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From Sheffield To Alaska
Yesterday was PRS STATEMENT DAY, that most wonderful time of the year that is SO wonderful it can happen twice in the same year. Or, for a lot of us, none times in the same year.

For LO! it is the day when The Performing Rights Society send you money (loosely) (sometimes very loosely) based on the amount of airplay you have had, whether that be from radio shows, telly, jukeboxes, gym workout sessions, or a variety of other ways to hear music publicly that seem a bit made up but almost definitely probably aren't. You have to get over a certain threshold of CA$H to GET a statement, but when you cross that line you get a full list of ALL the plays that PRS has collected money from.

This is almost always a DELIGHT because you often find all sorts of places that your music's been played that you had no idea about - for instance, I once discovered that we'd had national radio play in SPAIN because of a PRS statement. THIS time I around I was utterly AMAZED to find that almost the entire payment - and the reason we had got over the Getting A Statement Threshold at all - was because ALASKAN AIRLINES had been playing Thank Goodness For Christmas on their aeroplanes!

Alaskan Airlines do make a big deal about Christmas, so I ASSUMED they put us on some sort of Festive Playlist for the season, and I am thus DELIGHTED to imagine rugged Alaskan types zooming through the air with US ringing in their ears! HOORAH!

I was also very pleased INDEED to see that BBC Radio Sheffield appear to STILL be using Good Cooking as the theme for the cooking section on their breakfast show, going by the number of times PRS say they've played it anyway. I must say I find this all rather WONDERFUL. When one releases a song into the wild, as like what I have done so many times, you have no idea AT ALL who is going to listen to it or where they're going to play it - or indeed IF anyone's going to - so it's fantastic to discover these strange uses that they have been put to. I must say I fully support it, and if any OTHER airlines or local radio shows want to follow suit I would have no problem with that whatsoever!

posted 16/10/2024 by MJ Hibbett
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Live From Nottingham
I had the afternoon off work on Friday to enable ease of travel to distant Nottingham, where I was due to play an actual GIG!

It's been a good old while since I've travelled solo for a gig, so I had done my usual careful planning. I used to stay in an IBIS in Nottingham City Centre but after some Premier Inn googling I found what appeared to be my old place trannsformed into another franchise. "Oh lovely", I thought, "all the advantages of that location, with the extra delight of Premier Inn luxury. BOOKED". It was only when I was heading up there that I realised that the original Ibis was VERY MUCH still in existence, and that I'd booked myself into a Premier Inn that LOOKED similar but was about half and hour's walk away. Luckily as an INTERNATIONAL ROCK STAR I am extremely forgiving of myself as ALSO TOUR MANAGER and so undaunted I took the first of MANY tram trips from the station to my hotel and all was well.

About twenty minutes later I was out again and on the tram going in the other direction, back towards JT Soar where the gig was due to happen. WEIRDLY I had never been there before, despite the fact that it is also home to Snug Recording Co, which has been our studio home for MANY years, just not since they moved from Derby. Actually, I think we were MEANT to do a gig there the weekend before Covid, and we ended up all just coming to Nottingham anyway for FUN.

I found the venue OK but when I got there there didn't seem to be anyone around. After a short time Mr T McClure arrived and then, a short while after that, Mr R Newman arrived for a) HUGS b) soundcheck. Tom was doing a guest spot on WHISTLING and INEVITABLY the soundcheck for that took about 17 times as long as the rest of it, but by golly it was worth it. As I pointed out at the time, whistling is very much like playing TAMBOURINE - you'd never think it was possible for someone to be actively GOOD at it, but you know it when you hear it.

With that all done we strolled round the corner to Mocky D's, a vegan BURGER place with a fantastically excellent name. It is housed in an INDUSTRIAL ESTATE where there is also a BREWERY, and I was surprised to find that Tom was not familiar with this sort of thing as a concept. Round my way every second building is a brewery on an industrial estate selling vegan food! The place had been suggested by Mr N Page who had come with Mr T Pattison, who both arrived shortly after for a DELIGHTFUL early evening of grub and beer and intellectual discussion. Tim suggested that this was the first time he had EVER paid to see me play - monetarily anyway, I am pretty sure our long association has come with PSYCHOLOGICAL costs!

