Bruce Dickinson - What does this button do?

 I never liked Iron Maiden.  I just never for into them. I liked lots of other heavy metal stuff over the years but Iron Maiden just never floated my boat.  I think it's the way they dressed.  They just didn't do it for me.   I was never really a fan of Bruce Dickinson either.  I have vague memories of him messing about on the BBC Heavy Metal Heaven season in the eighties.  In retrospect he must have been channelling Spinal Tap.

I listen to audiobooks a lot.  When I'm commuting I like to use the time to do something and audiobooks seem efficient when I can't be bothered with music or the kindle. Using Audible you can often get an unexpected gem of a book for a couple of quid.

Which is how I found What does this button do?

Dickinson narrates his autobiography himself and he is funny.  He is very funny.  He doesn't take himself or anything else seriously.  Between his boarding school education, his adolescent interests and his general positive mental attitude this is a real feel good book.  He did very well with Iron Maiden and he became a pilot flying commercial airliners while on a break from music.  Eventually he was flying Iron Maiden around the world in 'Ed Force One',

He is, sadly, a 'Brexit wanker' although I do see that he has expressed dismay at the impact of Brexit on UK musicians which is good.  Thankfully we don't get any Brexit stuff in the book.  Just fencing, beer making and Spitfires.

He would be a better Prime Minister than the one we have.

The time I met Billy Connolly

I met Billy Connolly once, I think in summer 1997.  I was living in a scummy student flat just off of Great Western Road in Glasgow, near the botanic gardens.  I was with two of my pals, on the way to an immunology exam.  It was a sunny afternoon and as we turned the corner we bumped into Connolly coming out of a local chiropractors office.

We were of course delighted to meet him.  I think he was slightly less chuffed to meet us. We all expressed out affection for him.  I'd actually recently seen him do a show at the King's Theatre in Glasgow and I still had the ticket in my wallet.

I asked for an autograph, and the Big Yin, clearly grumpy and wanting to escape started making excuses about not having a pen.  I promptly pulled out a pen and a ticket and a signature was duly obtained.  I still have that ticket somewhere.  It's a treasured possession.  I feel a bit sorry for the bloke as he can't even walk down a street in Glasgow without being annoyed by a bunch of spotty students.

I really enjoyed the Made In Scotland documentaries that have been on over the past couple of weeks.  I've got a pile of his old vinyl LPs from the seventies and a few of his DVDs somewhere.  He's an inspiring guy.

I saw him live again at the Armadillo a few years back.  He was excellent again.  We are lucky to have lived at the same time as him.

Beastie Boys Book

I've been digesting the Beastie Boys Book for the last month or so.  It's amazing, disjointed and brilliant just like the band.  I've been listening to the audiobook due to my lack of free reading time.  It's one of the best audiobooks I've ever encountered.  They have invited a stellar cast of narrators including Snoop Doggy Dogg, Kim Gordon, Chuck D, Will Ferrell, Bette Midler and Steve Buscemi as well as many many others.

The narrative jumps about from their childhood, through early punk adventures, Bad Brains and Black Flag concerts, New York Discos, career low-points (Def Jam), clothing labels, recording with Lee Scratch Perry and lists of equipment, recipes and mix tapes.  Everything is in this book.

Much of the book is a tribute to Adam Yauch, MCA, who died in 2012 from parotid cancer.  His fellow Beastie Boys clearly and understandably miss him.  In some ways he appears to have been a pathfinder for the band and is credited as being the Beastie who made things happen.

The physical release is beautifully illustrated with photos and comics strips reminiscent of the old Grand Royale magazine from the 90s.  It's a thing of beauty but the audiobook is worth your time too.

A fitting legacy for a great band.  Sadly, I never saw them and I deeply regret it.  I am glad I had their music (and their music videos).

Stiffed by James Morrow

James Morrow is a retired consultant neurologist from Northern Ireland.  He did outstanding work in the field of epilepsy, particularly in his work looking at the effects of anti-epileptic drugs on pregnant women and their children.  He had to take early retirement when he developed autoimmune encephalitis and he wrote about his experience of this in Practical Neurology, a British neurology journal, a few years ago.

