might even decommission Bellowhead and get the Young’uns to record the Archers theme tune instead.

Anyway, there was a knock at Aisha’s front door. Upon answering, she was greeting by a man who seemingly had a severe speech impairment. He was making a few noises but was mainly attempting to communicate by making gestures with his hands. As Aisha is blind, these gestures didn’t enlighten her about what he was trying to say. She explained that she couldn’t see enough to interpret his gestures. He seemed perturbed by this, and for a moment he did nothing while he presumably reassessed the situation and devised a new method of communicating with her. However, after a few seconds, he resumed his noises and gestureings, only with added intensity, getting closer to her and frantically waving his hands in her face. She reciprocated by shouting louder at the man, repeating the fact that she couldn’t see him enough to work out what he was trying to communicate.

This is kind of similar to the stereotypical behaviour of an Englishman on holiday when trying to communicate with someone who speaks a different language to them.

“Do you speak English?”

“Je ne comprends pas, Desolé”.

“Dooooo, yooooooo, speeeeeeeek, iiiiiiinnnnngliiiiiiiish!!!!!!!”

I look forward to the day when Aliens come to earth to visit us, but hope they don’t land on British soil. It would be a tad embarrassing for the whole world – watching their TVs expectantly – to hear the British Prime Minister greet our new arrival by saying, “Do you speak English?”
The alien would probably respond with “Bllepy, beepy, bleep, beep bleep beep”, which of course means “I don’t understand, sorry”. The Prime Minister will then nobly step closer to the alien and shout while pointing wildly in front of its face. “Dooooo, yoooo, speeeeeek, iiiiiiingliiiiiiish!!!!!!!!!!!”
I look forward to radio 4 working with me to turn this hilarious idea into an award winning sketch on my new flagship comedy program. It would be handy for me if you could arrange a meeting about this when I’m in the building recording my Thought for the Day segment.

As expected then, this communication method did nothing to help the situation and after a few more seconds, Aisha and the man stopped their fruitless communication attempts while they considered their next move. They decided not to try the same method for a third time – getting even closer to each other’s face and shouting and pointing with even more intensity. Although if this was a sketch on Little Britain, it would of course go on like this for an entire series, with Aisha and the man having individual catchphrases that they would shout at the close of each episode’s sketch; although no one in the audience would understand the catchphrase of the man with the speech impairment, but the viewers will laugh anyway.

The next move that the man made took Aisha aback, and she was unable to compose herself in time to react. The man thrust something into her hands and then walked off. She stood there, holding the object. It was a potted plant. She stood with it for a few seconds, wondering what the heck was going on, but the man had already gone and so she couldn’t ask questions – not that she would understand his response anyway.

We postulated on what the whole thing had been about. The best theory I came up with was that it might have been an odd stunt as part of a new TV comedy show. Perhaps a comedian had decided to film himself doing something completely random to a person like knock on their door, point and shout nonsense in their faces and then hand them a potted plant before walking off. Perhaps he will return to her house the next day with a new gift. Maybe the sketch is based around a kind of anachronistic “partridge in a pair tree” motif. Each day, for the next twelve days, he will go to the same lady’s house and try to ingratiate himself with her by presenting her with random gifts. But there’s an extra layer of quirkiness to the whole comedian’s concept: his challenge is to do this without speaking; he must communicate solely with noises and gestures. Perhaps he was already aware that Aisha was blind and chose her especially, adding another layer of complexity to the comedian’s routine. Or perhaps the whole thing was a beautiful discovery which has added an inadvertent dimention to this comedian’s crazy idea. This is the kind of idea Dave Gorman might entertain, or possibly a Dave Gormanesque upstart. Perhaps one challenge is to see if this strange event will make it on to Google. Dave Gorman will be searching for words like “random potted plant incident” and “blind girl potted plant speech impaired man” in the hope of finding her interpretation of the story on her Facebook page, or maybe the story on a friend’s blog. Well hello Mr Gorman. I’m on to you. I know you’re reading this, and I know what I’m writing is being broadcast on TV, and so I might as well take this opportunity to alert you of the fact that my alien/Prime Minister comedy sketch is copyright, so don’t you even think about stealing it and pretending it’s your own!

