Last night was the first in a five night, sell-out run of Robin Ince’s ‘Nine Lessons and Carols for Godless People’ at the Bloomsbury Theatre. Robin ran three of these nights last year which were billed by The Times as ‘(a) unique mix of variety night and Royal Institution Christmas Lectures’. Along with the Rationalist Association, Robin gathers together comedians, musicians, scientists and even a choir to provide an evening of entertainment and education in celebration of a rational Christmas for a secular audience. 


Mr Ince takes on the brave task of trying to wrangle an enormous number of acts on and off the stage and keep the show running to a reasonable length. At the last count there were 18 acts last night, most of whom did pretty well at keeping to their allotted time on stage (and one in particular who didn’t, but more of that later). 


After an introduction from Robin the first act on stage was one of my favourite comedians of the moment, bouncy as ever, Chris Addison. I’m struggling to remember what Chris talked about, other than some very funny dinosaur impressions and from somebody’s comment on Twitter it was material he had used at a similar evening in June but it was new to me and a great start to the evening. I should add that Martin White and his six piece Mystery Fax Machine Brass Band (a reduced version of the usual Orchestra) were on stage throughout the show and provided entrance and exit music for all the acts as well as musical accompaniment on a number of occasions, and a song of their own somewhere in the show.


Next up was science writer Simon Singh who, as I’m sure you are all aware, is currently be sued for libel by the British Chiropractic Association and is at the centre of the campaign for libel reform in the UK. By the way, if you haven’t already signed the petition you should do it right now at http://www.libelreform.org/sign. Apart from a brief plug for the campaign Simon didn’t talk about his current wranglings with the law, instead he gave us a fun and interesting set about ‘the Bible Code’ and finding hidden messages predicting the future in the bible – or in fact, due to the laws of probability, anywhere you care to look!


Iranian Shappi Khorsandi was next to take the stage and despite professing to know nothing about science she did manage to crowbar some jokes about her heritage and DNA into her set. Shappi was followed by pyschologist Richard Wiseman who did some stuff on magic and pyschology, some of which I had seen at Robin’s science show ‘Carl Sagan is my god…oh and Richard Feyman too’ in Edinburgh, but which was still entertaining nontheless.


After Wiseman we had music from Robyn Hitchcock, interpretive dance from Jo Neary (which was hilarious!), more music from the excellent British Humanist Association choir, all interspersed with more from Robin Ince (who told his only physics joke – which I reckon I’ve heard nearly every time I’ve seen Robin but which still makes me laugh). The first half finished with John Otway (who I also saw at the same science show in Edinburgh) with a rousing rendition of his ‘Top 10’ hit song Bunsen Burner, accompanied by the MFMBB and with (unrehearsed) backing from the BCA choir.


To this point the show was going pretty much as expected with minimal chaos despite the number of acts and entertaining and informative sets all round. It was only later in the second half that things took a turn for the slightly surreal…but I’ll get to that shortly.


Due to what came later, I’m struggling to remember the order of the acts in the second half but there was definitely, at some point in the proceedings; a very funny set from Richard Herring in which he mostly just read out his childhood stories (which I had already heard on the Collings & Herrin podcast but which were still very funny), an endearing set based on one cracker joke from Josie Long which provided plenty of giggles, The Rap Guide to Evolution from Canadian Baba Brinkman (another thing I had seen in Edinburgh but was definitely worth seeing again), and seven minutes on the ‘MMR hoax’ from a somewhat distracted Ben Goldacre who should have been at home revising for an exam he had today!