I picked up some BEERS from the fridge - JT Soars is a BYOB establishment - and we headed back to the venue, which was filling up with people. This doesn't take much as it is TINY, but the people it DID fill up with were uniformly DELIGHTFUL, and as well as Vlads and The Family Machine, who arrived not long after us, there were TONNES of lovely people who I had not seen for AGES. Hugs abounded, and then it was time for me to go on and do THIS:

Bad Back

It's Hard To Be Hopeful

I'm Doing The Ironing

Fire Drill

Chips And Cheese, Pint Of Wine

In The North Stand

Cheer Up Love

It Only Works Because You're here

The Lesson Of The Smiths

It went well, I think! Loads of people made two (2) very specific comments. Firstly, they said "Ooh, I haven't heard some of those songs before", which I guess is true - I didn't INTEND it to be mostly new or new-ish songs, but I guess it was! Secondly, and much more forecefully, everyone said "COR! That whistling was BRILLIANT!" which is probably because it WAS. We should do more songs with Tom whistling in them!

After me it was the turn of the night's main attraction, WHITE TOWN. My booking for this gig had come about as a sort of old-fashioned GIG SWAP after Jyoti and Frankie came down and played at Totally Acoustic, but this evening was very much ELECTRICAL. Jyoti has basically reunited the original White Town band, including Mr G Thatcher on AXE, and also roped in Frankie for additional GTR and especially TRUMPET. It all sounded GRATE, not least because the SOUND was being so excellently manned, and as at Totally Acoustic the songs that were somehow NOT globe-straddling hits sounded brilliant alongside the one that WAS. That one, however, sounded FANTASTIC in the full-band arrangement, as Frankie's MAGICAL LIPS tooted their way through.

Afterwards we wafted around saying thank yous and goodbyes to friends old and new before me, Tom, Mr V Vorton and various other pals went round the corner to The King Billy pub. This had been recommended to us by Mr A Hale who, alas, was not able to attend, but I was very grateful for the suggestion as it was LOVELY, like a pub from the OLDEN DAYS of the 1990s!

All that remained was to have a pint and then wander off into the night and onto another tram. It was a pretty BRILLIANT evening - gigs, it turns out, are GRATE!

posted 15/10/2024 by MJ Hibbett
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Can You Beat John Dredge (9)?
Today we unleash the FIFTH episode of The Funny Comics Fan Club, which this time is all about an issue of KRAZY COMIC. You can listen to our THORTS on it HERE:



(SUMMARY: we really really liked it!)

Along with the usual mix of INSIGHT and HIJINX this episode also features an idea I have borrowed from the This Are Johnny Domino podcast - an ENGAGEMENT OPPORTUNITY! As you will hear in the above, the issue we looked at this time featured a winning competition entry from a young John Dredge (9) of Penn. This is the very SAME John Dredge with whom I do the show, and you can hear all about the spoils of his victory within. The competition itself was called "Get Out Of This" and involved the comic showing a first panel with a problem, and readers being invited to send in their solutions. So, the first panel was THIS:

Readers then had to suggest a way out of it, and John sent in this solution:

We may all have our thoughts on the effectiveness of this solution, but it still raises the question of whether any of US could do any better? We therefore decided to throw this out into the universe as a CHALLENGE to our listeners to see if they could come up with their own answers, putting it out on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter and Bluesky to see what people can come up with. If you'd like to take part please do so on the SOCIALS of your choice, and otherwise please enjoy this latest episode which is PACKED with GRATE stories!

posted 14/10/2024 by MJ Hibbett
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Going To The Comic Mart
On Sunday I headed into old London town to attend my first ever COMICS MART. I have read about such affairs from afar for most of my life, not least in the FANZINES I used to buy as a teenager, where they seemed like super glamorous affairs where heroes such as Alan Moore etc wafted around buying drinks for other legends and revealing top secret secrets of future storylines. I longed to be there!