He has kept busy during his retirement and he has written a book, Stiffed, about the pharmaceutical industry and the various challenges it faces.  The book is a comedy crime novel in the vein of Chris Brookmyre and has a few unexpected twists and turns.

There is a palpable sense of reality to the book as Dr Morrow borrows details from his extensive medical career and work with the pharmaceutical industry.  I don't want to spoil things but there were a couple of sightly unexpected twists in the tale.

The text of the kindle edition could do with some additional proof reading but it's a good read.  I'd read another book by him.  Best novel by an eminent neurologist that I've read for some time.

30 years of Danzig

There is a Big Black concert recording that contains the immortal phrase 'no-one in the room may look Danzig in the eye'.  One controversial punk icon making a snide dig at the other.  Both larger than life figures who attracted controversy.  Both wrote songs about horror with humour in their music.  Both often ended up in physical confrontations with detractors.

There is notorious youtube footage of Danzig being knocked out with one punch (look here if you must).  In 1993 Danzig nearly got into a fight with a member of Def Leppard. This was not the one armed drummer as many suggested.  I think a lot of people wanted to beat up Albini too.

Still, I love Danzig.  I've loved his stuff since I first heard Last Caress/Green Hell on the $5.98 e.p. by Metallica when I was at primary school.  The stupid offensive lyrics and the swearing just got me.  After that I got a tape with Bullet on it and I was in love.  Misfits stuff was hard to find but the first Misfits collection LP was well circulated in the west of Scotland in the '80s.

The Misfits were stupid fun horror punk.  Danzig sang with great passion about the emotional struggles of horror film monsters and other gory subjects.  The energy of the music with the lyrics of songs like Bullet or Attitude were just electrifying.  As a 12 year old I had no idea what the lyrics of Bullet meant.  Reading them now, at the age of 40, I'm still bemused.  If I had the chance I'd love to ask Danzig about them.

The Misfits are not the whole story.  The band Danzig, fronted by Danzig, were superb.  The first album I heard was Danzig II: Lucifuge.  I've been listening to it today.  It's still fucking great.  I'm not sure why they had to lose the original Doors homage cover.  It was a bit homoerotic.  They probably got sued.

Danzig was Danzig trying to be Jim Morrison with a dash of Elvis.  It was metal but blues.  The songs were still fucking ridiculous with Danzig worrying about being a werewolf or some shit like that but it rocked.  It rocked like little else.  It really wasn't cool but it didn't suck.

At this point I must make it clear that I had little access to MTV as a kid.  I've only seen the video for She Rides recently and as a fairly PC, hardcore punk morally puritanical teenager I might have been put off by the blatant sexism and exploitation of this video.  As an adult I just shake my head and sigh.  Danzig was trying to be sexy.  I'm not really convinced he was.

I'm really excited that I've got tickets to see Danzig when he plays Glasgow later this year.  He last played in 1991 when I was just a bit too young to see him.  I did see the Danzig-less Misfits a few times but they could never top the real deal.

When Danzig was young he wanted be a comic book artist.  Indeed, he did have his own line of horror/soft core porn comics called Verotik at one point.  They were kind of stupid, like many of his songs.  My University flat mate was an even bigger Misfits fan than me and he had a few.  Danzig also got famous comic artists like Simon Bisley to do covers for his records and draw his comics.  I used to like Bisley till I met him and he proved himself to be an objectionable twat.  I think I asked him if he knew Danzig.

I met the band Slint once.  I love Spiderland.  I got to talk to David Pajo who actually recorded a solo album of Misfits stuff and all I could ask him was 'you know Danzig, don't you?';  I was a bit drunk.  But Danzig is interesting.

