Happily had time to pop into the Glee Club post gig to see the excellent compere and Morrissey fan Andy Robinson; Worth it to hear him use ‘Rubenesque’, a word underused in stand up clubs around the weekend.

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Currently listening to a packed carriage discuss their feelings about Evita which has been in some Birmingham theatre or other. It seems that it was a film with Madonna and is based on a true story.

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I deleted my previous blog as readers, including my father, found it rather bleak. I didn’t think it was bleak after midnight, but I know that I am a little overly analytical and tear most gigs into shreds in the space of a train journey. This train journey is 100 minutes, so who knows what tatters tonight’s show will be in by the time I walk into the house.

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It was lovely performing in the Electric Cinema, an arthouse cinema that used to be an almost porno cinema. By almost porno I mean that it mainly showed filmed made in Britain where dollybirds occasionally ran off naked or sat motionless in saunas, but Roy Kinnear and Christopher Timothy popped into scenes too. Apparently the cinema basement still has many reels of Horny Hospital and Confessions of a Taxidermist holding up one wall.

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I am not sure quite where new my show lies at the moment. Some nights I think it is the best solo show yet, others I think it might have just too much leftie fury and not enough jokes. I will be playing around with it for some time before it goes on a full tour. Both on the Edinburgh and Camden Fringe it would go from great receptions to stubble stroking reactions. Sometimes the stubble stroking nights appeared ultimately more effective than the ones with louder laughter. Every solo show I have put together seems to be part of a transition. I imagine my final show before I die will still seem to me as another awkward transition show, just one where the awkward transition from movement to stillness followed by smelliness. I rarely leave a gig without feeling that some people are cross, maybe that is the way it should be. Even during club sets I build up an image of the front row as looking like the angry faces of a colonel in an antiquated punch cartoon, only to look down at the end and see their smiling faces.

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90 minutes without a break from a caterwauling, damp man in a cardigan is still pretty long though and I hope to have injected more new ideas in by Sheffield and Manchester next week.

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Wish I could remember how I fitted in Feynamn’s discussion of jiggling atoms tonight, but I can’t, so that’s that. I’ll find other ways of letting my mind out to get Feynman and jiggling in next time.

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Oh and I think I might have been wrong about Years of Refusal, though not musically or lyrically the greatest Morrissey escapade, Robinson has rightly pointed me further into its direction. I think Morrissey should use a quote from Altered States – “he sees everyone as nothing more than transitional matter” – for his next A side.

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My son has a new model steam train with a dull and repetitive nearly tune, he seems as annoyed by it as we are, this is a good sign. He still prefers PJ Harvey.

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I wonder if anyone apart from Richard Feynman worked on theoretical physics in topless bars? How much physics happens in Spearmint Rhino on a Friday near Slough? What small particles are discussed near a dancing nipple?

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I have just scribbled “evolution betrays the male feminist” , I don’t know what it means now, but in the backyard of my mind I think it is somehow meant to turn into a routine of some description. 

I browse the magazine rack of WH Smith. There are a lot of breasts. A few weeks back I am sure I was told that Nuts and Zoo catered for different markets. Zoo women generally have breasts that developed over time via puberty and hormones, Nuts’ breasts are developed by implants and craftsmanship. That might be the other way around…or it might not even be true, but I am sure I read it while I was awake.

I am now old enough to buy The Oldie, well near enough, I like being in the youngest part of their readership, the juvenile amongst people who are ld enough to remember when Francis Bacon spilt his booze on them while reaching for a young man in the Colony Room.

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Coming up with ideas for stand up seems to have slowed down now I have stopped buying newspapers. When I read between three and eight newspapers a day it was pretty easy to summon up some comedic rage about a misinforming columnist or pointless waste of a prime page on a glib story. I decided I didn’t have quite enough mental energy to fall straight into a book when taking the morning train back from Southampton on Saturday, so I broke my rule and bought The Guardian. Oh good, a long glossy interview with Mariah Carey, I believe her music has sculpted the Guardian readership’s world. Many of them remember that moment they were listening to Mariah at exactly the point they decided they couldn’t go on that anti War march because it was the first day of the sales at John Lewis. When I haven’t watched television for a while, the adverts seem to scream at me, having not picked up The Guardian for some time, the prevailing weekend glibness rubbed itself in my eyes like a stinky unguent.

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Hopefully, I have pretty much finished the second draft of my book about killer locust novels and right wing Christian lifestyle manuals. This was thanks to the amount of traveling I’ve had this week.

