This is the real me.
That Synching Feeling.
We all have been given one gift and mine is being great at doing embarrassing things in public. They don’t always embarrass me but they do make those around me cringe. One of my proudest awkward moments happened just a few weeks ago. And, yes, I am very proud of my embarrassing moments. They’re my beautiful gifts to you.
I was compering the new act night at the Comedy Cafe in East London. It’s a show featuring 14 of the brightest and best new comedians trying to break the circuit and, as a result, I was drinking heavily. I mean there’s really only so many jokes about Groupon or rape that one can bear listening to. And the jokes about Groupon AND rape are even worse. By the end of the night I was drunk. So drunk that I decided to have a couple of nightcaps before heading off home. I stumbled on to the train and made my dizzy way to Lewisham.
The train was noisy. Really noisy. Noisy and nasty. Of course it was. It’s the last train of the night and there’s only three types of people who take the last train at night to anywhere. The noisy, the nasty and the unlucky. Even though I was drunk and probably could have fallen asleep inside an explosion, the noise was really annoying me. People were shouting and swearing and being aggressive even when being kind. “I’m getting us a taxi when we get off”, someone threatened. “Have another beer, Tom”, another enforced. It was certainly way too much for my delicate ears so I decided to listen to some music.
I put my earphones in and scrolled through my phone to find some music to match my mood. Not loudly, of course. Just because everyone else is being thoughtless doesn’t mean I have to be. It was loud enough to just about hear it. Now, here’s the thing…
I don’t know if you’re like this but, when I’m drunk and listening to music, I mime the song. I’m not over the top with it. Just a tiny lip-synch of a mime. No dancing, no air guitar, just a small movement of the mouth. Alright, my eyes sometimes squint when I mime a soulful bit but that’s only because I want to make sure I really hit those notes that I’m clearly not making. I’m not pretending I’m on Top of the Pops, I’m just doing a tiny lip-synch. It’s a quiet mime, as most mime’s should be I think. But it’s so noisy on the train that I can barely hear the song that I’m soulfully and mimimally miming to.
People near me are making so much noise. Talking and laughing. Now, I’ve never been drawn to the sound of laughter. It’s a very cold and hollow sound. Hateful, even. But these guys were laughing loudly and I needed to be able to hear the song to give an authentic performance of it in my head so I broke one of my own train rules: I turned up the volume. Not too loudly, just enough so I could hear a bit better. I continued with my number. Moving my lips to match the voice and squinting my eyes a little to give the folks at home the show they deserved. But the laughter got louder.
Ah, I see. Some of them THINK they’ve spotted me miming but how can they be sure? I mean, I KNOW I’ve been miming but how do they know I haven’t just been yawning funny or maybe I’m smacking my lips with my tongue because my mouth is dry? They can’t KNOW for sure what I’m doing so their laughter is unjustified. Only I know the truth. But I can’t worry about that now because I’m halfway through a song that I’m miming to a crowd of thousands (in my head) and I mustn’t disappoint them. So I ignored the haters and picked up my phone to turn the volume up again.
That’s when I realised that my earphones weren’t plugged in.
Don’t ever use the phrase “reality check” again without thinking of me, please. In my head the crowd of thousands were loving every note I sang to them and screamed their agreement when Simon Cowell said I gave the greatest performance of that song he had ever heard. But that wasn’t true. The truth was I was sitting on a smelly, sticky, late-night train while being pointed at and laughed at by about eight people who all thought I was a cunt.
Maybe it wouldn’t have been so bad if the song wasn’t Man Or Muppet by The Muppets. But it was.
www.twitter.com/michaellegge
If you like being embarrassed as much as I do or just want to point and laugh at my many embarrassing moments then why not go to Michael Legge’s Private Hell on the 3rd June with guests Richard Herring, Catie Wilkins and Dab & Tench or on the 1st July with Nick Helm and Bridget Christie? Shows start at 3pm at The Phoenix, Cavendish Square, London (nearest tube Oxford Circus) and it costs an unbelievable £5.
Or you can get more Legge embarrassment at the Edinburgh Fringe. I’m very proud and happy to say that my show, Michael Legge: What a Shame, is on nearly every day of the fringe at the fantastic Stand Comedy Club. Here’s info: http://www.edfringe.com/whats-on/comedy/michael-legge-what-a-shame
If you’re too lazy to read my blog or are in fact blind then why not subscribe to Blogging For The Blind at www.soundcloud.com/michaellegge or look up Michael Legge on iTunes and subscribe there for free also. Thanks.This blog is also available on Kindle but I don’t recommend you get that. It’s bollocks.