Next came the man that we had, arguably, all been waiting for – childhood hero of many a science nerd, Johnny Ball. To be honest, I was a bit disappointed with Ball before we even got to the climate change stuff. He had a few outdated gags and didn’t really seem to be saying much of anything…more embarassing Dad at a teenager’s party than the enthusiastic populariser of science and maths that I remember. Things looked up when Johnny launched into his George Formby style song on John Dalton’s atomic theory complete with visual aid. But then came the, already much commented on, rant on climate change. According to Ball, with some bizarre stats about how for each person in the theatre there are insects weighing the equivalent of seven African elephants in the world (I think I’ve got that right!) and that these insects eat (and fart) so much that they contribute more CO2 to the atmosphere than all the humans and so we can’t possibly be contributing to climate change….or something like that. The audience tolerated Ball for a good 10 minutes (in something of a stunned silence) before it just got too much for some and the jeers of ‘you don’t know what you’re talking about’ and ‘get off’ started, accompanied by a slow hand clap. I have to say though, despite some reports, it seemed to me that this was only coming from a minority of the audience (the rest were sticking with that stunned silence) and when he finally left the stage after overrunning by 13 minutes he still received a polite round of applause. What amused me during the rant was that from my seat on the front row I could see Robin Ince just off stage in the wings literally pulling his hair out! And I should add that although Johnny Ball’s opinion on climate change was clearly at odds with the majority of the audience, a lot of the dissent was also due to Ball over-running so much and so reducing the amount of time for the acts we still had to see. As I write this, Robin has just confirmed that Ball will be back at the Godless shows tonight and tomorrow as billed, although with a different set. I’ll be very interested to hear what happens.


It fell to Peter Buckley Hill to bring the audience back from the brink which he ably did with a song about Xmas (the X being deliberate there). After PBH came the ‘big name’ of the night, Dara O’Briain who completed the rescue with some great material about what just happened with Ball – in O’Briain’s mind, the equilvalent for a child of today would be if Iggle Piggle came on stage and started masturbating, and then if Upsy Daisy came and joined in! O’Briain then carried on and gave a storming set, talking even faster than usual (trying to make up for Ball’s overrun?), with hilarious tales of his experiences of pre-natal classes with his surgeon wife. I’ve not really seen much of O’Briain’s stand up before but if this was anything to go by I really should make an effort to see some more.


The night was finally rounded off with the brilliantly simple, yet very funny duet from Barry Cryer and Ronnie Golden of their song Peace and Quiet, with added audience participation.


So there we are, some things I’d seen before, some I hadn’t, and some that I’ll probably never see again! I’m going back for more Godless action on Saturday – some of the guests will be the same, although I wouldn’t be surprised if things have changed by Saturday. My only real disappointment of the whole evening was that there was a distinct lack of Gavin Osborn. I don’t know where he was but I missed him and I really hope he’ll be there on Saturday.

After fog in Edinburgh having me worried that my flight would be delayed I managed to make it from Gatwick, to Bloomsbury then back, South of the river, to Stockwell for An Event Of Some Kind hosted by H Anthony Hildebrand of Junior Ministers. It was a really fun evening; music was provided by Witness the Beard and Don’t Tread on Spiders, and comedy from Eric Lampaert and Tom Basden. I have only seen Tom once before, and that was in Edinburgh, so I was delighted to get the chance to see his incredibly funny musical whimsy again. As at every AEOSK there was an audience drawing competition. The challenge this time was to draw two people (or animals, or things) kissing under the mistletoe. I was very proud to win a Junior Ministers CD for my picture of my two favourite fictional Christmas characters – Father Christmas and the Baby Jesus. After the gig I made my way back to my (quite) posh hotel in Bloomsbury which I was only staying at because I’d managed to get a cheap deal on Lastminute.com!


