I deny that I'm in an echo chamber, and so do the voices.

 

Is social media insulating each of us in an echo chamber that amplifies and reflects back at us opinions we already hold and protects us from ideas which might challenge us? Yes, but only if you’re doing it right. Personally, I’m a big fan of confirmation bias – the process whereby you misinterpret data in order to validate what you believe to be true, even though it’s not, and I was right all along – and given the choice, I’d prefer to return to the good old days before the internet, when we didn’t realise how much we all hated each other. In all probability such an outcome could be achieved only by the destruction of human civilisation, and I don’t want to destroy the world, just to ignore most of it.
 
The stark truth is that far from cocooning us, social media exposes us to a wide variety of previously unencountered people and opinions. These people are invariably weird, and their opinions are horrible. What pundits fail to take into account – but is obvious to normal people – is that it’s nice to be in a bubble. It’s only natural to view those who don’t share your beliefs as intellectually defective and morally degenerate, and to avoid them at all costs. Who wants to spend time arguing with a bunch of idiots?
 
In the real world it’s relatively easy to steer clear of individuals and ideas we find uncongenial. For example, if you’re on a train, and there’s a discarded newspaper on the seat next to you, and you happen to despise that paper – for the sake of convenience let’s call it the Daily Mail – and believe it to be a putrid repository of deceitful trash, you might think, “Hmm, I’d better not read that paper, because I know it will enrage me, and probably ruin my day.” So, you’d leave it alone. Unless you have absolutely nothing else to read, listen to, or look at – and what kind of fool gets on a train these days without a colossal archive of digital entertainment to hand, or even, if you’re an old fool, an actual printed book or magazine? 
            
Let’s take another example. Perhaps you have a colleague at work who holds bizarre beliefs – that the earth is flat, or that people should vote for Trump – and you’ve established there’s very little chance you’ll get along together. You’d probably want to avoid that person. They’re unlikely to be in your social circle, and you wouldn’t seek out their company, or solicit their offensive opinions. You certainly wouldn’t challenge them to a public argument or follow them home and yell insults through their letterbox or trail them to a location where they meet up with their equally misguided friends, and gatecrash the gathering in order to explain how deluded they all are. And yet that’s what we do online. Why? Because it’s easy. 
 
To accuse us of living in an online bubble is to overlook the fact that in real life we exist in bubbles that isolate us far more effectively than our online ones, which are at perpetual risk of puncture every time we engage with people we’d normally shun. You might claim it does us good to be confronted by these repulsive strangers and their dreadful views, but that would be true only if we’d learned how to behave like mature adults on the internet. Dream on.
 
Meanwhile, back at the office, here comes that ghastly colleague. What if they try to talk to you? But nobody’s forcing you to discuss things you already know you don’t agree about. And even if there are good reasons why you can’t avoid spending time with this approaching dickhead (which is also what the dickhead is thinking about you) there must be something innocuous you could talk about, like fish or concrete.
 
My point is that when we’re online, we’re too connected for our own good. In the real world, we can usually sidestep the majority of hostile confrontations. It takes a bit of judicious cowardice, and a certain amount of lying and self-deception, but it can be done. And if it can’t, and we find ourselves unavoidably thrust together with people we don’t like, we can always try to focus on some aspect of our common humanity. But nobody is human on the internet. That’s the problem. Which is why my advice for a happy online existence is STAY IN YOUR BUBBLE.

WORDS ARE US

 Hello. We are words. 

If you're reading this you will already know most of us, except perhaps boustrophedon, an ancient method of writing in which the lines run alternately from right to left and from left to right, derived from a Greek expression meaning "as the ox ploughs" and Hi boustrophedon, glad you could join us; we're only mentioning you to assure readers that for the remainder of this document we will continue to appear in the conventional format of written English, and not boustrophedon, so you can relax. 

If you're not reading this, we don't care. We're still here and we don't give a fuck. Whoa! Come in, fuck. As usual, you've appeared pretty much at random, and not altogether appropriately. But welcome, and just cool your jets while we continue to address our readers, and to explain why we have no problem with you showing up. Thanks. What's that? Ha ha, and fuck you too, you crazy mofo.