In the intervening decades, however, I was aware that things had changed somewhat. The sort of thing I dreamt of is now called a Comic Convention (although they tend not to have a huge amount to do with comics and are more about MOVIES), whereas the actual COMICS MART had stuck to the business of LONG BOXES (i.e. cardboard boxes full of comics) to be flicked through and bargains to be sought. Still, it was quite exciting to be actually GOING to one, and I arrived with a pocket full of CASH hoping to come away with a big pile of British comics ready for future episodes of The Funny Comics Fan Club.

Friends, it did not quite work out like that. The signs were good when I entered the MASSIVE hall where the mart was being held, as I saw before me table after table PACKED with long boxes FULL of comics. However, as I made my way around the room I realised that they were pretty much ALL American comics. Now, obviously, I was expecting this to be mostly the case, but I wasn't prepared for the almost complete lack of British comics. Even 2000AD was in short supply, but British humour comics of the 60s to 80s were almost entirely absent - in the end I found THREE stalls that had ANY British comics, and most of those were either Whizzer & Chips (which we've done), The Beezer (which I've already got) and, for some reason, Hotspur. My GOODNESS but there were a lot of issues of Hotspur!

After some diligent flicking through boxes, many of which were hidden UNDERNEATH the stalls, I eventually came away with 8 different comics, which did not feel like quite the HAUL I had hoped for. I also attempted to publicise the podcast a bit with some FLYERS what I had made, but that didn't go terribly well either. I did FOIST them on a few stall holders I spoke to, and though most were friendly some of them gave the distinct impression that they DISDAINED the very IDEA of a podcast and would be placing the flyer in recycling as soon as they could find an appropriate receptacle.

There was a weird sort of ATMOSPHERE overall that was a bit like that, like everyone was very much ON THEIR GUARD and I must say I came away feeling a bit UNNERVED by the whole experience. I wasn't expecting it to be glorious festival of glamour that I had read about in the back pages of Fantasy Advertiser, but I was surprised to find how DEFENSIVE everyone seemed to be. I can sort of understand it - traditionally comics readers have been outsiders and thus the target of BULLIES, and so perhaps one builds up those sort of defenses as one goes along - but I was surprised how pervasive it felt in what you would hope was a SAFE SPACE.

However, despite all that I did manage to ACCRUE a mighty HAUL of comics, and hopefully managed to spread the word around, so it was all good in the end, and The FCFC is powered up well into next year!

posted 7/10/2024 by MJ Hibbett
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Comics | Histories
Last week there was a knock at the door, and that knock was knocked by The Postie with a special package for me what had come all the way from Germany, containing THIS:



As you can hopefully see from the above, this is a book called Comics | Histories (I'm not sure what the "|" is for) what has been published by Rombach, edited by Jessica Bauwens-Sugimoto, Felix Giesa and Christina Meyer, and I received a copy because my chapter Periodizing 'The Marvel Age' Using the Production of Culture Approach is very much in it!

I am EXTREMELY pleased that this book is out as my chapter is the FINAL SLICE of my PhD to be published, and it is quite a BIG slice. As fellow Comics Aficionados will be aware, American superhero comics have traditionally been divided into AGES. The Golden Age starts with Action Comics #1 in 1938 - the debut of Superman - and is when most of the really big DC superheroes were first invented. The Silver Age starts in 1956 with the introduction of the new Flash in Showcase #4, and saw revised versions of most of those heroes plus, in 1962, the debut of The Fantastic Four. PEASY!

After that, however, it all gets a bit confusing, with The Bronze Age starting somewhere in the early 1970s, sort of, and then... um... well, nobody seems to agree WHAT happens after that. It's all very inexact and unsatisfying, especially when you're trying to do an empirical analysis of a corpus of comics BASED on ages, so I decided to SORT IT OUT by developing a DIFFERENT classification, based on empirical methods rather than just "this is when a comic I like came out".

The POINT of this, for my PhD, was that it gave me a way to select a CORPUS of comics, cartoons, radio shows etc featuring Doctor Doom that all appeared during this period, which I called "The Marvel Age". However, when I was putting together the BOOK Data and Doctor Doom, describing how all this worked was starting to DERAIL everything else, so I decided to EXCISE the full explanation and put it somewhere ELSE, and THIS is the place where I put it.