I had been at AEOSK with Kate, Shell and Simone. I met up with them again on Saturday afternoon at Sadler’s Wells Theatre where we were going to see Matthew Bourne’s Swan Lake. The tickets were quite expensive but we had booked them so long ago that it was almost like it was free – I often trick my brain into thinking this when I’m justifying spending a lot of money on shows I’m not going to see for ages. In fact I think we booked the Swan Lake tickets when I was still working and before I’d even applied to go on my teacher training course!  I really love Matthew Bourne’s style of choreography (I went to see his production of Dorian Gray in Glasgow a couple of months ago, which was excellent) and I grew up dancing to the music of Swan Lake so this was a perfect combination. Bourne manages to inject plenty of humour into what is really a powerful and moving story, and the athleticism and grace displayed by the two lead male characters (The Prince and The Swan) and the ensemble of male swans was breathtaking. I would highly recommend this production, even if ballet or dance isn’t usually your thing.


After some catching up over diet cokes in the pub (rock and roll I know) and a delicious Turkish dinner, we made our way over to the Roundhouse in Camden for our second show of the day – the indescribable La Clique. The show, set in traditional, in the round, circus-style is ‘a heady cocktail of cabaret, new burlesque, circus sideshow and contemporary variety’ according to their website. I had a vague idea of what to expect but it is really difficult to describe, other than to say you almost definitely won’t have seen anything like it before! I think my favourite act was the daredevil trapeze artists, The Wau Wau Sisters but all I can really say is go see it for yourself and make your own mind up.


After my first experience of a London night bus (uneventful) and another night in the (quite) posh hotel (comfortable) I managed to get up in time for breakfast, spent the early afternoon in the Apple Store and the O2 shop trying to get the 3G sorted out on my phone (successfully) I met up with my brother and Shell to see Stewart Lee at the Leicester Square Theatre in his show ‘If you prefer a milder comedian please ask for one’. I had already seen the show in Edinburgh  but neither Mark or Shell had and I was looking forward to seeing it again, without having to endure an hour on an uncomfortable bar stool in a boiling hot venue. Mr Lee certainly didn’t disappoint. After an early, hilarious, mishap with smoke distribution (while trying to have a rock’n’roll entrance the smoke machine just kept on going, meaning we couldn’t see Stewart and he didn’t even know if he was facing the right way), the show got under way. There had been a few additions since Edinburgh, and some material which I’m guessing had been added that day after Lee lost out to Michael McIntyre as ‘Best Live Stand-up’ at the previous evening’s British Comedy Awards. Lee is definitely one of my favourite comedians at the moment although I suppose he does have that marmite quality for some people. I’m glad I got the chance to see the show again and I hope he comes up to Edinburgh with another new show next year.


So that’s the first 3 days of my London Christmas Comedy Adventure. I’m back at the Leicester Square Theatre again tonight to see the recording of the last As It Occurs To Me, Richard Herring’s latest comedy/podcast venture and I’m looking forward to bumping into a few familiar faces. I’ve then got a ticket for Mark Watson’s ‘Work In Progress’ show at 9.30pm so I’m hoping Herring doesn’t get too carried away, what with it being the last AIOTM tonight.


There’s plenty more comedy (and science from Robin Ince’s ‘9 Lessons and Carols for Godless People’) to come in the rest of the week so I’ll try and keep blogging. It’s more for my benefit really – if I don’t I’ll never remember what I’ve seen and when. Ah…it’s a hard life sometimes.

I’m feeling inexplicably down in the dumps lately. I shouldn’t be, I mean what have I got to complain about? I’m fortunate enough to have parents who can (and will) support me, at the age of 31, while I re-train so I can get a ‘proper’ job. I’ve got a lovely flat, that I own and can afford to live in. I’ve got lots of friends – admittedly I’ve not seen many of my ‘3D’ friends for a while and I spend a lot of time socialising with my virtual Twitter friends, but I see them in real life too. I’ve only got 8 teaching days left in school until the Christmas holidays when I’m going to London for a week to stay with my brother and his wife and see loads of great comedy, and it’s Christmas soon and I get to see my Mum & Dad and I like Christmas….

And yet, still I’m miserable.

