Archive for the ‘Insomniac’ Category
The Small World of the Web
And slinging mud at comedians.
Over recent weeks, there have been a couple of cases of comedians that I’m following on Twitter getting a bit of a negative press. Well, I say press, but I haven’t read any of this on paper, and strictly speaking, the most recent isn’t really the press anyway, but a website, catering specifically to those interested in comedy.
Firstly, Richard Herring was interviewed, quoted and discussed in a Guardian article about a new breed of bigoted, misogynist and/or racist , and as far as Mr. Herring and his fans were concerned the man and his material were misrepresented in that last category, possibly even shoehorned to fit an agenda that came before the writing of the piece. The Guardian gave a right to reply, so a rebuttal was printed (Brendan Burns was also involved, but I don’t follow him, hence not mentioning him earlier). A further reply from the writer of the original article, and things had run their course. Whatever you might think of the articles themselves, I don’t think there can be much doubt that the commenters on all three pieces came down firmly behind Herring.
In the middle I think there was a scathing piece written about Stephen Fry, the darling of Twitter, but I haven’t read that, and I guess with the man reaching National Treasure status, it was more easily ignored and brushed aside by Fry fans.
And so we come to the current furore, which hasn’t fully played out yet, unless the writer of the original piece in this case leaves things as they are and doesn’t follow up on this rather quicker rebuttal. David Jesudason wrote a piece on chortle.co.uk titled ‘Off the artistic roll call‘, in which he took Watson to task for taking money to be in an advert. An additional swipe was aimed at Mitchell and Webb, though mainly Webb, for the same, plus a documentary voicover. There was also a claim to not want ‘a world where every comedian is a Bill Hicks-style clone’, (which rang fairly hollow in the context of the article), and a statement that the role of the comedian ‘is to highlight the ills of our society’.
In my opinion, a fairly nonsensical piece, easily dismissed as silly, but then it wasn’t about me. And in this connected age, on a site dedicated to comedy, it wasn’t overly surprising to see a reply from Mark Watson himself within a couple of days. In fact the two would have been together in the Chortle articles list if it hadn’t been for an additional reply from Carl Donnelly separating them.
He points out the obvious, that a comedians job is to make people laugh, and that highlighting the ills of society is the job of activists. I’d add that it’s the job of investigative journalists too, which puts Mr Jesudason very much in a glass house/stone throwing situation.
As an incurable insomniac, I had tweetdeck open through the night, and then into the day today, and was able to follow some of the ‘action’ in real time. This is obviously something that didn’t happen in the past.
Say, Frank Carson had had a negative article written about him in the 80s, he may have been able to get a reply of some sort printed, though I doubt it. That would be it. Article, reply, end. Maybe a dig in a routine somewhere along the way, particularly if that right to reply wasn’t forthcoming.
Now though, you can in some cases follow the process as well as see the outcomes. On twitter last night, Mark Watson linked to the offending article, and had a bit of a rant, and in fact with his last tweet of the night, thanked his followers for indulging his ranting. Of course that begs the question, why write and publish the rebuttal on chortle then? The Jesudason piece was likely to get short shrift from Watson fans in particular, and any comedy fan that hadn’t pigeonholed themself in the ‘Agit-com or Death!’ camp.
Which is another parallel here. I know it’s not quite the same as comments in the Mail (the downside of twitter for me, people link to the Mail as if it’s news, without any disclaimers or warnings), but the authors of the offending articles have been rounded on in a similar mob rule fashion. I don’t have a lot of sympathy with the specific articles in these cases, but that may just mean they fucked up. Hardly unusual. I actually have a little more sympathy for them after writing this, as evenhandedness is like a writing equivalent of a straight-jacket. I guess how you deal with adversity is what gets you through when you hit a rough patch. The reply from Brian Logan was a bit limp in the Richard Herring case, and as yet we don’t know how Mr Jesudason will follow up on this, if at all.
Anyway, enough of these petty squabbles. What about synchronicity? Through the night, while twitter was all quiet, I was organising my writing folder on the computer as the previous folder set up was an illogical mess, and as part of the job I copied the few posts I’d written in a blogger.com blog last year into documents so I had copies on my machine. While I was at it, I checked up on the blogs I’d subscribed to over the last year or so, one of which is a very funny football news blog – Extravagant Nonsense (the other is the cutest thing I’ve seen on the web – The Itty Bitty Kitty Committee).
The football blog regularly had me laughing, so I decided to have a look at the main site it was attached to, which is an equally funny spoof wiki about the beautiful game. The Michael Owen, Roy Keane and Maradona entries were particular favourites, though I noticed they were missing a Nick Barmby page, and wondered if they might be up for submitted pages. Quick look around at who’s who, and part of the team is only our good friend Mark Watson! Who’d have thunk.
So then with my hopeful hat on, I can see myself drinking and laughing with the rich, famous and beautiful people that I’m now best mates with having got to know them over the internet. Potential contributor and spelling advisor to Mark on his football sites, through the night insomniac twitter confidant to @Jason_Manford…
Nope, hugely wishful thinking there, and single reply tweets from John Amaechi and Curt Smith are hardly going to give me red carpet entry to the novel writing elite either are they? Ditto the odd retweeted #tag tweetgamepost (?).
I’ll just have to make sure that by the time I’ve finished it, my novel is at least a bit commercial. Mind you, this reality TV style tweetdeck watching and blog rambling isn’t getting that novel written at all. And those #tags too. Dammit.
I’ve never been one for getting overly excited by meeting the famous. There were opportunities when I was in bands, and most of the time I didn’t bother at all. But the illusion of connecting over the web can be oddly attractive. The old who you know game, though now it’s who you’re kidding yourself you know.
Most likely reaction from any of these people to submitting work is likely to match that of Josh Olson: ‘I Will Not Read Your Fucking Script‘.