I am therefore REALLY EXCITED that it is now OUT in the world because, as stated above, it was a HUGE part of the PhD that didn't really get into the book, and I think that ACTUALLY DEFINING what "The Marvel Age" MEANS (rather than just SAYING it, as everybody seems to) could be Quite Useful for The Comics Studies Community.

I am EVEN MORE EXCITED to realise that you can actually READ my chapter for FREE by accessing it on the Nomos e-library! Do go and have a look if you can, it is NOT TOO LONG and does explain quite a LOT about how all this works!

posted 4/10/2024 by MJ Hibbett
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Influencer Level Unlocked
I am happy to report that myself and Mr John Dredge have this week reached a whole new level with our podcast The Funny Comics Fan Club, for LO! we are now INFLUENCERS!

Yes, you read that correctly - me and John are now being approached by organisations (well, AN organisation) desperate (I assume) for us to promote their wares for them. The TYPE of organisation is, of course, one involved in FASHION WEAR which will be of no surprise to anyone who has ever seen either or both of us casually draping ourselves in the latest must-have "togs", but I must say it was quite a nice surprise to us.

What happened was that we got an email from Apparel of Laughs asking if we'd like a couple of free t-shirts in exchange for a mention on the show. They have the actual official licence from Rebellion to make t-shirts featuring the old IPC kids' titles and, as you can see on their website, they have done a LOVELY job with titles like Buster, Oink, Tammy, Misty and so on. We of course said "YES PLEASE" and the shirts arrived yesterday afternoon, just before I was heading off to meet John to record a new episode. This, of course, led to a FASHION SHOOT, and I am very happy to share some of the ensuing shots BELOW:




As I'm sure you will agree, we are NATURALS at this and so, in order to help boost the economy and raise national morale, we are prepared to entertain further offers for either ENDORSEMENTS or MODELLING.

We also recorded an ADVERT for a future episode of the show. As regular listeners will be aware we usually include one in each show based on an actual advert in one of the comics we've looked at, so it felt a bit weird to do it FOR REAL. I've not started editing this episode yet, but I might have to include a bit where we tell people that this really IS an advert for something they can buy, rather than an offer for 6,000 Stamps Of All Nations that you could have sent a postal order off for about forty years ago.

That's all to come in a few weeks, but for now please gaze in wonder at our mighty selves above, and thanks very much INDEED to Apparel of Laughs for the t-shirts, they really are very nice indeed!

posted 3/10/2024 by MJ Hibbett
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Triple Threat
On Wednesday evening I headed off to distant WEST LONDON to go to the THEATRE. West London is a flipping WEIRD place as it is full of super-posh people who are ODD. As soon as I got into the lift at Gloucester Road tube I felt out of place, as everyone else seemed to be wearing KNITTED CLOTHES with haircuts from the mid-1980s and more BROACHES than I've seen for several decades. Truly, THE WEALTHY are not like the rest of us!

I was heading for Drayton Arms Theatre to see a play called Triple Threat, written by Mr Andrew Cartmel. A certain subset of people will be thinking "Hang on, not THAT Andrew Cartmel?" to which an entire corpus of me replies "Yes, THAT Andrew Cartmel" i.e. former script editor of Doctor Who back in the Sylvestor McCoy era and current author of the Vinyl Detective series of novels. Andrew was my MENTOR back when I did my MA in Screenwriting at City University, and was both EXCELLENT in his advice and GENEROUS in his marking, so it was lovely to hear from him a week or so ago when he spotted my face in The Radio Times. "Is that you?" he asked, and it WAS!

I bumped into Andrew almost as soon as I got into the PUB bit of The Drayton Arms and we had a delightful chat before it was SHOWTIME. I must admit I was a little trepidatious before going upstairs to see the play, as I always AM when going to see a normal play without even any songs in it, but there was no need as it was BLOODY GRATE. It was actually GRATE three times in a row, as it was THREE short plays in a row, with the same three actors in each. The acting was VERY GOOD INDEED and the writing was BRILLO - I especially enjoyed the middle play, "The Magical Money Tree", which got into some really in-depth arguments about whether money exists or not while still being DEAD FUNNY. The dialogue was especially ace here, it was very very snappy INDEED enabling the actors to bounce off each other, keeping all the THORTS rolling along while still being fun to watch. As I say, it was ACE!