It’s probably something to do with being ill last week – I had quite a mild cold but just felt unbelievably tired (and I still do). So much so that I had three days off school, and then sat at home feeling guilty about it and not doing anything. I only left my flat twice between coming home from school on Tuesday afternoon and going back this morning, and both of those were to go to the supermarket. I felt like I was turning into my Grandma, who always used to say she ‘never saw a soul’ between my Mum’s visits. I’m grateful for all my Twitter friends because without them I really wouldn’t have spoken to anyone – well, apart from the man from E-on who came knocking on the door to try and make me change electricity suppliers.

The other thing is that I’ve got loads of university work hanging over my head. I’ve got a 3500 word assignment due in the first week of January that I’ve not even started. I need to do some ‘reading’ for it which means trying to squeeze in a trip to the uni library in Glasgow and I’m just not really sure where to start. I had my assessed lesson at school last week (where my university tutor came to observe me teaching and grade me) which I passed fine. All my placement up to that point had really been gearing up to that one lesson, and once it was done I let my body give in to the illness I’d been fighting, and also just seemed to lose motivation. And because I’ve generally been feeling a bit rubbish I’ve been having another small crisis of confidence in my decision to do this teaching thing in the first place.

Maybe this is ‘stress’ – that seemingly middle-class affliction that I’ve always mocked people for having.

Anyway, I just wish I felt a bit more normal again and could get my mojo back – whatever that may be. I must be feeling down because I even let Michael Legge’s teasing get to me in the Precious Little podcast tonight. I had recorded a couple of stupid jingle things on my ukulele – and I know they were rubbish because I’m not very good at it and I can’t sing – but I actually started crying when Michael made fun of them on the podcast. Mostly, just in that ‘I’m embarrassed and annoyed at you, and because I’m feeling a bit down anyway I’m going to cry’ kind of way, but there’s no need for that really. I should have expected it, and I shouldn’t have sent them in if I didn’t want them to play them (and it was pretty much a given that they would take the piss) but it still really upset me.

So, this has been a really uplifting post hasn’t it? Sorry about that. It’s really not like me. Writing this has helped a bit though. And now I just need to get through the next 10 days then I’ve got a week of fun ahead when I’m going to forget about school for a week (even though I should clearly be working on my assignment) and with a bit of luck I might run into Michael Legge and I can punch him really hard.


Normal service will resume shortly (I hope).

I am now half way through my first 6 week teaching practice. It’s going pretty well all things considered. I’ve still got a lot to learn of course but I’ve not made a bad start. I really need to work on remembering my French too – although I did it to degree level, a lot of my knowledge came from living and working there for 6 years on and off. Unfortunately, learning your French from potty-mouthed, middle-aged French ladies who clean mobile homes for a living isn’t the best starting point when trying to teach reflexive verbs to bored thirteen year olds in the last period of a Friday afternoon! Luckily, I had been left on my own and the class teacher wasn’t there to see me slowly lose the attention of each pupil one by one. In the grand scheme of things though that is by no means the worst that can happen. 

Now, I know there were naughty kids when I was at school; one boy in my year got expelled and came back into school armed with a cricket bat to seek his revenge on the head teacher, but I think being in the top set for every subject probably shielded me from the worst of the behaviour in school.  There are, of course, still some lovely, hardworking, well behaved children in school, but the bad behaviour just seems to be getting worse. Just today, a twelve year old boy in one of my classes told the teacher she was a ‘fucking twat’ and when told he would be getting lines as a punishment shouted at the top of his voice ‘do I give two shits?’. When given the lines he screwed them up saying there was ‘no fucking chance’ he’d be doing them, then proceeded to go outside and set fire to the piece of paper in full view of the French classroom windows. This pupil is so badly behaved that he goes to the dedicated ‘Behaviour Support Unit’ for some classes where he cannot behave in the mainstream classroom. He also has a ‘flexible timetable’ which means he doesn’t have to come to school in until period 2 because he is basically too tired/grumpy/lazy to get into school for the first period of the day. In an other class, an 11 year old boy refused point blank to take his coat off. When asked to go outside he refused some more and eventually the head of department had to come and (almost forcibly) remove him from the classroom at which point he just disappeared for the rest of the period. 