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The Amazing Meeting in London was great fun to play. It is a joy to play to an audience who cheer and applaud when you mention their favourite Nobel prize winning physicist. My main error was resurrecting my ‘magic man done it’ routine from some years ago and performing it quite poorly. It seems that Brian Cox and myself accidentally created book ends for TAM Saturday. He was the first lecture of the day, and he began with an excerpt of Carl Sagan’s Pale Blue Dot. Having no knowledge of this, I ended our show with a reading of the same excerpt. We are co-presenting a series on Radio 4 about science , a general module where Brain will counterbalance my poor grasp of laws and theories with his wisdom. Finding a title has not been easy. TV and radio companies are pedantic when it comes to titling a show. The working title is Top Geek. We have both said we will not present the show if that is the title. Brian suggested The Science Show, I thought maybe Infinite Monkey Cage might be ok, the producer’s friend had come up with the stunning pun Here’s Looking at Euclid.

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I missed most of TAM events over the weekend due to my previous commitment to sing “yes my name is Iggle Piggle”.  

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I have just signed a horribly big cheque for the final Nine Lessons and Carols gig. As with last year, it’ll be at Hammersmith Apollo allowing us to have a great big star curtain and 25 piece orchestra. I have big plans and we’ll have a great array of scientists and comedians, just trying to get some tip top musicians, it’ll be hard to top Jarvis Cocker singing I Believe in Father Christmas. I have written to Nick Cave’s agent and Neil Hannon’s too, but heard nothing yet. Ann Druyan, Carl Sagan’s co-writer and wife has said she’ll come over, so I am hoping tickets are bought etc so we can do that. She is a great science communicator in her own right and it will make Brian Cox all giddy.

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It seems I am in trouble with Gervais for mentioning that he might have small feet to a member of the audience at Southampton. 

My Camden shows are as follows – The science show with Marcus Chown, Simon Singh, Andrew Collins, Natalie Haynes and me (plus Ben Goldacre on one day or other) is in Monday and Tuesday – www.roundhouse.org.uk/whats-on/productions/robin-ince-s-school-for-gifted-3469 Then from 8th – 14th August I’ll be doing the new Moral Majority show at Camden Head (the one in Camden that used to be Liberties bar). It is a nice small room and sold out last time I did it, so might be worth booking in advance. Normally you can enjoy me having an argument with a particularly rude and angry beggar after the show as well. www.camdenfringe.org/index.php?action=&id=3&disp=details&acts_id=228 Also in Edinburgh I’ll be doing my Bleeding Heart Liberal show for the final time and viciously cut to fit in an hour. www.gsohcomedy.co.uk/fivepoundfringe/index.php/listings/details/49-robin-ince-bleeding-heart-liberal

Matthew Crosby’s rutting of my leg now seems such a vague memory that there seems little to write about. The Pappy’s did a naked sketch , then Matthew stripped and ran to the stage and embraced my leg like an elderly, short sighted and, fortunately, unaroused whippet. He then rutted it with a drunken energy that, even after a hot wash and spin cycle, seems to have left a vague penile impression on my jeans like a lewd turin shroud (this might just be part of the imagination like an MR James tale). I saw few bands, but the bands I saw were chosen carefully enough to ensure no disappointment – Jeffrey Lewis, The Vaselines, Magazine and Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds. From Tuesday onwards, rumours of swine flu being smeared all over the Latitude turf had people falling to their knees and canceling gigs. By Wednesday, I felt pretty rotten, but I think this was more to do with two nights without sleep and the smell of pear cider over 96 hours. The Benjamin Franklin House preview on Wednesday was really just a man with lots to say with a bad memory who couldn’t find the things he wanted to show getting newsprint on his fingers – some nice feedback, but very confused. I then talked at a writer from Camden Voyeur for a couple of hours. This was meant to be a longer blog, but I have had a six hour break to do a gig and now feel all weary from my days under canvas (especially as I put my tent on far too sleep a slope and kept waking up as I slid towards the zip). My new material tonight was hastily written on the train, it was a flurry of cross things about The Guardian. Then I bought The Guardian at Euston and found a dig about me for doing stuff on the Daily Mail. This was excellent, The Guardian will be so happy as my new show is far more about how awful the centre right, lifestyle obsessed, New Labour licking Guardian is bullshit (you know, that left wing newspaper that began an interview with Gordon Brown talking about how his skin was “peachy and fresh”). Back in time, on the way to a lovely gig at The Tobacco Factory, we stopped off at the Leigh Delamere service station. For some reason, at the Costa Coffee, I started doing an impression of David Baddiel watching porn with Frank Skinner. Two bites of a muffin later, “oh hello David, how are you?” He was off to Cornwall. While taking to Baddiel, Edwyn Collins and his wife Grace walked in (I had chatted to them at Latitude). Leigh Delamere is like a Soho media club but with fewer twats and a WH Smith.