Smartphone/Stupidman.
Do you embarrass yourself easily? I don’t. It’s almost impossible to embarrass me because my entire life has been one cack-handed catastrophe after another. I’m so constantly embarrassing that being embarrassed just doesn’t register with me. In the same way that a half of lager will have no effect on a committed alcoholic, it takes more than a simple trousers-falling-down-in-front-of-a-primary-school to make me go red in the face.
I wake up every morning and from that second onwards its a shambolic cascade of twattery until bedtime again. If I was to compile the last few days into one day it would read like this: A man asking me for directions to the hospital while pissing up against railings, a woman in Sainsbury’s held my hand because she thought I was her 5 year old son, someone thought I was Dave Gorman, a teenager called me a wanker because I was wearing a t-shirt with a picture of a hedgehog on it, someone else thought I was Dave Gorman, I talked myself into actually physically following a complete stranger and reporting his movements on Twitter as part of Follow Friday (that made me late to meet friends in Greenwich because I followed the complete stranger and he got on a bus to Catford. I admit it. That was my fault), an old woman in the park called me Paddy Arsebandit, several more people thought I was Dave Gorman, I died on my arse on stage at the Comedy Cafe and I went to a book launch party looking like this:
So, you see, if it’s always this awful then you’ve really got to put the effort in to get the red in my cheeks. I think it’s safe to say that you will probably never see me looking embarrassed. But that’s not to say I’m NEVER embarrassed. The thing is, I’m just more likely to be embarrassed when I’m alone. That’s actually when it’s most shameful. At least if I fall down a flight of concrete steps and break my neck I know that I’ll have entertained some people who saw me fall but when you’re on your own…well, your own basicpatheticness is highlighted. You’re stupid, awkward and completely alone. So very, very alone.
I felt completely alone just a couple of weeks ago. I was on the toilet and using my phone to do emails, texts and tweets. That’s right, when I do my business I also like to do my admin too. About 10 minutes after toilet-time I decide to have a quick look at Twitter to see if anyone had RT’d my hilarious tweets about whatever celebrity death had happened that day but I couldn’t find my phone. It’s probably in the bathroom. No, hadn’t left it there. I must have left it upstairs. No, not there either. That’s weird. I checked my pockets again and the bathroom again and upstairs again. It was nowhere to be seen. That’s OK. I’m very popular and someone from the entertainment business is bound to ring me soon and when it rings I’ll know where it is. But just in case, I’ll check my pockets again and the bathroom again and upstairs again. No, it’s definitely not in any of those places. I checked the kitchen cupboards and the fridge because putting my phone in those places sounds like something I would do. Nope. Oh, well. I’ve got things to do and my phone will turn up sooner or later. Mickey Bigtime from Bigtime Television was probably getting his personal assistant to call me right at that minute and when he does my phone will hollar and I’ll find it. Until then, I have some boxes to move from the upstairs hall and I have to get something from the attic.
It took me five minutes to move the boxes and other stuff from the upstairs hall. That’s five minutes. Plus the ten minutes between toilet-time and wanting to check Twitter. Plus, I’d say, eight minutes trying to find my phone. That’s twenty-three whole minutes. Plus an extra minute for me to get the ladder for the attic. It’s twenty-four minutes since I left the toilet and my admin behind. Twenty-four minutes have passed and now I’m halfway up a ladder and that’s when my phone rings. My phone rings and it vibrates.
It was in my underpants.
How the hell does anyone live for twenty-four minutes of their life without noticing there’s a telephone in their pants? I know phones are small these days but they’re not that small. It was right there, pressing itself against my testicles and I didn’t notice. And how the hell did it get in there? I don’t put phones in pants. That’s just not me. But I must have. I must have put my phone in my pants and then pulled my pants up with a telephone in them and just got on with my day. Like an idiot would. An idiot who thought it was totally normally to keep a phone in your pants and a TV remote in your sock and your car-keys in your anus. I am that idiot. And there I was. Halfway up a ladder listening to my pants ring and feeling my testicles vibrating. I was embarrassed and alone and halfway up a ladder. There’s no way that I could put my hand in my pants and confidently take the phonecall-of-a-lifetime from Mickey Bigtime. When opportunity rings I don’t want to be halfway up a ladder with my hand in my pants.