The school I am currently doing my teaching practice in has, as I mentioned, a dedicated ‘Behaviour Support Unit’ because education these days is all about inclusion. Which means instead of excluding pupils for persistent or serious bad behaviour there is provision for them in a mainstream school, either by taking them out of classes and into the support centre where they receive one on one attention, or by having behaviour support assistants in the classroom. In a lot of ways I agree with this and I’m fairly certain I wouldn’t be able to deal with some of these kids with out the presence of the behaviour support assistants. However, I also have a bit of a lingering doubt that by giving these kids flexible timetables where they either start later, or finish earlier (or sometimes both) than the other pupils we are almost rewarding their bad behaviour.


It’s certainly a tricky area, and one that I know even experienced teachers struggle with. It’s certainly an area in which I still have an awful lot to learn. It seems one of the big keys to this is providing lessons and activities that are interesting and engaging for the pupils, and pitched at the right level. If something is too hard, or too easy then the kids will just switch off and start messing around. On the plus side, I did have some success today with the bottom set of second years that I teach. I invented a sort of noughts and crosses game with pictures of different activities to match up to the written French on a grid. The kids seem to really enjoy it and I even heard lots of French being spoken. So, sometimes it does work. And it’s those moments that make you perservere and carry on, and try and think of more activities that will have the same effect.


Anyway, I’m enjoying the teaching so far. I have a lot of work to do, what with lesson planning, creating resources and I’ve barely looked at all the stuff I have to do for university and the 3,500 word assignment due in just after Christmas (gulp!). So it’s looking like I did make the right decision after all, despite my early pre-show nerves.

You may remember (well you might if I had ever blogged about it!) that last month I went  to a recording of We Need Answers; the quiz show based on text answering service AQA, hosted by Mark Watson with Tim Key and Alex Horne.

Well, the show is going to be on BBC4 soon and the trailer is showing now. And I’m on it. For a split second, which I have captured for posterity here.

I’m looking forward to seeing the actual episode now. We were at the one with Martin Offiah and Radio 4’s Jenny Murray.

My thoughts have been provoked lately, specifically by a blog by Nicola Woolhouse about social networking in general and Twitter in particular. Nic blogged about what the consequences of our online interactions maybe and how those actions and interactions can affect others without our even realising it. Twitter is used by millions of people for many different reasons, but by its very nature Twitter is very much about the ‘look at me’ attitude of today. However, Twitter is increasingly also being used as a means of keeping up with current affairs. This can be a great tool and by following the right people it’s a fantastic way of getting the latest on news stories and often an alternative view to that which is being covered in the mainstream media. But this can also be where the problems start.

Take today for instance – this morning a news story spread like wildfire on Twitter. It was about a man called Paul Clarke who said he found a gun in his garden, he then inexplicably kept it over night before calling the police to say he was coming into the police station (although not telling them why), before turning up at the station with a sawn-off shotgun and ammunition in a bin bag – where he was promptly arrested for possession of a firearm without a licence. Mr Clarke has been convicted and is awaiting sentencing, where he may face being handed the minimum sentence for this offence, of a five year jail sentence.  The story was reported in Surrey Today here and picked up by several bloggers, including Constantly Furious . When a link to this blog was retweeted by Graham Linehan (@Glinner) the outrage really started to spread and a twitter mob quickly formed. On the face of it this looked like a massive miscarriage of justice – a man doing his ‘civic duty’ and handing in a shotgun to the police is now facing a jail term. However, many people, including the lawyer-cum-blogger Jack of Kent (who is often the voice of reason on Twitter) quickly put forward some counter-arguments to try and calm rather than fan the flames of the baying crowds. Yes, it seems ludicrous that if the facts of the story are as they have been reported then surely there is no way Paul Clarke should be facing a jail sentence. However, there are many questions that haven’t been answered – why did he not call the police immediately and get them to collect the gun? Why did he wait until the following day before taking the gun to the police station? When he did call the police why did he not tell them he was bringing the gun in? And if his story is true, why did the CPS choose to prosecute?

