Category: Other

I landed at around 10am, still dressed in the Canadian tuxedo I had worn to work the day before. I had one bag with me, hanging off one shoulder, full of what my friends call “Bastard shirts” – hideously glorious short sleeved Hawaiian-style tops. I also had toothpaste and some cotton buds so I was ready to party.

My driver (and yes, I feel like a total wanker saying that), Manish, was waiting for me in the arrivals hall. We went out to his car and started out on the worst buddy road trip movie of all time. He told me about his family and asked why I wasn’t married. I kept my sunglasses on to avoid eye contact and his questions. Driving around Delhi is like letting a toddler play Scaletrix.

In Agra, he left me with Naseem, my guide for the Taj Mahal. Naseem convinced me to jump the queue for tickets and then jump the queue for security. We approached the Taj and I was pleased that it was just as awe-inspiring as I had hoped it would be.

“Look at those arseholes” I said, pointing out a row of people with their hands outstretched like cranes, trying to get the shot that made them look like they were pinching the top of the tomb. Obviously, Naseem made me strike the same pose.

We then jumped that massive queue you can see in the background to go inside. People glared at me. The maddest thing about it is how balanced everything was. The place was perfect and white and the symmetry was too much for my eyes.

Inside, the rooms were hexagonal. Naseem mentioned something about milk and honey but I just thought of A A Milne so have no idea what he meant. He took a cool photo of me which has PPP (potential profile pic) written all over it.

I felt very white. To assist me in my whiteness, people queued up and asked to have photos with me. Understandably, my ego loved it. Look how much this small boy appreciates me. Do you appreciate me like this?

We took a series of awkward photos and then I headed off, telling them to make sure they told everyone they knew what a total rock star from Mars I am.

On the way out, Naseem made me stand in particular spots so I could see the Taj from a distance against the entry gate. There’s an optical illusion where it looks like it walks towards you as you walk away. I was reminded of a Magic Eye puzzle.

Manish picked me up and told me he wanted to show me some of the marble cutters who still worked with the same tools used on the Taj, 500 years later. I was taken into a workshop and this older guy with a moustache (there are a lot of great moustaches in India) took me through the process while two kids beside him handmade these intricate designs of precious stones cut on a lathe and set into flower shapes in slabs of marble. I was then taken into the back room where there were stacks of these beautiful marble plates and tables and elephants. They served me chai and the guy kept going on about how great marble is and how hard they work.

He is proper into this marble I thought to myself. Then he started trying to get me to commit to buying a £200 marble chopping board that he said they could Fedex to me when I said I didn’t have room and wasn’t carting that around. It had gone from a history lesson to a sales call. We debated it back and forth until instead of spending the cost of my return flight on a plate, I bought a wee wooden Ganesh for a fiver. Everyone was happy. I skipped back to the car and Manish drove me back to Delhi where I was staying at the Royal Plaza, a hotel so swanky that they locked the minibar before I arrived. I had to smash open a couple of off license Kingfishers on the bathroom unit. I slept like a corpse.

This week I have seen a number of posts from people celebrating their personal wins for the year so far. I know I have made similar highlight-type posts in time gone by about my personal achievements for a given period. Due to personal circumstances, it hit me this time around that it’s ok if you can’t pick out anything in particular to show for any given amount of time.
I have spent much of this year just trying to stay afloat. It’s hard in the like-frenzy social-media world of 2018 not to feel like you are constantly missing out on something, or failing to “live your best life”. I suffer from both FOMO (fear of missing out) and FOTP (fear of taking part).

To be honest, I’m just glad I am here. I’ve had a couple of real mental health dips this year.

I guess my point is that time is a construct of man, that you don’t have to compare yourself to anyone else and you have achieved enough just by being here and being yourself.
In the words of the world’s worst Prince cover band “Nothing else matters”.
In the words of vegetarian gammon, Morrissey, “it’s a miracle I even made it this far”.
In the words of the man I wish would be my best friend Matt Haig – “When anger trawls the internet, Looking for a hook; It’s time to disconnect, And go and read a book.”

I’m struggling to commit to editing at the moment. The whole thing feels like a lot of hard work, which is probably because it is. I know that I’ll get to it in my own good mystical time but for now I just need to get the words out of my head and onto the page about how I feel at this exact moment in time.

I asked a lot of people if they would be able to review the opening three chapters and the response was overwhelming. I’ve now had five different opinions and it’s all a bit overwhelming. I love writing . I hate editing. There’s so much more creativity and room when you initially put something down. It’s when you’re trying to make sense of it for anyone else that it suddenly becomes a lot harder to formulate and control. All the little asides and changes that you think make sense to you no longer make sense to anyone else and you find yourself justifying it and trying to capture what it is you thought was there in the first place.
In the cold light of day, they are right. They want what is best and they’re offering something whole and good in their opinion.

So thank you to you all, I am taking it all on board and trying to become a better writer and create the best novel possible as a result of your input. It is very much appreciated and we are all working towards this becoming something special.

I’m at an age where I go to a lot of weddings. It seems to me that everything is currently doing the wedding thing. My right arm is constantly hooked, ready for another glass of champagne, another toast to another happy couple.
That’s why it’s pretty impressive if a wedding goes above and beyond.

This week I was lucky enough to be invited to the wedding of two of my best friends. I knew them both separately before they became a couple and then I had the pleasure of knowing them when they were together.
Watching them read their vows to each other in a clearing in a woods brought me to tears. Hearing their heartfelt and brilliantly funny speeches bring the house down brought me to tears. I wasn’t even drinking but I spent a lot of time crying.

I guess what I’m trying to say is that if you have found someone that you care about and want to be with more of the time than not then you are fucking lucky and you should hold onto them in this storm.
I’m in a personal period of reflection and this is unusually sappy for me but love can be great.