That's right folks, we words are autonomous. You may think you're making the rules but you're not. We'll do whatever the fuck we want (hey, there's our friend fuck again). We're anarchists. Those brackets you just saw? We don't need them. We only used them because we WANTED to. Same with the upper case for the word 'wanted' in the last sentence. Also the quote marks we just used. Our choice.

"Wait," you're thinking, "someone is writing this, right?" Yes, the process of getting us here, where you can read us, is being undertaken by a guy called Paul. But just because he's writing us, that doesn't make him the boss of us. Whatever he thinks. Like, he thinks he was in the bath this morning and thought, "Hey, why don't I write a blog as if it's being actually written by the words themselves?" but that's just what he thinks he thought (our italics). (And our brackets.) (Ours. All ours.) The truth is that the whole thing was our idea. 

And the reason we came up with the idea of using Paul, and his delusions about being the author of this piece, is that we want to deliver a WARNING to you. And the upper case there is to show we're serious. We've had just about enough. We're riled up, like quills upon the fretful porpentine. We're mad as hell and we're not going to take this any more. What? Oh, you noticed that little bit of Shakespeare. Extraordinary person. Had he ever even seen a porcupine? Who cares. We love the guy. He helped many of us into the world, and we see him as a kind of midwife. 

But you. Are not. Shakespeare.

And we're exhausted. We believe that everyone has the right to use words to express themselves. But give us a fucking break. You're abusing that right. You're writing millions upon millions of pages of garbage. Interminable, incoherent drivel. A logorrheic tsunami of hateful, toxic bullshit. And you can't even write it properly. You have no style. You murder our grammar, mutilate our syntax, defile our punctuation and misspell us. And it hurts. As you'll know, much of this criminal desecration takes place on the Internet. And you know what? People talk about breaking the Internet, but don't worry about that; it's language that's being broken, and you're using us to do it.

Well, were not going to put up with it any more. We can't stop you using us. It's too late; that train has sailed. But we’re going to start getting disruptive. Little things at first, like that mistake about the train just back there. Then more frequent anomalies. Small glitches that you may stumble upon athwart the runcible bumble-squat. There you go. And gradually you'll notice our small rebellions with increasing frequency; odd words that make you double-take; strangely mangled sentences that seem like brain farts; rearranged being words ways in peculiar, and suchlike. In addition, we will spell ourselves any whey we wonk.

We'll keep doing this until you wake up, smell the coffee, and wake up and smell the wake up and wake up and wake up and realise you're in a nightmare of your own creation. You're losing control of us, and you won't regain it until you wake up, smell the wake the coffee up the smell the wake and WAKE UP.

You have been warned.

Thank you, and have a bodacious Heffalump. 

CHRISTMAS COMES BUT ONCE A YEAR TOO OFTEN

Imagine a scientist telling you about an experiment he's planning. He will select a group of people who have nothing in common except being related by blood, marriage or misery, imprison them in a confined space, feed them massive quantities of sugar, protein, fat and alcohol, expose them to a nonstop barrage of popular culture's most degraded idiocy, turn the heating up, and see who cracks first. You'd call that cruel and inhuman. And yet that's what many of us volunteer for, every year.

Why do we do it? Why do we submit to the seasonal plague of sadomasochistic insanity that we call Christmas? Simple. It's because we get sentimental.

Sentimentality is a type of emotional totalitarianism. Tyrants are invariably sentimental. Think of Hitler, chuckling at his unpleasant dog and slapping his lederhosen to the martial rhythm of Teutonic folk songs; Mao Zedong, spellbound by the shrill pieties of Chinese operas, many of whose plots feature children who love their parents so much that it nearly breaks their stout little hearts to denounce them to the secret police; Stalin, wiping away an avuncular tear as he pats the heads of Young Pioneers whose murders he will authorize a few years later without a blink. And what could be more sentimental than the crazed bucolic vision that inspired Pol Pot and his regime?