Musically I sort of lost touch with Danzig after Black Acid Devil.  He tried to become Nine Inch Nails or Ministry and he failed.  He has made a few decent records since then but he doesn't get much exposure anymore.  He has also starred in a few slash-fiction comic books focusing about his fictional romantic partnership with Henry Rollins.  Rollins enjoys these comics.  I suspect that Danzig does not.

I love Danzig but it's a complicated relationship.

I just wish he would re-issue the Samhain box set.

Inspector Hobbes and the Blood by Wilkie Martin

Sometimes I like mild amusing books that don't require much thought. I like reading but sometimes I just want to unwind with a book.  I used to enjoy Terry Pratchett and Douglas Adams and similar slightly skewed nonsense books with a dash of the impossible.  Wilkie Martin, whilst not (yet) up there with those great departed authors, is ploughing a similar furrow.

Hobbes is an interesting mix of old fashioned police officer, detective and slightly otherworldly person.  He has his tongue firmly in his cheek for most of the story and he is a figure of mystery.  The book has an unreliable and often misguided narrator who doesn't always know what is going on, standing in the corner, often quaking with fear as the animalistic Hobbes deals with crime in a unique manner.

Other strange characters inhabit the novel including Mrs Goodfellow, the house keeper, a ferocious black dog, a pair of ghouls, some Roman happenings and a troll.

There is more to be revealed about this world and I'll keep up with Wilkie Martin and the Unhuman book series.

South Park - The Fractured But Whole

I've never been too big on computer games but I love South Park.  A few years ago I bought a PS3 to play The Stick Of Truth and more recently I've purchased a PS4 for the Fractured But Whole.  I didn't realise that the name was a pun until someone pointed it out to me.

The new game is a South Park take on superhero franchise movies with two opposing teams of costumed vigilantes led by Cartman (the Coon) and Timmy (Doctor Timothy).  There is a main story to play with a funny story as well as a lot of easter eggs and side quests. I'm really crap at computer games and I managed to complete the main storyline after about 27 hours of game play.

The game is like an extended South Park film with you as the star.  As the New Kid you come to town, try to make friends and solve problems.  The special moves are great, the fighting is fairly easy and at one point you take on Morgan Freeman.

There will be a season pass with additional game content that I'm looking out for.  Hope they make another in due course

Podcasts

Over the past few years I've started listening to a lot of Podcasts.  I always liked listening to the radio although I didn't always find the broadcast shows to be very exciting.  Podcasts are homemade radio shows that you can download and listen to at a time that suits you.  They also often cover more offbeat or esoteric subjects that appeal to me.

Mostly I listen to real life mystery podcasts, American political podcasts (mainly ones about Trump), Twin Peaks related podcasts and comic book podcasts.  And the Private Eye podcasts.

One of the first mystery style I started to listen to was Thinking Sideways - in this podcast three presenters take turns to present a mystery every week and discuss various theories on what went on.  The first episode that I listened to was on the 'Glasgow effect'.

Another slightly more fantastical podcast that I enjoy is Astonishing Legends - this podcast goes into strange tales in a great degree of detail.  They exude an X-Files type vibe and they are often rather credulous but the production values are good and I enjoy the shows.

From a comic book point of view Fatman on Batman produced by Clerks director Kevin Smith as part of his Smodcast empire is a good starting point (if you like Batman).  The early episodes in the archive are great, often focusing on individual comic book writers or artists and Batman related stuff. More recently the podcast has developed into a general forum for discussion of sic-fi, superheroes and anything Smith wants to talk about.

The Stuff You Should Know network has several good podcasts including Stuff They Don't Want You To Know and Stuff to Blow Your Mind (both of which have a sort of counterculture vibe) as well as the more mainstream, flagship Stuff You Should Know series.  All of these are fairly interesting.

In terms of Trump bashing Trumpcast is fairly funny and a good place to start.  The Pod Save America team have more White House connections and often have serious guests on to interview although they are often pretty funny too.

No Such Thing As A Fish  was one of the first podcasts I listened to, a spin off from the BBC QI series, where strange facts are discussed in an amusing manner every week.  It's good for a smile every now and again.