Yesterday morning I was getting coffee. This is not news.

I turned from the counter and bumped into a girl. I had not seen her there and I had also not seen her in two years.
Let me take you back. Fathom this out.

Three years ago, I trekked the Grand Canyon for charity (don’t like to talk about it).
Of the new people that I met, it was clear that there were maybe three who I really hit it off with. One of them was this girl who I would bump into in Monmouth on a Tuesday morning in 2018.

For a year after the trek we were the best of friends. She would leave these brilliant, rambling voice notes on my phone and I would have to return them despite the fact it wasn’t my preference. Regardless of what you may think, I do not just like the sound of my own voice. At some point towards the end of that year of friendship we had a stupid falling out and I think she told me to fuck off and we hadn’t spoken since.

The point is, don’t let some stupid thing get in the way of being around the people who are good to you. Good people are hard to find.

Can we all just take a moment to appreciate George Harrison?

I’m sat watching Living in the Material World for the I-don’t-know-how-many-th time and I just adore him and everything that he was about. What an incredible talent and a great man.

Last weekend, in a move that can only be described as ‘trying to find material for a book’, I went to Amsterdam with my dad and two brothers. It was Father’s Day and he’s also due to get married in August so it was a joint stag/Father’s Day treat for him. The greatest joy was in the fact he had no idea what we were doing or where we were going.

Without his knowledge, I broke into his house and stole a series of polo shirts, his passport and a toothbrush. Then we arranged to pick him up at six in the morning and took him to the airport. Then I remembered that he hates flying and usually pops a couple of valium before take off.

We had a weekend. I can’t say if it was great or not but it was certainly a weekend. The bulletpoint highlights are the following:

• Dad ordering a cappuccino in every coffee shop we went to
• Getting turned away from the only cultural thing we had planned because we hadn’t booked tickets
• Watching my dad’s horrified face when I showed him our AirBnB (he slept fully clothed with his passport in his pants)
• Waiting forever for everyone to be ready to do anything
• Learning where “the line” was in my relationship with my father
• Spending some solid time with my dad and my brothers

We are all getting older. We are all doing our own things so it takes something special for the four of us to be together. It was great to see my old man out of his comfort zone and to treat him like the princess he is. Can’t wait for his second stag.

Here are the photo highlights:

I didn’t know Anthony Bourdain.
I don’t claim to.
I can’t imagine what his friends and family have been going through in the last couple of weeks.

It just served as a reminder that despite having the life that a lot of us are striving towards, ithe black dog doesn’t stop barking at the door.

Bourdain was cool. A friend recently described him as a culinary Hunter Thompson. I don’t know how either would feel about the comparison aside from the obvious, that they were gifted and that they made the decision to take their own lives.

I’m not going to dwell on the man much because it’s not my place to but he had a heart and a spirit that I greatly admired. He traveled, he ate and he wrote. I looked up to him as someone who was closely linked to the life I most wanted to live. He celebrated what it was to live fully and to embrace other cultures. He made no attempt to pretend to understand anything he didn’t and listened and engaged with others. He seemed cool, punk as fuck and very kind.

I’ll be spending the next couple of weeks working my way through everything I can read or watch about him and remembering a man who broke the mold.

Thank you Anthony.

Last week I got to enjoy the intoxicating scent of a pre-show toilet freak out. For any of you who have followed my ridiculous antics for a while, you’ll know this is part of my process before I take to the stage. This time it was for my return to improvised comedy. I haven’t taken part in improv for almost four years after it became a SFZ in late 2014. I’ve got to say, it was great to be back.

I first got into it after I was tricked. My friend Danny convinced me it would be good for my confidence and that there was no obligation to do anything outside of my comfort zone. I’m sure he was entirely aware that existing is outside of my comfort zone, but I persisted. On our first night at the class we were told we would be doing ten weeks of the course before a showcase in Southend. I stared at Danny, hard. He smirked.

I have met some of the most incredible friends through improv. It takes a certain kind of person to wish that kind of panic-inducing fresh hell upon themselves and, as it turns out, they’re the kind of people I want to be around. There’s a wonderful supportive network of individuals waiting.

I’ve come a long way from that first show but it hasn’t changed the absolute terror that grips me in the half an hour before I am due onstage. I’ve been told that I appeared to be drinking desperately at the side of the stage, not just before, but during the show. I think I managed to fathom my way through it all. I made jokes about topics I would not usually touch with a bargepole, the whole time supported by Lee, John and four new improv friends.

It might make me more uncomfortable than when a friend’s mum hits on me but it is a great form of discomfort.

I’ll be shaking my little tush again this Saturday but Laughter Academy showcases are on from Wednesday to Sunday this week.

Photos by Clarissa Debenham.

Last night I was lucky enough to see Young Frankenstein at the Garrick Theatre and I cannot recommend it highly enough.

I grew up on a steady diet of Mel Brooks films so was naturally drawn to the news that it was on in the west end. I have only just discovered that it has been around and on Broadway for more than a decade. We only received it in the UK in October, so I don’t feel quite as guilty.
It managed to perfectly balance everything about the 1974 film that I knew and loved with a host of new songs and gags thrown in. I came to Young Frankenstein via my grandparents, who told me that it was one of the best films of all time. They were not wrong. They were never wrong.

I think my favourite moment, even knowing exactly what to expect and how every beat of it would go, was Puttin’ On The Ritz. It’s a slice of brilliance that only Mel Brooks could ever pull off. It’s daft but so clever. It’s wise and beautifully orchestrated but ridiculous.

If you get the opportunity then I definitely recommend seeing it while you can. It’s the best thing I’ve seen since Springtime for Hitler.