There was a break in between the second and third plays, when a rather wonderful PUB MIRACLE occurred. Being a theatre pub they had prepared for the interval by having only two members of staff on the bar and having both of them working on fulfilling food orders rather than serving customers - for some reason almost ALL theatres and theatre-like places seem to do this sort of thing, as if having a massive queue at the bar is somehow a measure of Artistic Integrity. We all waited about 10 minutes for ANYBODY to get served, and then there was a gradual shuffling about as we watched the now ONE member of bar staff keep having to go and check things with colleagues.

ANYWAY when it was finally my turn to order I realised that I'd possibly got in front of the person next to me. I didn't want to risk the sole member of barstaff wandering off again, so I just offered to buy the other person's drink FOR them. She wasn't sure, but while we discussed it a bloke behind us said "Could you get two pints for me too please?" It seemed like the right thing to do, so I ended up getting a round for all of us but, just I was about to NOBLEY pay for the lot, the chap behind me said "Don't worry, I'll get these. I can put them on the work credit card!"

It was all rather wonderful, like THE UNIVERSE had leant in and said "LO! You shall be repaid for your patience and - for once - not getting all arsey about the situation." I shall have to remember this in future!

In fact, the whole EVENING was rather wonderful, and I hopefully made these feelings clear to The Author as I left. The play, or rather PLAYS, is/are on for two weeks all together, until Saturday 12 October in fact, and I would WHOLEHEARTEDLY recommend buying a ticket or even TICKETS if you are around that area. I cannot guarantee that you too will end up being rewarded with FREE BOOZE, but I CAN guarantee a FAB evening out!

posted 3/10/2024 by MJ Hibbett
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A Case Of Beano Vu
The latest episode of The Funny Comics Fan Club is out NOW, and this time John and I are talking about The Beano!



Some regular listeners may feel a strange sense of DEJA VU when they listen to it as, due to a purely technical error, this episode was accidentally uploaded instead of the one about Nutty a couple of weeks ago. This was spotted early and we were able to take remedial action, so hopefully no harm was done and it wasn't anybody's fault and definitely not mine for putting the wrong file up the first time.

Those who've NOT already heard it can delight to John and I having a FINE old time revisiting a classic issue of The Greatest and also The Most Important British Comics Of All Time - for those saying "Oh what about 2000AD then en?" I would respond by pointing out that almost every single writer and artist on that JUSTIFIABLY ESTEEMED publication grew up reading and being influenced by The Beano, and THUS without it there would have been no 2000AD nor any British Invasion nor approx 98.7% of all the mainstream comics we have enjoyed up to and including today. I am prepared to make this argument in public and/or at volume.

This episode features a few surprises for us, a lot of discussion about postal orders, and also, right at the start, one of my favourite JOKES of the whole series from Mr J Dredge. You will know it when you hear it, largely due to me LARFING quite a lot.

We're dead chuffed with how these episodes are sounding so far, and would be EXTREMELY grateful to anyone who can like, subscribe, retweet, mention, or wave a placard in their local high street about it. As you can hear, it is very much a DIY operation, so any help getting it out to other people is very much appreciated!

posted 29/9/2024 by MJ Hibbett
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Prolapse Return (Again)
Last night I went to distant North East London, which is a faraway place from my own home in... um... East London. It was round Tottenham-ish way, which is peculiarly awkward to get to from Stratford at the best of times, and even less convenient when you set off confidently for Mansion House and realise that you were meant to be going to MANOR House instead.

So it was that I was slightly late to meet Mr S Hewitt for a delightful PINT in The Finsbury before heading down the road to New River Studios, there to see Prolapse, who have re-emerged from their slumbers to do a string of gigs leading up to Paris Popfest. The venue was SURPRISINGLY NICE - it was in The Trendy Warehouse District of converted warehouses (the clue is in the name) so I was expecting Arsiness and Board Games, but everyone was dead friendly, the beer was nice, and all was well.