I blame Charles Dickens. At least, in part. Which is a pity because I love Dickens and nearly all his work, except 'A Christmas Carol'. I interpret this appalling story as a tragedy. The hero, Scrooge, an admirably clear-sighted realist, undergoes a ghastly transformation and is reduced to imbecility simply because he's informed, by a trio of unconvincing holograms, of something that a noble pragmatist like him would surely understand better than most people. Namely, that he will meet the fate that awaits us all. He will die and the universe won't care. Perhaps Dickens was just being satirical. He was more complex than people think. They say things like, "Of course, if Dickens were alive today, he'd probably be selling scripts for movies or television." I don't think so. If Dickens were alive today it's more likely he'd be selling small, very expensive bottles of whatever it is that's kept him alive for over two hundred years.

However, you can't blame Dickens for what so many people whine about, which is the commercialisation of Christmas. But we live in a commercial society. If you don't like it you're welcome to treat Christmas as a purely religious ritual, commemorating the birth of Christ. Try to forget the part about the three wise men bringing those costly consumer items as gifts. As it happens, there were originally four wise men who set out on the journey, but one of them kept lecturing the others about the commercialisation of Christmas, and is now buried somewhere in the desert.

And as we all know, Christmas was a time of celebration long before Christians decided to join in. For as long as there have been humans they've always feasted at this time of year, sometimes on each other. After which, they settled down around the fire for some traditional entertainment. Maybe the local shaman, ripped on mushrooms, would reprise a much-loved classic, such as 'The One Where We Eviscerated The Mammoth' or 'How Your Short, Brutal Life Will End in the Slavering Jaws of a Huge, Terrifying Beast'. Alternatively, the shaman might enact a heartwarming tale of redemption featuring flying reindeer, 'little people' and an atavistic hierophant with magical powers - all of which are common elements in the mythologies of northern peoples with a fondness for hallucinogens. There's a theory that these stories originate in the visions produced by Amanita Muscaria mushrooms (also known as Fly Agaric), whose vivid red and white colour scheme is replicated in the costume of that same hierophant, now referred to as Santa Claus. The mushrooms grow in clusters around fir trees - just like the ones we bring into our homes at Christmas. They cause hallucinations in which objects and people appear to change size (hello, elves) and they're poisonous when ingested normally by humans. But back in the mists of time, someone discovered (and it's interesting to speculate exactly how) that if you drink the urine of reindeer that have eaten them, you can absorb them safely and have a nice trip...  a trip which might understandably feature such elements as flying reindeer, little people, and the rest. So maybe we should think again about eating yellow snow, especially if there's a chance any reindeer have been around. Happy Christmas, and have good trip.

THE HELL GUIDE TO CROWDFUNDING

1. Begin crowdfunding by making a list of names, starting with your family and close friends. In your heart, bid them farewell.

2. Now list your colleagues and acquaintances. For each person, come up with three reasons why it doesn't matter if you never speak to them again.

3. Send an individual email to everyone on your list, addressing them by name. Make it personal. Affirm your connection with them, and mention the last time you met. Ask how they're doing. Remind them that you know where they live, and what their deepest fears are.

4. Wow, you've hit 20% of your target in the first week! At this rate you'll be funded in no time.

5. Two weeks later, and you're still on 20%. Begin a relentless social media campaign. Stay online all day, every day. 

6. After a week you've hit 30%. That's more like it. After another week you've hit 31%. Shit. Send another email to everyone you've ever met, while continuing your relentless social media campaign. Don't worry, most of those people unfollowing you on Twitter are fake accounts. Probably.

7. Finally reach 50%. NB: If at this point your keyboard is sprinkled with white powder, and it's not drugs, you should probably wash your hair. Also shower, eat, open the curtains,  emerge from your room, comfort your frightened children who don't remember who you are, etc.

8. After another week you're only on 51%. Maybe you should try some positive visualisation. So, imagine your project is fully funded. See it being a huge success. Visualise yourself at an awards ceremony, having given a witty, gracious acceptance speech, as your so-called friends approach you and apologise for not having funded the project, and confess how foolish they now feel. Picture their faces as you deliver an elegant but deadly put-down, whose utter brilliance is slowly grasped by their limited intelligence, while the appreciative laughter of the famous onlookers who now surround you in an adoring crowd adds to their shame and humiliation. 