So I didn’t take the call. I actually just stood there, on the ladder, and got redder in the face with each ring. The more my testicles got vibrated the more incompetent I felt. Plus it felt nice. What if it was my mum ringing? I’d have felt awful.
www.twitter.com/michaellegge
If you like being embarrassed as much as I do or just want to point and laugh at my many embarrassing moments then why not go to Michael Legge’s Private Hell on the 3rd June with guests Richard Herring, Catie Wilkins and Dab & Tench or on the 1st July with Nick Helm and Bridget Christie? Shows start at 3pm at The Phoenix, Cavendish Square, London (nearest tube Oxford Circus) and it costs an unbelievable £5.
Or you can get more Legge embarrassment at the Edinburgh Fringe. I’m very proud and happy to say that my show, Michael Legge: What a Shame, is on nearly every day of the fringe at the fantastic Stand Comedy Club. Here’s info: http://www.edfringe.com/whats-on/comedy/michael-legge-what-a-shame
If you’re too lazy to read my blog or are in fact blind then why not subscribe to Blogging For The Blind at www.soundcloud.com/michaellegge or look up Michael Legge on iTunes and subscribe there for free also. Thanks.This blog is also available on Kindle but I don’t recommend you get that. It’s bollocks.
Fakes On A Plane.
I am ashamed of myself. Constantly. If I’m not doing something really embarrassing then I’m thinking about something embarrassing I did in the past. The confusing thing is I’m proud of being ashamed. All those times that I’ve let myself down and looked stupid will either have entertained someone else or made someone feel better that they’re not me. When you make a tit of yourself you’re not just doing a stupid thing, you’re providing a service. By lowering oneself we only raise others. Through my continuous lifelong display of cack-handedness and oafishness, I have become Jesus. In a way. I’m not interested in making sure that I come across as perfect at all times and I pity anyone who is. It’s just not…human. When I fall on my arse, do I not bleed? Actually, that’s quite a horrible image but I hope my point is clear. When you embarrass yourself it’s not all about you. It’s about everyone laghing at you. If you’re the kind of person who, when they fall over in the street, immediately checks to see that no one saw you then I’m afraid I have no respect for you. When I fall over in the street the first thing I do is check that someone saw and enjoyed it. If there’s no one there, I lie there until someone turns up. All those cock-ups? That’s who I am. All your awful moments? Don’t hide them. Those moments are all you. What’s wrong with being you? You’re alright.
But some people are terrified of being themselves.
Recently I was on a plane flying from London to Belfast. On board the plane was a very rowdy, loud and obnoxious stag party. Well, there was actually only four men in the stag party. It was more of a stag cull. Now, no one wants to sit next to a stag do on a plane UNLESS you’re the two Australian women sat in front of them who thought everything they’d ever heard in their entire lives was funny.
“HA! I might get something to eat later! Ha ha ha ha! We should land by about half eight! Ha ha ha ha! I saw the Bourne Identity. Couldn’t make it up! Ha ha ha ha!”
You could make it up. They did make it up. The Bourne Identity never happened. Those two ladies were like that for practically the entire journey. Laughing at the fact that they might take their shoes off during the flight and pissing themselves over having two lip balms with them. It’s the Mrs Brown’s Boys demographic. Laughing to forget they’re dying.
Now before I pass judgement on this stag party I should say this: I couldn’t ever go on a stag night. I’m not that good at drinking, I don’t like dressing up as Wally and when I see a large group of scantily clad women all I do is worry. They’ll be freezing later. Or worse. Yes, I’m rubbish at being a stag night man but secretly so were these guys. They were clearly ashamed about not being laddy so they over-compensated. Which is bad because I think they’re probably lovely. They’re the loveliest stag do ever. Yes, they wore matching t-shirts, yes they were loud and yes they clearly thought there was some weight to those Lynx adverts judging by the smell of them but they made two incredible errors that no self-disrespecting stag do would ever let happen.
The first was when the stewardess came round with the refreshment trolly and they immediately started screaming “Lager!”. Keep in mind that all four of these guys had that spikey Northern Irish accent that ALL Northern Irish men fake when around other Northern Irish men. It’s somewhere between a shout and a shriek. Like the sound of two barcodes arguing.