There are many more podcasts to check out - a few more are below
Page 94 - The Private Eye Podcast
The 2000AD Progcast - some great 2000AD chat
The Politico Nerdcast
A Twin Peaks Podcast

Enjoy

Twin Peaks - The Return

The revival of Twin Peaks has been rather exciting for me.  I've gone to fairly extreme lengths to try and see it on a weekly basis and overall it has been pretty satisfying.  As a teenager I watched the original Twin Peaks as it was broadcast on BBC2.  It fascinated me back then.  I think I'd already seen a couple of Lynch films by then and I did my best to see a lot of his other work after that.

The original Twin Peaks finished on a cliff hanger, with Agent Cooper trapped in another detention while his evil doppelgänger, possessed by the evil BOB entity, smashing his head into a mirror.

The show finished and was followed by the Fire Walk With Me film that was a bit of a box office flop.  Last year Mark Frost released a great book called 'The Secret History of Twin Peaks' that added a lot of colour and richness to the Twin Peaks universe without giving away much about the new series.  The book served to whet my appetite for new Twin Peaks.  I was not disappointed.

Lynch is a pretty unique film maker.  His work, from Eraserhead on, is different.  He views the world in a different ways and he expresses himself differently.  In Twin Peak - The Return (TPTR from now on) he has been able to run riot with his creative urges.  The initial 2 hours of the series had little relevance to what had happened before although TPTR is a direct continuation of the original storyline.  Lynch will let scenes run for longer than many film makers would tolerate, creating new and different rhythms in his work.  His use of sound is creative and his solutions for replacing actors who are no longer available (for a variety of reasons) are novel to say the least.  One actor he has fallen out with has been replaced with a talking silver christmas tree and the character of Philip Jeffries, played in the Fire Walk With Me (FWWM) film by David Bowie, was portrayed by a giant talking kettle (with the approval of Bowie before he died).

Kyle Maclachlan, Agent Dale Cooper and alumnus of many Lynch works plays 3 characters in TPTR.  Agent Cooper appears only sparingly although the malevolent doppelgänger, Mr C is a more regular oppressive presence throughout the series.  Maclachlan also supplies comedy relief in the form of a third Cooper variant, Dougie E, thought the series.

Many of the original cast return and the cult status of Twin Peaks has ensured the presence of many talented actors as well as an excellent soundtrack with performances from Nine Inch Nails and Eddie Vedder amongst others.  Lynch himself appears as FBI director Gordon Cole supplying additional comedy.

TPTR made me laugh and cry.  It contains genuinely disturbing scenes as well as amazingly heartwarming moments.  Lynch does not take prisoners and he does not explain his work.  A lot is left open to interpretation and many questions are left unanswered.  Overall I was satisfied but greedily I want more.  The are endings, one good heroic ending and another bleak, potentially apocalyptic ending.  We may have seen the end of the Agent Cooper/Laura Palmer story but there is room for more tales from the Twin Peaks universe.  We would all like to know what has happened to Audrey.

I want to watch this again and see if my understanding changes.  I feel lucky to have seen this and I can't wait for Mark Frost's next Twin Peaks book 'The Final Dossier' which may answer some stuff.

Lynch and Frost have created a masterpiece that people will struggle to understand for years.  Some folk with think it is pretentious bullshit.  I'm not sure what it is but I enjoyed the ride.

For an interesting interpretation of the ending look at https://www.waggish.org/2017/twin-peaks-finale/

Fond memories

After the funeral of a friend we all sat about remembering him.  It had been years since I had seen him but some heartwarming stories were told.  One of these stories involved him altering the lyrics to various classic rock songs to include the words 'your maw'.  On one occasion, when we were all on a bus home after a wedding he altered the lyrics to 'Rock n roll' by Led Zeppelin.

He led a singalong using the alternative lyrics 'been a long time since I shagged your maw'.

In a lot of ways it was perfect.

RIP

Is medicine in the UK fucked?

Why would a smart school kid want to be a doctor?