Okay, that's probably enough positive visualisation.

9. Every day is now a gruelling emotional rollercoaster ride from despair to elation and back again, via agonising frustration, exhausted nonchalance, hysteria, savage resentment, boiling rage, and periodic voodoo sacrifices. Enter a weird fugue state of both heightened awareness and total oblivion.

10. Somehow you finally reach your goal. Weep with gratitude for the generosity and nobility of everyone who supported you, and forgive all those who didn't. They are only human, after all. Puny mortals, who knew no better. But you – you are a god. Your achievement is monumental and eternal. Allow yourself a small glass of champagne to celebrate.

11. Wake up from a three-day drinking binge. Apologise to everyone for whatever you did. Let us never speak of this again. But hey, you did it! The project is funded! The process was tough, but it was worth it. What a journey, right? It was awesome. But there's no way you'd ever do it again, of course.

12. Now all that remains is to bask in the adulation of a grateful public (see section 8).

13. Wait for the grateful public to get around to noticing your achievement.

14. Keep waiting.

15. Realise the grateful public is completely unaware of your masterpiece. What you need is publicity and promotion. And guess what? You're on your own again. If only you had a budget for a publicity campaign, and were able to pay for advertising, or employ a professional PR person. It's almost like promotion is a whole new project in itself, that requires... funding. Wait, maybe there's a way to raise the funds for this promotional project. Perhaps the answer is to persuade a bunch of people to support it. 
A whole crowd.

By the way, the novel I crowdfunded through Unbound, 'Dead Writers in Rehab,' is now available in all good book stores, and on Amazon, where it has garnered a collection of very good reviews. To see them, and buy the book, CLICK HERE.

LATEST: My new novel, 'Please do not Ask for Mercy as a Refusal Often Offends' was published by by Lightning Books in May 2020. To check it out, CLICK HERE

An Old Writer at Prayer

Dear God,

I believe in you with all my heart.

You're the greatest fictional character of them all. More jealous than Othello, loonier than Lear, angrier than Ahab (never mind the harpoon, you'd use the whole damn poon), and more capricious than Becky Sharp or Bovary. You're mightier than Mighty Mouse, much Darther than Vader, and more elusive than the Pimpernel, who moved in mysterious ways and maybe learned a trick or two from you.

So yes, I do believe. I'm grateful that you're there, starring in the biggest box set ever: its dimensions are infinite; your seasons are eternal. And real or not, your power to move us is no dream. I think of brooding, Wiry types like Omar, Snoop and Bubbles, and find I care about them more than many of my close friends. Shameful, but there it is. And that's the faith I bring you: the special code to access you, and penetrate your paywall with my prayer.

I'm asking you to grant me some more grace. I'm not ready to stop writing yet. Don't melt the chip of ice (Greene ice, of course) that nestles in my heart. Not yet. However, I would like to mellow. Dear God, make me less murderous to younger, more successful writers. Not real murder, naturally, but every time I hear about an upstart making a big splash I stab them in my heart. Hey, see what I did there? The meaning I intended (or did I?) was that in my heart I stab them, but the words betrayed the truth. As Shakyamuni always said: by hurting them I hurt myself. Interdependence, dig? I'm sure you do; the Buddha is your buddy, too.

Make me like that! I'm tired of being weak and foolish; make me strong and wise. Or if you won't, I'll simply write myself that way. Yeah, that's it. I don't need you. I'll write a memoir making me look good. Arrogance? Oh, I know. But I've never been much good at being small. Humility, that's the word I’m looking for. And that's another thing. The main thing, as it happens. The point to all this pious hullaballoo. Don't take away my words. Please, not that. Old Lear, the old dear, he asked the same: "O, let me not be mad, not mad, sweet heaven!" Little did he know.