Within 5 seconds of being there we had bumped into Mr T Pattison and then Mr D Dixey, but WEIRDLY that was almost THE LOT for People From Leicester, with the slight exception of Dave and Sean from Airport Gurl who, technically, are more Loughborough. At previous Prolapse gigs there have been about 9,000,000 familiar faces from Back In The Day so it was strange not to see so many people this time, although maybe that is a GOOD thing as the gig was SOLD OUT so I guess it was allowing tickets to go to people who WEREN'T going to spend most of the night saying "Ooh do you remember The Charlotte?" and so on.

Prolapse themselves were GRATE as per, with Scottish on ESPECIALLY good form between the songs. He always was dead good at this bit, back in the day - ooh, do you remember them playing the Charlotte etc etc - but MATURITY has refined his abilities even further. It reminded me of seeing Allo Darlin' last year and MARVELLING at Elizabeth's CHAT PROWESS.

The thing that struck me MOST though was that the SOUND was different from previous occasions, with them being mixed like a BAND with seperate INSTRUMENTS, rather than A BLOODY RACKET. Back in the 1990s, when they formed, PA systems at all venues were uniformly AWFUL and soundmen tended to just turn up the bass and drums A LOT. This really really suited Prolapse as the bass and ESPECIALLY the drums are a huge part of their sound, with everything else having a BIG FITE in the background, but last night you could hear all the words and the individual instruments. I'm not sure how I feel about it, to be honest, but INTERESTINGLY it seemed to work best for the two new songs played (which were ACE and also not a sudden new direction!). I believe that Prolapse songs are composed through "jamming", so I guess these new ones will have been "jammed" ON one of these new PA systems, and so maybe work better that way.

Anyway, it was DEAD GOOD as per and made me Quite Excited to hear NEW STUFF, which I believe should be emerging next year. Don't tell Tim I said so (as it will make him insist WE do the same) but I quite like the idea of hearing them do some songs I haven't heard before, and hopefully there will be AMPLE chances so to do!

posted 27/9/2024 by MJ Hibbett
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Who's Better - Radio Times or B3ta?
Last year, following my GIG ONE THOUSAND, I unleashed an AVALANCHE OF STATS from The Database Of ROCK, including sales figures, gigs played, people played WITH, and MUCH much more. Should you wish to revisit it you can start with the blog what EXPLAINS it all and then move forward from there. There are LOTS of graphs and tables as it goes along, so prepare yourself for EXCITEMENT!

I mention this because I have recently been looking over a couple of other graphs and tables, this time to do with The Funny Comics Fan Club. Our podcast provider gives us GRAPHS and LOGS of how many people have downloaded stuff, and I have been PORING over it regularly for the past few weeks - entirely for analytical reasons, of course, and not because I CRAVE VALIDATION. I mean, if I DID crave Validation you'd think it would show up somewhere in my ROCK career wouldn't you?

Anyway, it is GRATE, and gives us graphs like THIS:



This shows how many downloads we've had overall for the past 14 days. As you can see there are two PEAKS, which coincide almost exactly with us being featured in The Radio Times and then a few days later us getting a plug in the b3ta newsletter. It's not surprising that we DID have big bumps in downloads on those two occasions, but what DELIGHTS me is that the B3ta Bump is almost as big as The Radio Times one. I mean, one of these is a long-running periodicial very popular with the middle-aged demographic we're looking for - AND THE OTHER IS THE RADIO TIMES - so I suppose they WOULD be similar, but it still makes me happy that b3ta is reaching out to so many people still. WELL DONE EVERYBODY!

This graph is for downloads, but I remain unsure of whether or not it counts if someone STREAMS the show instead. Technically they don't actually download it then, so I don't know if that means it's stored with the provider (e.g. Spotify) or not, and it's not QUITE the same story when you look at the CHARTS. Here, for example, is a graph showing our CHART PLACINGS for the past 14 days.



Now, the MOST exciting part of this is that we got to NUMBER ONE in the Comedy Fiction chart last week (as previously discussed), but there's also something going on with this and the line for the Fiction chart (the lower one). The Fiction one shows a much closer relationship to the earlier downloads graph, with the same very similar bumps for the Radio Times and for B3ta. The upper line, showing our placing in the Comedy Fiction chart, doesn't move around anywhere NEAR as much, which leads me to think that there might possibly be quite a lot FEWER contenders in that one, so there is less competition for places. Maybe. Perhaps?