I wonder what will happen next. Will Dave Gorman now focus his next random event on me, or is there yet another layer of complexity to this whole thing? Well I’m ready Mr Gorman! I’m ready for you if you come to my house, make a series of noises and gestures, then hand me an antique washing mangle before walking off into the distance to do a Google search for “man in Hartlepool antique washing mangle”. Be warned though, Mr Gorman, that I am also blind, and so you’d get the same kind of reaction to your gestures that you got with my friend, which may make for a rather repetitive show, unless you’re going for that Little Britain thing. I don’t mind though. If you want to come to my house and do some recording for your new TV program then I’m well up for it. I’ve prepared a few lines to spice it up a bit. But I won’t be happy if I see my alien/Prime Minister sketch on the TV or if I hear you on Thought for the Day talking about racist women on busses!

Two women sitting on a bus: one woman said to the other woman (this isn’t a joke by the way, I don’t want to raise your hopes; this happened on the bus a few minutes ago) “You’ll never guess what I did today”. The other woman started to speak but the first woman cut across her and proceeded to tell her what she had done today, which in my book is cheating. She didn’t even get a chance to guess. Dirty tactics! So I assume she was merely using the phrase “you’ll never guess what I did today” without really thinking about it in any particular detail. Well I’m not the kind of person to let her get away with that sort of phraseological frittering, and now I’ve mentioned this woman’s lazy figure of speech in my blog; that’ll show her! Anyway, if I keep on analysing her whole conversation in as much detail as I have done so far then this blog post will be never ending (to use a lazy figure of speech, because of course it will end. If nothing else, I will die and then it will have to end. Unless I can produce offspring who will continue the blog post after I’m gone, but even then it must, at some point, come to an end. And anyway, what woman would want to enter into a relationship and reproduce with a man who’s unyielding obsessive preoccupation is to maintain a constant, never ending banal blog post. So yes, the post must end at some point. Religious fanatics may make fruitless predictions about when the post’s end will come, but they will inevitably claim that they merely miscalculated when it doesn’t actually happen at the time they’d specified. You’d have thought that before making such a bold prediction and trumpeting it in the media, he would have asked a friend to check his sums to save him all that embarrassment. O yeah, I just did some satire all over your arse – in case you were wondering what that queazy feeling was. But yes, this blog post must end at some point).

The content of the woman’s day was not particularly interesting; not when you compare it to her opening line which has resulted in over 200 words of analysis.

She was talking about a conversation she’d had with a group of girls who she’d just met that day. The anecdote took the form of: “Then one girl said” … “and another girl said …” “and then another girl said …” and so on. This went on for a while and I was beginning to lose interest in this stranger’s tale. But then she said “and then, this coloured girl said …”. Why did she feel the need to specify that this girl was “coloured”. All the other girls had just been described as “a girl”, but this woman obviously felt the need to mention that this particular girl who said this particular thing was “coloured”. The fact that she was “coloured” had no baring on what the girl had said from what I could tell. The whole conversation between these girls sounded dull. All the girls in the conversation were saying dull things, as was “this coloured girl”. It wasn’t even as if “this coloured girl” had said anything illuminating which changed the course of the conversation. She was just as dull as the rest of the girls, who I assume must have all been white, otherwise why make the distinction?

When the second woman heard the first woman say what “this coloured girl” had said, she made a noise that gave the impression that she also thought that the fact that this girl was “coloured” added another dimension to the bland story.

What does she mean by “coloured” anyway? Presumably someone who isn’t white. But why “coloured?” Surely i, as a white man, can be labeled as “coloured” just as readily as a person with a different skin colour to mine?

I remember a poem that a teacher read during a primary school assembly which made this very point:

“When I was born, I was black.
When I grew up, I was black.
When I get hot, I am black.
When I get cold, I am black.
When I am sick, I am black.
When I die, I am black.

When you were born, You were pink.
When you grew up, You were white.
When you get hot, You go red.
When you get cold, You go blue.
When you are sick, You go purple.
When you die, You go green.

AND YET YOU HAVE THE CHEEK TO CALL ME COLOURED!!!”

So there you go. Surely this blog post is a contender for a Thought of the Day item on radio 4’s Today program? at the very least I should get an appearance on Pause for Thought on radio 2. I’ll edit it a bit so it’s radio friendly; take out the more rambly parts and the word arse, and then once that’s done it’ll be a poignant, socially observant item, perfect for sentimental radio features like Thought for the day or Pause for Thought.

THE END!

The new summer series of the Young’uns podcast is here:

This week, we speak to Michael Hughes as he gets his feet eaten by fish; Mike shamelessly flirts with a woman cooking bacon just to get an extra rasher; we attempt an interview with a none-moving statue; are the Young’uns gay? We reveal all – possibly to each other. Plus: an escaping infirm cat, stomach noises and top tips for perverts. “But what about the folk?” (Well, if you insist.) There’s also recorded material taken from the Young’uns at Hardraw, Liverpool and Peterborough.

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