What you'll be hearing in 2007

After banging on about his debut single about a week ago I've managed to get my sticky little hands on a copy of the album. The hype machine is out in force and all the magazines have tipped him for 2007 but does the album live up to all the fuss?

The album mixes disco pop with the MOR of Seventies singer-songwriter's retooled for the 21st Century. There are a couple of throbbing, thumping party records here that show Mika could happily fill in for Scissor Sisters if they fancy a break. Mika has a great, elastic voice and knows his way around a piano. He also fills his songs with a natural humour and playfullness and everything here sparkles under production gloss.

The trouble is that "Life in Cartoon Motion" is all a bit superficial. After a while the sonic squiggles and vocal pyrotechinics begin to sound a bit hollow. Beneath the flash and finesse there isn't a lot to hold onto. Mika could use some earthy substance to ground all the leafy splendour.

Still, and I hate to sound fatalistic about this, like him or loath him you will be hearing Mika everywhere this year. I guess you might as well get used to it.

Someone likes Herring

Last night comedian Richard Herring followed in the footsteps of his former double act partner Stewart Lee by coming to the Chapter House arts centre in Cardiff to record his first live DVD. It was to be the last ever performance of his 2005 Edinborough show Someone Likes Yoghurt. Before writing this show Herring had shied away from standup for thirteen years, he admits in the programme that he didn't feel he was cut out for solo stand up comedy, preferring to have someone to bounce off of.

It's true that Herring lacks the natural charisma of Bill Hicks or indeed Stewart Lee but he has a way with words and an easy charm to his delivery that keeps the audience onside even with potentially risky material. He claims the show is about opening closed lines of thought and making people question everything. Certainly he deals with difficult subjects, with one routine about the Pope's death spiralling into an hilarious expose of the Church's hypocrisies.

That said, Herring is at his best with misdirected anger and the misguided satirical barbs at the trivial or mundane. Such as tearing apart the theme tune from Magpie, "In what some might call, 'far too much detail.'" Or else courting faux-controversy, "I don't care what you think, I think Jesus is better than Hitler".

It's a long set and Herring thrives on taking a slender comic idea and stretching it to breaking point, almost willing his audience to lose patience, but stick with it and there is reward enough along the way. The one low point is an overlong section on monkey-fucking, if only because the subject has inexplicably been done to death these past few years.

Not everyone will warm to Herring's rambling, obsessive style but this was a fine show. Although he wont be performing it live again the DVD will be available at some point through the www.gofasterstripe.com website, where you can still find Stewart Lee's fantastic 90's Comedian DVD. In the mean time, Herring will be touring his Menage a Un show up and down the country so keep an eye out at your local venues or check the gig guide at www.richardherring.com.

Mika: Grace Kelly

Queen, as anyone's dad will tell you, were a great band. They had a great drummer, a great guitarist, the prerequisite boring bass player and in Freddie Mercury a brilliant, flamboyant showman of a singer. The trouble is that Queen didn't have a whole lot of credibility. Their pop sensibility and dertermination to dress up and look like they were enjoying themselves means that even today rockers and indie bands shy away from mentioning Queen as an influence. The efforts of The Darkness didn't help.

Luckily, pop stars don't go in for all that moody, artless authenticity and thanks to them we get to listen to dizzy, silly pop songs like Grace Kelly which marries all the best bits about queen-the flamboyance, the soaring tune, the energy-with a very silly lyric.

Mika doesn't try to hide that he sounds a lot like Freddie too, which is really no bad thing. In the Youtube clip above you can hear Grace Kelly for yourself. Although it is possible that that is not the official video. If his other songs approach this standard, I would be promising big things for Mika this year, even if I didn't already know about the big publicity machine gearing up behind him.

Tiny UK

I have written a sketch and wanted to get some opinion on it. I think it is edgy and dark and different and gloriously un-PC.