I didn't work hard at school.  I wasn't interested.  I was more interested in music and comic books and having fun.  Eventually I grew up, decided I wanted to do something worthwhile for society and my community and decided I wanted to be a doctor.  I wanted to help people.  So, at the age of 23, more than 15 years ago, I went to medical school.

Unfortunately I never had rich parents.  Both my parents had jobs.  Jobs working for the state where they worked hard but they were never paid very much.  Now I probably earn more than my parents did when their salaries were combined.  However at medical school I had no money.  My parents didn't have much spare to give me although they gave me what they could.  I got bank loans, overdrafts, hardship loans and hardship fund awards.  I managed to pay my rent and eat and get through medical school and become a doctor.  When I graduated at the age of 26 I was about £40,000 in debt.  It took me seven years to pay that back.

Being a doctor isn't cheap.  You give the GMC money, you give the BMA money (if you want), you pay to sit expensive exams (sometimes more than £1000), you pay your Royal College money (to train and to be a member), you pay your medical insurance and finally you pay a big chunk of money to be on the GP register or the consultant register.  Also, you get a small study leave budget so you pay a fuck load of cash to attend course, buy textbooks, buy equipment and make yourself good enough to do the job.

Also, you damage your personal life.  You travel about.  I've lived and worked in lots of cities and towns.  I've spent 3 and a half years as a doctor mainly living in hospital rooms.  I've slept on the floor at work when I'm meant to be oncall for emergency work (from home) but I don't have a car and I don't trust a taxi to get me into hospital quickly enough for a patient who needs me.  You miss time with family and friends.  You don't spend enough time on relationships.  You blink and you're nearly fucking 40.

So why do you do it?  You do it to help someone.  You might stop them dying.  You might get them out of ITU.  You might stop them becoming disabled.  You might help control their pain or their inconvenient chronic disease.  You might help.  Because you want to help people.  Because you are a doctor.

You are a doctor 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year for the rest of your fucking life until you get to stop being a doctor.  You realise that life is precious and wafer thin.  You know that sometimes you can help and sometimes you can't.  You always hope that you won't be the only doctor on a plane (and that the other doctor is an anaesthetist and not a public health consultant).

So being a doctor is tough but you do it because it's a part of you.  The NHS is a useless monolith sometimes but it helps everyone without asking questions.  It is a privilege to be able to treat every patient without worrying about costs so I guess the monolith is worthwhile.

All this is fine and good but it's becoming more and more unpleasant being a doctor in the UK.  The current rich kid clown show of neoliberal Tory twats that is molesting this country has decided to fuck with the medical profession.  They have picked notorious fud-nugget Jeremy Hunt as their frontman for this project and he is trolling the doctors in England in a massive way.  He is aiming at a reduction in take home, spendable pay for junior doctors of approximately a third.  He is claiming that this is a pay rise and that doctors need to work seven days a week.  He's like a Bizzaro version of a health secretary from a Superman comic. Backwards and fucked up.

Nowadays medical students often have debts of about £70,000 when they graduate.  If they get paid less they won't break even till they are in their 40s.  Hard work and no money makes you miserable.  Why would a smart school kid want to be a doctor in the UK?

We won't have the best and the brightest as doctors if there is no obvious reward.  The job is horrible. It will only be worse if you don't get a comfortable wage.  Smart kids will do something easier that pays more.  They'll work in finance.  Talent will be lost.

Medicine in the UK is probably fucked.  The NHS will probably be dragged down with the medical profession.  Jeremy Hunt will laugh all the way to the bank.

Happy happy, joy joy.

The League TV series

Netflix is letting me watch loads of random TV programmes and films.  The quality is variable.  There are a few gems.

The League is pretty enjoyable.  It's a dark comedy based about a group of friends who have a fantasy football league.  Most of the humour comes from the insults that the friends throw at each other while competing in the league.

It's pretty offensive stuff but it's good for a laugh if you're not faint hearted. Again, I'm very glad that I have netflix.

