Heroes Of Comedy No2 - Chic Murray

A clip of Chic Murray, rarer than hens teeth these are............This is from a Variety performance in Aberdeen, sometime in the eighties. A great wee biog of the man can be found here and his best one liners are here

They didn't come more 'off the wall' than Chic. Little language tricks, feints of logic and, in character at least, the demeanour of a man soberly facing down the absurdity of his situations like they were just minor inconveniences.

There are bits of this performance that don't seem to quite come off. As he nears the end of his allotted time, he sacrifices a couple of gags, almost relegating them to the narrative, simply so he can get to the punchline before he 'runs over'. As stated in the short piece about him linked above, Chic was at his best when he had no constraints. Had he lived just a bit longer, I think he would have benefited from a few 'specials', shows in which he could stretch his legs and move through his material at will.

Comedian Doug Healy does a pretty good run through of Chic Murray material in this clip. If you can suspend disbelief for a minute or two, it's actually not too far off target.

Further Observations On Futility And Impotence

American physicist Hugh Everett came up with something called "The Theory Of Universal Wave Function". It later became known as the 'Many Worlds Theory', a catchier short-hand phrase, used to invoke the notion that for every observed eventuality, there are many other alternate evenualities, or universes which split off from the world we are conscious of. Or something.............

Although centred on the quantum world and the observation of particles, it's rather startling conclusions have been the fuel for many a bad science fiction writer, and even more wild eyed physicists looking for grants to try and prove that time travel is a possibility. I won't pretend to know exactly what it's all about and the Wikipedia page for it will leave all but Larry Teabag non-plussed, but I did find a much simpler explanation, along with a rather wonderful adaptation of a Super Mario video game to illustrate the theory.




Of course, if alternate universes did exist for every possible outcome to any action or decision a decidedly non-quantum mass such as myself were to make, then I would have to state with some degree of sadness that about 50% of them would involve death by quite horrific injury, possibly involving buses, cars, motorcycles or suicide from the 2nd floor window of an office block in Glasgow city centre................

Watch Me Destroy Myself b/w Gravity

A - Watch me Destroy Myself

B - Gravity

Heroes Of Comedy No1 Victor Borge

Victor Borge was a Danish musical genius. He was also a comedy legend. Enjoy! Some of this may elude you, as it did me, but the best bits are as good and 'off the wall' as any Chic Murray..........

Dafties

Every so often, find myself over at the other office to collect files for our department and each time I come away wondering what it is they teach them at school nowadays.

Overheard the other day...........

1 - "That Paris Hilton makes great perfume!"

2 - "How do you spell 'Richard'? Is there a 't' in it?"

3 - "What does 'intricate' mean?"

There are more, but I'd need to talk to other witnesses and make a list of them. The latest one I heard was "What's this 'credit card crunch' thing about then?" Utter genius!

Mind you, give me a genuine simpleton over some pseudo-intellectual bore any day of the week.

Observations Of Human Habit From The Safety Of The Mothership

What sort of arse flicks or wipes bogeys on the walls and door of a toilet cubicle at work? Is this some sort of throwback to potty training when they would shit the floor to let mummy know who was really in control? The snot tends to be dried up, but if I ever see a soggy one, I fear I may projectile vomit. Fuck! Public toilets are rotten places at the best of times, do they have to make them even worse? There are a couple of maldjusted and skanky candidates in the office who could be labelled as possible culprits, but it'll take a bit of detective work to flush them out, if you'll pardon the pun................

On the subject of regurgitation, I have noticed that when I see someone puking, the first thing I want to do is, well, puke.......... I'm always slightly worried that a drunk man staggering along Saracen Street in Possil Park on a Sunday afternoon as I walk to the speedway, will set off a massive chain reaction of vomiting that doesn't stop until a day later when the Queen politely excuses herself from a photo call with disadvantaged kiddies to go and 'talk to God on the big white telephone'.

Anyway, none of that matters, for I have seen the future and it's thick as fuck! Paying for my shopping in Lidl today, I noticed the Police on the premises, talking to the security guard. The staff room door opened briefly and I caught sight of a couple, maybe in their mid twenties, dishevelled and looking resigned to their fate. What really caught my eye was the mass of Iceland bags on the counter behind the tills. The security guard was demonstrating to the officer how the sticky fingered ones had been stuffing their bags with little 'extras', seemingly after having spent a fair old whack in the shop next door. I do realise that the temptation to nick stuff if you've just spent your Giro on a weeks shopping may be too much for some, but surely you would do your main shop at Lidl and nick yr 'bits' at Iceland? No?

Basically, they didn't need to steal anything, they had enough shopping to feed themselves and whatever brood they may have had. Sorry to say it folks, but these people ain't starving........

I will say this, the guys they have on security at Lidl just now are pretty good. I've seen some of the goons they hire and to be frank, they creep me out. One looked like a fat pervert and bored customers and check out assistants alike with his smarmy 'yeah, I know stuff' bullshit, a bit like a male version of the hideous she-bore I have to put up with at work. Another busied himself by telling customers how good certain products were, while no doubt some trackie clad skell was tucking packets of biscuits into his pockets on the other side of the store.

It may just be me, but it must be said that cut price supermarkets are a haven for dafties. On the whole both staff and customers are fine, but the very nature of these operations will attract people with only a very tenuous grip on reality and as such, they provide top notch, if slightly uncomfortable specatator sport.

Just don't make eye contact with them.................

Budding 3