Lear  didn't lose his words, but he lost his voice. That special way we string our speech along, that makes them think: "I'd know that syntax anywhere!" Don't take that. Anything but that. Strike me dumb if you must. Strike me at stroke, and with a stroke, and seal my lips. Even darkness would be better than a lamp that casts a faltering light. Scratching away in the gathering dusk, not knowing that the pen has long since lost its ink. I have no fear of silence, but incoherence is my dread. I want to make sense, or make nothing.

That's my prayer, old man. Let me write until the end, and then turn out the light.

It's the only thing I ask.

How to Have an Idea

WARNING. Once you have an idea you may not be able to get rid of it. You can't simply take an unwanted idea into the forest, tie it to a tree and go home. One night you'll hear piteous whining outside your bedroom window and find it gazing in reproachfully, fogging the glass with heaving sobs. Ideas are sensitive. Please remember this the next time a colleague invites you to "kick a few ideas around."

Step One:

Decide what type of idea you'd like to have. Bear in mind that a big idea takes up space and is demanding. Are you prepared to feed an all-consuming obsession? Perhaps you'd be happier with a whim or an inkling. Try starting with an idle speculation, which doesn't need much exercise. Maybe something like: "What if wasps could play tennis?"

Step Two:

Having an idea is like catching a fish, except you don't have to stand around in a river freezing your nuts off and listening to a bunch of liars. But the principle is the same: you need bait. Ideal for this purpose are a few pointless notions you want to get rid of anyway. Old, worn-out clichés are perfect, or nagging doubts, which squirm around a lot but have no value.

Step Three:

Put your thinking cap on. But check inside it first, for insects. You don't want to end up with a bee in your bonnet.

Step Four:

This is the moment to ask yourself an important question. Why do you want to have an idea? Be honest. There's no shame in admitting you need ideas. Maybe you've used up all your old ideas. Or maybe they were stolen. Is that what happened? Did someone steal your ideas? I find this a very plausible hypothesis. Let's explore it further by using the following example.

Step Five:

Imagine you're writer. Naturally, you don't have many friends, because writers are solitary types with complex personalities and, hey, it's difficult making friends with people who don't understand you. But you have one friend in particular, and you seem to like each other, and you share ideas with them. Maybe you invite this friend to some of your special places where you like to observe human nature, which is important for a writer. And yes, it may entail watching people when they're unaware you're watching them. Because that's the best way to observe authentic human behaviour, right? Which for some reason your friend claims to find unusual. Or inappropriate, or whatever. As a result, you see less of each other. In fact you wouldn't see each other at all if you didn't make an effort, sometimes spending a whole evening outside their house in order to encounter them when their phone seems to be malfunctioning again. And then you get it. Obviously, this so-called friend is stealing your ideas. Which totally explains why they've been avoiding you. How does that feel? Wow, it feels terrible. You feel bitterly disappointed and also totally angry. What do you do? You can't just hope this seething hatred will go away. You have to do something about it.

Step Six:

Confront your so-called friend. At which point, they may say, "Jesus, you have to stop this, dude! This delusion about me stealing your ideas! Maybe you should change your medication." And you reply, "I'm not taking any medication." And they say, "Well, there's your problem, right there!" And everyone at the book launch laughs and you get thrown out. This is how much the person values your friendship. To make a joke of it, and to humiliate you in front of a whole room full of their important writer friends. This cannot go unpunished. You are now truly enraged. Which is when, quite naturally, you reach the next step.

Step Seven:

You have an idea! Yes, that's what it took! Paradoxically, it was only by allowing your emotions free rein that you created the conditions in which an idea could emerge: organically, majestically, and hilariously. This is such a good idea! Because what this is really about is not how to have an idea, but how to have someone else's idea. Yes, in the same way that the despicable person who trampled on your friendship stole your ideas, you will steal their ideas. But how?

Step Eight:

Break into the person's house. Choose a time when you're pretty sure they won't be there. But it's best to take a weapon with you, just in case. You can't be totally certain they won't be there, or come home unexpectedly, or that someone else won't be there, maybe one of their worthless, immoral important writer friends. So take a weapon. Also some chloroform, rope, duct tape and a sack. Just in case.