“Four cans of Stella there, love. No. Eight. Eight cans of Stella”.
Oooh…two cans each. Such tough guys! Have you seen the size of cans of lager on aeroplanes? That’s normally the kind of can tomato puree comes in. You are NOT hard.
“Two cans of wife beater each!”
THEY’RE TWO REALLY TINY CANS! Your wife won’t even get a barbed comment.
Even though they all had their cans of lager, these so-called lads still couldn’t stop shouting. “Stella”, they shouted. “Stella!”
“Way-hey! Stella!”
“Stelllllaaaa!”
“STEEELLLAAA!!”
Hang on, they’re quoting A Streetcar Named Desire. These hard-as-nails booze machines have seen the film A Streetcar Named Desire.
“That was a fucking good play that”.
Holy shit! They’re quoting the PLAY A Streetcar Named Desire.
“I saw it at the barbican a while ago, so I did”.
“Aye, sure, I was with you, you big bollocks”.
“Uck, fuck, right enough. So you were, like. Fucking Frances O’Connor was brave and good, now. Fucking hard role to fucking pull off”.
Please get them on Newsnight Review.
“I saw it at the Barbican and I saw a wee fringe version at the Brighton Festival”.
WHAT? That’s the kind of lads they were: Lager, shouting and supporting independent theatre. Then the Australian ladies decided to get involved. “Hey, guys. When’s the sing song starting? Everyone’s really boring on this plane”.
Everyone is “boring” on this plane? What did she think we should be doing? The stewardess clearly said “Fire eating, strip poker and shark vajazzling are prohibited until after the seat belt sign has been switched off”
“Come on, lads”, she continued. “Start a sing song. We’ll show these boring bastards”.
Now, what happened next was actually too much. If a bunch of Tennessee Williams fans want to pretend to be lads then that’s fine but this? This was something that just couldn’t be processed by something as simple and basic as the human brain. Put it this way, me and the other passengers plan to meet up once a week and talk about what happened just like survivors of plane crashes do. In fact, for a while that’s what I assumed had happened. We’ve crashed. We’ve crashed and we’re in Purgatory. It wasn’t Heaven but it definitely wasn’t Hell. It was just something we all went through until we moved to somewhere better. Or worse. One of the lager drinkin’, Tennessee Williams lovin’ stag night men was more than happy to assist the Australian lady with her need to liven up this terminally dull 50 minute aeroplane journey.
“Wee sing song, is it love? Get everyone joining in? If it’s a sing song you want, we’re your boys”.
Then he made this noise. “Bum bum. Cha cha. Bum bum. Cha cha”.
And that’s when the other three stag night men joined in.
“Looking from a window above, it’s like the story of love. Can you hear me?”
The whole plane froze. No one looked round. They couldn’t. It was too much. And not just a minute of that song. They sang the SONG.
“All I needed was the love you gave”.
“Bum bum. Cha cha”.
“All I needed was another day”.
“Bum bum. Cha cha”.
“And all I ever knew….(Bum bum. Cha cha.)….Only you”.
The song ended and everyone on board applauded. THEY GOT A STANDING OVATION ON AN EASYJET FLIGHT. Do you have ANY IDEA how tough a gig that is? But they did it. They won us over and we all applauded. All of us. Every single passenger. Except two now very quiet Australian ladettes who had just witnessed the sickest, most perverse sight in their lives.
I love that stag party and I only hope that they learn to love themselves too. If you have Tennesse Williams in your head and a song in your heart, what can stop you? Not two very tiny cans of Stella Artois, that’s for sure.
www.twitter.com/michaellegge
If you’re too lazy to read my blog or are in fact blind then why not subscribe to Blogging For The Blind at www.soundcloud.com/michaellegge or look up Michael Legge on iTunes and subscribe there for free also. Thanks.This blog is also available on Kindle but I don’t recommend you get that. It’s bollocks.
Gregg Jevin.
What can I say about Gregg Jevin that hasn’t already been said? Nothing. Yesterday morning, Gregg Jevin, a man I had just made up sadly died and the worldwide outpouring of grief was as vast as it was unexpected. But that’s Gregg all over. Even death and the fact he never existed could stop him from making a splash.