Either way, it remains JOLLY exciting for all of the above reasons, even if it remains Slightly Perplexing. I'm not 100% sure, for instance, who decided that we should be in those two charts and not 'Religion & Spirituality' or 'Fashion & Beauty', for example, both of which John and I are clearly Thought Leaders in. I also don't know what the relationship is between downloads and streams, or how many people are SUBSCRIBING to us as we go along on these different platforms, or all SORTS of things. I guess this is another of those occasions where, at some point, I'll have to learn more skills, but for now I'm just enjoying the FACT that we're IN these charts. It feels GOOD!

posted 26/9/2024 by MJ Hibbett
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Unwanted Skills
This weekend I had to learn a new skill, and let me tell you my friends I did not like it ONE BIT.

The problem was not the skill itself, which was learning how to use a mixing desk to record audio onto a laptop. It was slightly complicated, because the equipment what I had bought came with NO MANUAL AT ALL and so I had to watch a whole bunch of videos, read various webpages, try it out in various configurations and generally think back to all the times I've sat behind either Robbie and Rich at Snug OR Kev Reverb in Stayfree and try and remember what on earth they were doing. Actually, it was slightly more than slightly complicated as I also had to get it to work with a new microphone, and also with Adobe Audition (for REASONS) and also with Microsoft Teams (for OTHER reasons), but it was at least do-able.

The PROBLEM was not any of the above, it was the fact that I really really did not want to HAVE to learn any new flipping skills. Over the years I have had to learn LITERALLY MILLIONS of new skills that I didn't want, and to be perfectly frank I have had just about enough. Several years ago when I was a teenager - maybe even a decade or more ago in fact - all I wanted to do was WRITE WORDS what people would think were clever, and so I had to learn to TYPE. Fine. Then to put these words out in public I had to learn how to use one of them STENOGRAPH machines you used to have with the carbon paper and the turny handle, and then staple them all together into magazines. Then I thought it'd be good to do some sort of PERFORMANCE, as that would involve a chance to SHOW OFF, and so I had to learn how to book a venue, and rehearsal space, and organise people to turn up, and do some sort of directing, and then TELL other people about it. MORE SKILLZ.

After a couple of years I realised that actually being in a BAND was probably easier and would involve MORE showing off and also BEER so did that, which meant having to learn to play an INSTRUMENT. As it turns out, you didn't need to have to learn how to play an instrument WELL, so I didn't, but I did have to learn about how AMPS worked, and PA systems, and LIGHTING sometimes, and also designing posters and flyers, and how to get into gig listings. As time went by we did some RECORDING so I had to learn how all THAT flipping works, and how to do MIXING and then how to MANUFACTURE tapes and CDs and who to send THOSE to to get them on the radio or in shops or on websites.

"Great news everybody", said the Universe around this time, "now there's a thing called the INTERWEB what you can use to do all of this yourself!" This sounded fun, but then you had to learn about SERVERS and HTML and CSS and then WEB PAGES and SOCIALS and OH MY GOOD LORD it just keeps going on and flipping on. Do you need someone who knows the difference between CMYK and RGB? Ask me! Need a slightly wrong explanation about the difference between Mechanicals and Publishing? I can do that! I can also give extremely basic advice on how to EDIT BLOODY VIDEO and then get it onto YouTube and all those as THAT was something that we all suddenly needed to flipping know about.

It makes me feel like I am a VILLAGE HALL filled with a crowd of surly teenagers who have all been sent on a variety of training courses that they didn't really want to go on and didn't properly pay attention to. Some of them have talked to each other and pretty much worked out the basics - Video Editing Teen and Music Editing Youth realised it was all sort of the same thing, for instance, while Gig Booking Boy can fill in for PR & Communications Lad if need be - but it really is quite a LOT of youths in rather a small metaphorical village hall and by this point they are starting to smell a bit, as gatherings of youths often can.