Teaching

I regularly reflect on what a lucky bastard I am.  I spent the last week teaching a full year group of medical students about my speciality interest.  I had a great time.  Teaching is one of the most enjoyable parts of being a doctor.

Part of what you want to do is stop the students falling asleep.  A lot of medicine is boring.  It's difficult to just absorb a stream of facts.  It's also difficult to filter the massive amount of information that we deal with.  Hundreds of pages of medical data are published every day and the vast majority of it is bullshit.  You want the students to walk away with knowledge of the important stuff that will save a life and help patients get better.  You want the important stuff to stick.

By teaching, you learn.  I've learned some neuroanatomy myself this week and I've come to realise that my understanding of at least one condition was wrong.  I don't know if this is because I was taught badly myself 16 or 17 years ago or if I just misunderstood a concept.  The important thing is that I have corrected my knowledge now.

We were trying to make things fun for the students so we set up a text number on a mobile phone to let them ask us questions as well as a twitter account.  We got a lot of useful texts as well as a few abusive ones.  I used the twitter account to promote YouTube videos of examination skills, patient experiences and other useful websites.  If the students are interested they will check it out.

I'm a bit of an extrovert so I enjoy public speaking.  My problem is, that as a Glasweigan, I tend to swear or say inappropriate things.  The students did seem to like this.  I didn't say anything that was too out of order, especially when I compare myself to a surgical colleague who started to talk about shagging goats.

We got some decent feedback and hopefully it was a success.  With luck the students will pass their exams and some of them may even develop a greater interest in neurology as time goes on.  I have to get back to regular doctoring this week but I'm already looking forward to my next bit of teaching.

Autobiography - Morrissey

I made myself finish the Morrissey Autobiography today.  I think much of it is an elaborate practical joke.  It's written in a stream of consciousness splurge that does not appear to have been edited in any way.  He has a very breathless voice and he seems to recount every negative encounter that he has ever had.  He has a special amount of anger reserved for an ex-band member and a Judge who labelled him as 'devious, truculent and unreliable'.

He also spends a lot of time with dying birds.  I suspect that the dying birds sections are elaborate parodies.

I would have liked some chapters.  It is nice to hear that Morrissey has had sex with a few people.

I like the records more than the book.

Netflix

I've finally fully entered the internet era.  I've set up broad band internet in my flat and I've got a fancy new TV that lets me stream Netflix.  Netflix is a great service.

I was sucked in by Breaking Bad.  I'd caught the first series on the UK channel 5 a few years back and more recently got up to date on DVD.  I was desperate to see how the series would end so I decided to go for Netflix.  Now I think I'm addicted.

Netflix has thousands of hours of TV shows and films instantly available.  Breaking Bad is the crown jewels but it also has South Park, Battlestar Galactica, Buffy, Portlandia, It's always sunny in Philadelphia.  The list goes on.  Netflix also has a big pile of films that I want to see, the sort of things that I would pick up in Asda for £3.  Usually I would watch these films once and then put them in a pile.  Now I will hopefully save money and space.

I've found some good documentaries too.  I'd been wanting to see the Jason Becker: Not Dead Yet documentary for some time and I was pleasantly surprised to find it here.

I strongly urge anyone who likes good cinema to check this service out.

Private Eye - the First 50 years by Adam MacQueen

I'm not sure when I first started to read Private Eye.  It was a long time ago but certainly during the Ian Hislop era.  I think I initially enjoyed the cartoons although I probably didn't really understand very much else in the magazine.  I haven't always bought every issue but I buy as many as I can.  I've very much enjoyed a lot of the output this year, especially the downfall of the News of the World.

This book by Adam MacQueen is a high quality history arranged in alphabetical order.  The bad things that Private Eye has been guilty of over the years are presented in as much details as the good.  Homophobia, sexism and public schoolboy-ism are presented as much as crusading investigative journalism and good jokes.  The in-fighting amongst the staff is also described in unflinching  detail.  Hislop appears to have sorted things out and got rid of some of the more unsavoury aspects of the magazine.