The problem with Twitter is that a ‘mob’ can quickly form. All it takes is one celebrity with a lot of followers (Graham Linehan has over 34,000) to tweet or retweet something for it to be blindly retweeted over and over again with out anyone bothering to check out the story for themselves.  Even when, within a couple of hours of his original post, Linehan started tweeting links to Jack of Kent and others, people were still retweeting the original post with no qualification. I don’t mean to pick on Linehan in particular here, there were several other celebrities guilty of the same ‘tweet now, think later’ attitude. This tendency towards a ‘mob mentality’ was covered in an excellent blog from Paul Bailey after the Jan Moir Daily Mail and Trafigura episodes in October. It’s very easy to take everything at face value, particularly when it comes from a source whose opinions you value and respect. The lesson here surely is, think before you tweet and do your research!

I am also finding I am thinking a bit more about what I tweet since I have started on my teacher training course. As I commented on Nic’s blog, I am more aware that my personal and professional lives are now inexorably linked. I am concerned that I need to be more wary of what I say online – but should this really be necessary? Should I be worried about a pupil or a parent perhaps stumbling upon my Twitter account (or this blog for that matter)? What would the professional consequences be for me if they did, and found something inappropriate? Not that I ever post anything especially controversial, but there’s a fair amount of swearing, and even the recent comments on the Precious Little podcast, although said in jest and taken in the spirit they were intended by me, may cause offence or seem inappropriate if they were heard by a parent or a potential employer.

Nic made the point that many people aren’t the same as they are in real life as they are when posting online, whether on Twitter or Facebook or some other social networking site or forum. We nearly all hold something of ourselves back, or even go in the other direction and are more outgoing and open online. I think I am pretty much myself online, a view which has been confirmed by some of those people who I met online before meeting in real life. I do self-censor what I write on Facebook, mostly because my Mum is on Facebook so I would never post anything I wouldn’t be happy for her to read. Twitter is a different matter and I think I do say pretty much whatever I like. I rarely tweet (or blog for that matter)  if I’m feeling down (although that happens very rarely anyway) although I did make an exception a couple of weeks ago when I blogged about how scared I was before my first solo teaching. And I got an enormous amount of support from people on Twitter, some of whom I knew and some I didn’t. I do try and offer support to others where I can but there are a few people on Twitter who spend so much time moaning I tend to mostly ignore them – it’s a bit like the boy who cried wolf.

Despite all this and my increasing concern that my new career is going to leave me with no choice but to limit my online activity I am a huge fan of Twitter. In the last year, without Twitter, I would never have made so many friends who I then met up with in real life. I wouldn’t have had the courage to approach so many comedians during the Edinburgh Fringe had I not ‘spoken’ to them online before had. I wouldn’t be half as aware of the news and current events as I am now. And I wouldn’t have so much fun listening to the Precious Little podcast – which has now become a weekly event where I listen with my friends around the world and we tweet along together.

This post hasn’t been very coherent and I’m not really sure what my point is but I hope that perhaps it can make a few more people think for a minute about what their online presence says about them, just like the blogs of the others I have mentioned here did for me.

I was planning on doing lots of work today but all I’ve done is download some interactive whiteboard software that I need for school, and finish moving this blog from its old home on Vox. Ah well, I’ve got the rest of the evening and tomorrow to get everything done. I’ve even got some homework to mark for the first years. It’s like I’m actually a proper teacher!

(P.S Massive thanks to everyone on Twitter who, despite half of them having never met me, were wonderfully supportive after my last blog)

Sorry. This is all a bit depressing. I hope for some improvement soon.