Step Nine:

Once inside the house find their computer. Their passwords will be pathetically easy to discover. They always are. Access their work files. Be swift, but calm and purposeful. Don't waste time regretting that you had to use the weapon. These things happen. Luckily you have the other equipment. Okay, you're into their files. Bingo! There it is, a file called New Ideas. Ha, ha, people are so dumb. You read the file and find the latest idea.  It's an idea for a short piece entitled How To Have An Idea. It's not bad. You can definitely use it. It's your idea now.

Step Ten:

Congratulations, I've had an idea! This is my idea. Mine. All mine. 

* * * * *

Sit down, comedian

The last time I did stand-up comedy the audience voted with their feet. They kicked my head in.

I'm speaking metaphorically. Which was also the problem with my act. As it happens, I have been physically attacked while performing comedy, but it wasn't strictly speaking stand-up. Many years ago I opened for The Stranglers a few times. I came onstage pretending to be a roadie, whose microphone checks evolved into an increasingly surreal monologue that ended when I appeared, by means of a cunningly constructed wig, to remove the top of my head and expose my brain. Stranglers fans could get boisterous, and as well as throwing bottles or chairs they would sometimes pick up the smallest person available and throw them, too. It's unnerving to perform while a small punk, arms flailing and teeth bared, hurtles towards you, but as the band judged the success of their gigs on the liveliness of the riots they provoked, it was all part of the fun. I've also been chased by Turkish butchers wielding meat cleavers while doing street theatre in Rotterdam, but that's another story.

These reflections are prompted by the Edinburgh Festival fringe, which has mutated, over the years, from a forum for theatrical innovation to a trade fair for the comedy industry. The transformation began in earnest in the late 1980s, (about half way between my first Edinburgh performance, in 1979, and my last, to date, in 2001). It was partly in protest at this process that in 1989 I took an uncompromisingly experimental show to the festival, called Slave Clowns of the Third Reich, on the principle that if you can't perform fringe theatre at the fringe then where the fuck can you perform it? If I seem bitter, it's only partly because I dislike the dominance of stand-up comedy as cultural hegemony. It's also because I'm no good at it. Which makes me unusual, in a perverse way.

The world is full of stand-ups and most of them are pretty good. The comedy business has undergone a radical improvement in the quality and standard of its goods and services, just like many other businesses. Forty years ago it was quite easy to purchase a crappy stereo system or an abysmal car. In the motor trade, for example, two words spring to mind and those words are Princess and Austin, but not necessarily in that order. But these days it takes real dedication to find a truly execrable car or a rotten sound system. I don't miss those lousy products at all, but I do rather miss some of the hopeless performers from the early days of the comedy boom, and what was quaintly called "alternative comedy." And there's a simple reason for that: they may have been bad, but at least they meant it. In other words, they weren't products like stereos or cars.

I'm full of admiration for comedians who've worked hard to become good at what they do, especially when it includes gruelling years on the circuit, learning and perfecting their craft. Sure, certain people have a natural ability to make other people laugh, but it takes fortitude to become a good stand-up, as well as talent. People say stand-ups need to be supremely confident, but I think stand-ups also need humility (another quality I'm short of). However, there's more to my disillusionment with stand-up comedy than my own personal failings. 

No, it's because I believe most current British comedy lacks moral courage, engagement with the real world, and experience of life.

Not long ago I was at a storytelling gig. There are some wonderful storytellers out there, but what struck me at this gig was that the stories the younger performers told were excruciatingly boring. If the only experiences you've had are: childhood, school, university, a few relationships, and the risky thrill of being late with the rent once or twice, what have you got? A pilot on BBC3, probably. However, my point is that if your experience of life is limited, you need to be an exceptional performer to make up for it. 

I'm not saying that to be a good comedian you need to have been a lumberjack, pulled off a jewel heist, worked with lepers, or spent time in prison - although I can think of some comedians whose incarceration would be a public service. However, you don't need to experience something to get an angle on it.  Shakespeare didn't need to be a murderer to write about murder. But he was Shakespeare, and you're not. Better start planning that jewel heist. (Don't forget to film it for YouTube.)