Private Eye as a magazine is both anti-establishment and of the establishment.  The UK is a better country because of Private Eye and I hope it keeps going for another 50 years.

 Private Eye Website - you still need to buy the magazine for the good stuff

The Other Guys - DVD review

I picked this up in the supermarket a couple of weeks back.  It's a throwaway comedy cop duo movie starring Will Ferrell and Mark Wahlenberg with an A-list supporting cast (Samuel L Jackson, Eva Mendes, Steve Coogan).  Most of the humour in the film is just daft but it did make me laugh.  This is not a film that is full of artistic merit but it was entertaining.  I won't even try to remember the plot.

In the red by Mark Tavener

In the red is a comic novel set in Thatcherite London of the mid '80s. A string of bank managers are murdered by a serial killer and a BBC journalist tries to solve the case. The journalists are all hard drinking mavericks in the finest film noir tradition while the management of the BBC are all incompetent. Politicians are all perverts with an interest in being spanked. All very believable really.

Indirectly this book inspired the Stephen Fry TV series Absolute Power. I believe In the red was filmed by the BBC about 15 years ago but sadly I have not seen it. From what I have read of the TV series I hope it gets a DVD release at some point. The cast is very good. The book is entertaining if not intellectually challenging. I got through the paperback in one day.

I'm not sure if this book is in print at the moment. I found a cheap second-hand copy on amazon. Worth a couple of hours of your time.

Alistair McGowan at the Perth Concert Hall

Alistair McGowan is not someone I would normally go and see perform. I went along tonight because there is little to do in Dundee and I fancied a bit of a change. I wasn't really sure what to expect from his live shows. I've seen a few of his TV shows which are OK but nothing amazing.

The Perth Concert Hall is a nice venue. It's been built recently and it is well designed with good views of the stage. The audience were all very posh and well dressed. I was wearing dirty jeans, dirty converse and a Descendents t-shirt. I felt slightly out of place.

I wasn't sure what to expect from McGowan. He is famous for his impressions but he is actually a fairly competent stand-up comedian. His stand-up does revolve around accurate impressions of others but it is also well observed and very slick. He can change persona seemlessly without missing a beat.

He was pretty funny but I think he tries to keep his politics/environmental beliefs out of his comedy. He is one of the most professional comedians I have seen live. He is very popular and he seems to appeal to a more mainstream audience. It would be interesting to see him really kick-back and let out some more cutting stuff. I think he would be really good doing stuff that is closer to the bone.

Interesting.

Richard Herring - Christ on a bike - the second coming at the Whitehall Theatre in Dundee

I only learned about this show last week via Twitter. I've seen some Richard Herring stuff in the past and I like his BBC radio show whenever I hear it. I'm obviously a big fan of Stewart Lee too.

Apparently some fuckwit in Dundee was protesting about the offensive nature of this show but I didn't manage to see any of this media coverage. I hadn't seen many adverts for the show around Dundee although I don't really spend too much time in the city. Apparently some sort of Christian rock band was playing a show that night and the local Minister had tried to promote that as an alternative to the 'puerile' Herring show. I can think of few things that I would find less entertaining than a night of Christian rock.

http://www.thecourier.co.uk/News/Dundee/article/13639/dundee-minister-dismisses-comedian-richard-herring-s-christ-on-a-bike-show-as-childish-and-juvenile.html

Anyway, the Whitehall Theatre was probably about half full. I think that is good for Dundee. The show focuses on Jesus Christ and Herrings thoughts about him. Herring points out some of the obvious contradictions in the Bible and talks about his own atheism. He also make lots of jokes about wanking and blowjobs.

It's a fairly funny show and I'm glad I went. Most of the time I have absolutely nothing to do in Dundee. I intend to pick up some more Richard Herring stuff in the future and I was impressed with the free Programme he gave out. Herring also collects money for SCOPE and I urge anyone that reads this to consider making a donation.

http://www.richardherring.com/
http://www.scope.org.uk/