I think it’s fair to say that I am the only person that was ever intimate with Gregg. Just before I tweeted the news of his death there was a brief moment, a fleeting second, where I was the only person in the world who knew him and no one on this earth knew that I knew him. For just one beautiful instant Gregg and I were alone. Together. He made me smile during that moment and I was happy having him around. That was when I knew I had to give him up. Gregg was too…beautiful to keep to myself and when the tributes started trickling in I quickly realised that other people saw the same beauty in Gregg that I did. Plus I realised that I had no idea who Gregg Jevin was at all.
If reports are to be believed, and they shouldn’t be after all, Gregg had hundreds of jobs. He was a tightrope walker, a spy, a singer, a former Prime Minister, a priest…the list goes on and all this information was given to me by regular people around the UK who had been touched by Gregg’s phenomenal and staggeringly brief life. Most people agreed that Gregg was a comedian despite me never once saying that he was. Even The Guardian claimed that Gregg was a comic (http://tinyurl.com/7qqb5tq) and why wouldn’t The Guardian want to get involved? Thousands of other people were. Yes, tedious ordinary people loved Gregg but soon our beloved celebrities would be showing how much Gregg meant to them. Danny Baker said “Imagine the band Gregg is playing with in Heaven now!”, Charlie Brooker was “Devastated by the loss of Gregg Jevin”, 6Music discus jockey Lauren Laverne said “Wondering if I should play some of Gregg Jevin’s band’s music in his memory as well. Any suggestions?” and actor Hugh Bonneville cried “So long, Gregg Jevin. I always believed in you”. Even the Radio Times itself, so wracked with grief and confusion, stopped everything to announce a change in our television schedule: “And we know you all be watching tribute programme Oh Well, Never Mind: The Gregg Jevin Story, 9:30pm, BBC2”.
The list of names went on and on but not on and on and on. Danny Wallace, Dara O Briain, The Royal Albert Hall, Peter Serafinowicz, Huey Morgan, Waterstones Bookshop, Tim Burgess from The Charlatans, Rebecca Front, sport man Colin Jackson, Ian Rankin….the names were just lining up to give their thoughts on this great and fabricated man. It was overwhelming. Certainly by the time Graeme Garden posted “His performances I saw were effortless. I wish he’d tried at least a bit” I was overjoyed, so happy that Gregg meant so much to so many. I think, if you know me, you can imagine how filled with emotion I was when Colin Baker, the 6th Doctor, revealed this: “I got down to the last 2 for the double of The Ghost/Osric on tour in 1972. Gregg Jevin got it. I could have had his career”.
But it was the ordinary folk who really made it all special. Although nowhere near as important as Colin Baker, they managed to make yesterday a celebration rather than a bereavement. Half an hour after I broke the news, Gregg Jevin was the 2nd most trending topic on Twitter in the UK. Within an hour Gregg was number one and number three worldwide at the same time. Message after message revealing stories of how Gregg changed people’s lives. People were writing poems about him, making t-shirts with his name on it, writing songs about him. Someone even set up a Mrs Gregg Jevin Twitter account, a joke that will never stop no matter how unfunny it clearly is. And why? Because people loved Gregg and they wanted the world to know. Perhaps it was because they just realised they knew him, perhaps it was because some of us think that when someone dies it’s a time for quiet relection rather than an excuse to post a sad face and retweet YouTube clips constantly? Who can tell? Whatever it was one thing was clear: Gregg inspired us all yesterday. I think that’s what I like about the man most. Unlike characters like Mr Darcy or Chief Brody from Jaws, Gregg Jevin wasn’t content with being fictional. Yes, I could have easily just not tweeted that Gregg Jevin had sat on his keys to death and he’d just have stayed locked in my mind but I knew that wasn’t right as soon as I invented him. I have to remind myself that some birds aren’t meant to be caged, that’s all. Their feathers are just too bright. And when they fly away, the part of you that knows it was a sin to lock them up does rejoice. But still, the place you live in is that much more drab and empty that they’re gone. I guess I just miss my friend.
What I’m trying to say is, thanks for yesterday. You restored some faith. There are now loads of links to Gregg. Just Google him and find out more.
If you’re too lazy to read my blog or are in fact blind then why not subscribe to Blogging For The Blind at www.soundcloud.com/michaellegge or look up Michael Legge on iTunes and subscribe there for free also. Thanks.This blog is also available on Kindle but I don’t recommend you get that. It’s bollocks.