I received an excellent heckle during Political Animal at the Latitude Festival – “what are you angry about?” It is something I have been mulling over for quite some time. The new show is meant to be balanced in that there will be some caterwauling and seemingly impotent rage, but with quieter moments that are less flappy. They are the harder bit, so it is only in the last week that those elements have started to go on display. I have about three weeks to fins the balance between railing against newscasters who are honey connoisseurs and JK Gailbraith’s views on advertising. The more time I spend with my son, the harder it is to perform comedy, worrying about the approbation of a room or tent of people seems a little sillier when you have enjoyed spending the morning dancing to Nick Cave with your 18 month old. Latitude was an odd one in my head this year, with some very happy highs and a very ridiculous low. On the Friday, while on the Literary stage, I suddenly realized that I really shouldn’t be on stage ever, and I had to go up to the much bigger comedy tent to perform a set. I trudged up, having no idea whether I could even do it or if I could just pull out, whatever I might have once had was lost forever. I wondered if not eating anything that day may have had something to do with the peculiar chemicals in my brain producing this overhanging greyness. I consumed a banana. I went on and shouted and flapped, it was a pretty flimsy gig compared to Glastonbury or, indeed, last year at Latitude. I seemed to be all over the shop, after the gig I set in a fug in an imaginary hair shirt having torn off my own shirt in a fit of pique. I felt I should leave the site immediately even though I had many more shows to do. How could I stand on the stage reading Horrid Henry to screaming kids in 45 minutes time? I necked a beer and another, I had shamed myself in front of a crowd I should have performed well to. Phil Nichol said that I really should eat some food, the forced an asparagus and mushroom pie on me. The fog began to clear (even though I left most of the pastry). I managed to get from the Comedy tent to the Lit tent without anyone saying “you are the worst comedian ever and I will set fire to your hair shirt as a game of agony”. I stood on stage cajoling children into Horrid Henry based madness. Horrid Henry based madness is one of my favourite parts of Latitude. Later that night, Robyn Hitchcock and myself started writing our crabs musical on stage. I was a little late as I had been showing off in the Claudia Winkleman show. For the first few minutes, this idea of writing a crabs musical with no preparation seemed a momentous folly, but then, as Robyn found couplets, and Amy and Steve joined on violin and trumpet, then Cat came on with her operatic voice, I think it was great. Something you would only really see at latitude. By this point, I knew that my time on the comedy stage was not one of my better performances, but it wasn’t the disgrace I had believed it was. I shall now carry I Tupperware box containing a yoghurt and kiwi fruit for future such emergencies….or at least wander by the ice cream van on the way to any stage I am meant to be shouting on. I’ll get back to you with what I am angry about when I tell more of Latitude and the exposure of Pappy’s Fun Club and how a naked Matthew Pappy rutted my leg.

I have put the running order of Latitude Book Club on my facebook thing as myspace is playing up

hello,

I have spent much of today carrying around books I keep forgetting to talk about in the corpse of my new show strange paper clippings that suggest my wife was right when she said I will die surrounded by carrier bags full of rubbish and a hessian bag containing some porridge I was kindly given at 1am.

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I was performing in the sitting room of a pub in Brighton/Hove last night (The Funny Farm worth a visit). As time, ideas and emotions have moved on my show is currently a man shouting and then looking confused for an hour. As usual, I never get much further than page one of my seven pages of notes. By the time I have waffled on about the first page I am too confused to work out what the second page onwards mean. I know what ‘backbeat news’ is meant to be, but it is currently shuffling and confusion. I believe that somewhere in this rubbish of ideas is the best show I can do, but it is a distant sandcastle at the moment. I am constantly in battle with my brain which is ridiculous as my brain is me. I want it to be a beautiful thing rather than a tramp’s slow vomit. Melanie Phillips has annoyed me so much this week, but I don’t believe I have properly analysed her nastiness. She is like a holocaust denier. She has a conclusion and then works backwards to piffle and edit out anything that might contradict her nastiness. I believe she may have had cancer of her kindness. Once she had kindness, but it was tumescent and so her kindness had to be surgically cut off. Sadly, it spread to her reason, and that too was cut out.