It is a sketch to be performed by two people. One of them should be tall, thin and camp. The other should be short, fat and bald. They are not, I repeat, NOT Matt Lucas and David Walliams and you would be very wrong to jump to that conclusion. Although now that I think of it I suppose there is a passing resemblance...

Anyway, Davi...I mean the tall one plays a policeman who likes dressing up in women's clothing. There aren't any other people living locally who enjoy doing the same. In fact he is certainly the only transvestite in the area.

The short, fat one plays a detective inspector who doesn't like to see any of his PCs behaving in a manner that he considers, 'a bit pouffy'. In fact if he does see such a thing he reacts in a way that involves bodily functions and hilarious consequences.

Please take a look, excuse the poor layout, I'm not used to scriptwriting:




V/O: It's a saturday, and in the small village of Coventry City On The Wold local policeman PC Trousers is doing what he does every weekend, dressing up in women's clothing.

(We see PC Mandy Trousers mincing down the high street, he is wearing full make up and a girl guide uniform. Pigtails protrude from underneath an old fashioned police helmet.)

Shop Keeper: Morning PC Trousers!

PC Trousers: Good morning, my name is mandy!

Old lady: Good morning constable.

PC Trousers: Good morning, my name is Mandy!

Mother and small child: Good morning.

PC Trousers: Good morning, My name is Mandy!

Detective inspector Kettle: (distractedly) Good morning constable.

PC Trousers: Good morning, my name is Mandy!

DI Kettle: (realising what he has just seen) Wait a minute!

(PC Trousers looks sheepish as DI Kettle suddenly looks really angry at the constable's 'pouffy' clothing. There is a long, loud farting noise and we see a brown stain starting to spread across the seat of DI Kettle's trousers.

We then cut to a HILARIOUS close-up of runny shit falling out of the bottom of DI Kettle's trouser leg. Shoper keeper REACTS, old lady REACTS, PC Trousers REACTS, young woman REACTS, small child bursts into tears. DI Kettle looks sheepish.

The studio audience begins to boo and hiss loudly, PC Trousers sidles over towards DI Kettle.)

PC Trousers: (whispering) Do you ever think that we are taking large amounts of public goodwill and just slowly pissing it up the wall?

DI Kettle: Shut up! I spent a whole afternoon writing this series!

(the pair look towards the camera and smile sheepishly to renewed booing. In the background at the edge of frame a ginger haired woman can be seen taking notes. Fade to black)




Well, that's it. It's not for me to comment of course but I don't think groundbreaking is too strong a word. It's about time people started taking transvestites seriously in comedy as well as employing irony and being gloriously un PC! Also, you can see how I've explored the comedy of embaressement about shitting yourself in public. We've all been there, right? I have tried to avoid putting any actual wordplay or 'jokes' in it as that sort of thing can alienate viewers who dont really like comedy or thinking.

I certainly feel that this sort of thing could sell a lot of T-shirts and scriptbooks, which is after all what comedy is all about.

Telly Listings

Friday night
Channel 4

8.30: Celebrity Big Brother
A bunch of people fuck about in a house. You might recognise some of them.

9.30: Ugly Betty
Comedy drama about an unnatractive young woman hired to star in a telvision show, much to the shock of her fellow employees, until the execs get cold feet and recast the role with a pretty girl in braces and comedy glasses.

10.30: Celebrity Big Brother
One of the people you may or may not have recognised earlier is interviewed by Davina Macall. Who had that chatshow on the BBC? Remember? She doesn't have to do this job you know? She's got plenty of money. So just be grateful, that's all.

11.05: The Friday Night Project
One very camp man and one very hairy man attempt to prove that being gay/from-the-west-country is hilarious in and of itself and that actual decent material is not needed. They fail repeatedly. Meanwhile a celebrity guest hopes that 'being a good sport' makes up for previously mentioned lack of decent material. It doesn't.


If I believed in God I'd be thanking him for DVDs right now.