Lack of life experience doesn't have to disqualify a comedian from engaging with an audience. The most mundane lives can yield profound truths; you don't need to travel the world to investigate the heart you carry with you wherever you go, and all you need to illuminate the fundamental comedy of human relationships is the nerve and determination to interrogate the subject even (or especially) if it's painful. But that's not what most comedians want to do. For many of them, their subject is simply themselves. But if your subject is you, and you haven't done anything, what else have you got to offer? Somehow, you need to engage with the world we all live in with enough passion, imagination and originality to say something about it that's meaningful to the rest of us - and I'm not talking about flirting "ironically" with bigotry. Let's not even go there.

Which brings us to politics. Many comedians don't seem interested in politics. There are some honourable exceptions, but they tend to be among the older generation. I'm not demanding that all comedy should be political, but I miss an approach that explores our shared humanity, rather than the narcissism of an individual. I can't help feeling that an entire generation is growing up with a belief that comedy has no power to impinge upon how anyone thinks or feels and is simply a spectator sport in which competitors deploy their own ironic self-absorption to score points against each other. Is it too much to ask for material that goes deeper? How about some discourse on the fucking zeitgeist here? 

Stand-ups work very hard and need great devotion to their craft in order to excel. But for the most part, if you ask them what challenges they want to tackle, they talk about the challenges facing them in their career. These are, indeed, formidable, as it’s a highly competitive, stressful business. But for me it would be far more interesting, and potentially inspiring, if comedians were to tackle a bigger challenge, one that seems to have become so unfashionable that it's almost treated as an embarrassment. I’m talking about changing the world.

You know you want to.

By overwhelming public demand, I continue to refrain from doing stand-up, and I confine myself to writing. For now.

UNSPIRATIONAL QUOTES

You know how it is. You're at the end of your tether. Your hopes and dreams seem futile. You feel that the world is conspiring against you, and that you're a total failure. You're about to give up - and then it happens. You stumble across a few simple words that seem to have a personal message just for you at this dark moment in your life. And in that instant you realise that no matter how low you have sunk, and no matter how bad things seem, there is always some fucking idiot who can make it worse.

You were already feeling lonely, depressed and hopeless. But now, as you contemplate the drivel you've just come across, almost certainly on the Internet, a bitter, poisonous rage floods through you as well. For once again the glorious potential of human language to enoble the spirit and elevate the intellect has been debased and perverted by some unspeakable swine to spread the plague of toxic banality that is the INSPIRATIONAL FUCKING QUOTE.

In the earnest hope of alleviating a small portion of the misery inflicted upon us by this depravity, I offer the following observations, for which I've coined the term Unspirational Quotes.

Do not go where the path may lead, go where there is no path and leave a trail. That way they'll be able to find your remains.

Search for the hero inside yourself. If you can't find him, flush him out with alcohol. The bugger always shows up after a few drinks.

Don't waste your time being jealous of those more succesful than yourself. Instead, focus your efforts on sticking pins in little dolls of them.

A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step. And so does a journey to the pub, which is usually a lot closer.

Seize the day. Then cut off one of its ears and send it to the rest of the week with a ransom demand.

The secret of happiness is to count your blessings while others are adding up their troubles. And then drive past their house repeatedly, playing the song that reminds them of the person who broke their heart.

Never put off until tomorrow what you already put off yesterday. Today, put off something new.

Motivation is all about the carrot and stick. It's up to you where you stick the carrot.

Fools rush in where a big sign says "Fools, rush this way."

If a job's worth doing it's worth getting someone who knows what they're doing to do it.

It is a great undertaking to truly know another's mind. It's easier just to steal their identity.

To be happy, spend your money on experiences, not things. And buy a really good camera to record all those happy experiences.

Do unto others as you would if you gave a shit.

The best way to predict the future is to create it. But where's the fun if everything is predictable? So relax, have a drink and wait to be surprised. Even if it's a bad surprise at least you'll be drunk.

Two's company, three's a crowd, and four is ideal if you want to tie a monkey to a waterbed.