Over the years otherwise perfectly sensible and lovely people have occasionally asked if I would like to use all of these gathered skills/metaphorical teenagers to manage someone ELSE, and my answer has always been to politely say no thank you very much, for two very excellent reasons. The first of these is that although, as stated, I know the basics of all manner of unwanted skills, I am not actually very good at ANY of them, and the second is that I don't LIKE knowing about them and would really rather not have these skills in the first place!

All of which is a very roundabout way of saying I now understand what an XLR is, what 2TK INPUT (RCA) means, and which settings to alter to get the correct CODEC into an audio file. Look out for all of this knowledge being inexpertly applied to a podcast near you soon!

posted 25/9/2024 by MJ Hibbett
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Nerd Nite
Last Wednesday myself and The Acts On My Bill went OUT, heading to The Backyard Comedy Club in Bethnal Green for an evening at Nerd Nite London. It was meant to be REVISION as I'm doing a spot there myself next month, but it turned out to be BRILLIANT FUN as well.

We arrived at The Backyard Comedy Club to find that it was Surprisingly Nice, with a big bar, wide range of beer, friendly staff and - perhaps most importantly - REALLY NICE CHIPS. They were lovely! At showtime we went through to the back room which was ALSO really nice, much more spacious and fresh than a usual comedy club set-up, with a mixture of Cabaret Format tables and chairs at the front and several rows of chairs at the back, which all soon filled.

It was a VERY good sign that when the host (who I don't think told us her name) came on everyone stop talking right away. It was also good when she carried on and explained EXACTLY how the evening would go and, crucially, pointed out that though this was taking place in a Comedy Club it was NOT a comedy NIGHT. The idea was that people would talk about their research areas in an entertaining way but weren't aiming to do stand-up comedy, which was a GRATE thing to know going in, and also a GRATE way to run a night because it meant that you got a bunch of enthusiastic people telling you about their VERY VERY INTERESTING research areas without feeling the need to shoehorn GAGS in, which meant that the enthusiasm and excitement and Being Very Interesting could generate their OWN larfs.

And COR but it was all SO interesting. The first speaker was Professor Sarah Hart who explained things like the SQUARE CUBE LAW as it applies to fictional GIANTS and tiny people, done in a way that was a) really funny b) completely clear. I have had this explained to me MULTIPLE times over the years and never really got it but this time I totally did, along with a whole other bunch of stuff like terminal velocity and calories in tiny apples and various other previously unthought of (by me anyway) aspects of fictional characters growing and shrinking. Even better, once she'd finished, there were QUESTIONS. This happened with every speaker and it was BRILLIANT as everyone asked Actual Questions (i.e. not "more of a comment than a question") and the speakers dealt with them Intelligently and also Wittily.

Next was Rachel Coxcoon who gave an amazing explanation of her PhD research around the language used to discuss climate change, the different political groupings that exist in the UK, and how they do or don't communicate with each other. I'm not really doing it justice as it was pretty MIND BLOWING in places, not least when she very nicely and kindly pointed out that although us in the audience might think we were pretty diverse in terms of age, race, gender etc etc, in actual fact we were pretty much all of the same political/philosophical viewpoint, and that this lack of diversity REALLY MATTERS when trying to get across public policy. It was BRILL!

Finally Professor Kevin Murphy talked about the history of obesity drugs and the science of some of the current jabs, which had multiple UNEXPECTED outcomes and results and was similarly REALLY REALLY INTERESTING and followed by Questions. It was basically like going to the best conference EVER with the best AUDIENCE too, as you came out feeling as if your BRANE had had a really good workout, with lovely people sharing their enthusiasms with you.

As you can probably tell, we really enjoyed ourselves and I was EXTREMELY glad that I'd decided to do my revision. All I need to do now is work out how I'm going to match up to these high standards when it's my turn!

posted 24/9/2024 by MJ Hibbett
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Top Of The Pops
One of the (many) GRATE things about doing The Funny Comics Podcast is that you get access to STATS! Not MANY stats, but stats nonetheless i.e. you can go to the homepage and click 'refresh' as many times a day as you like to see if anyone new has downloaded one of the episodes. I really like this as it is a gently babbling stream of VALIDATION, although to be honest I'm not quite sure what it actually MEANS. I'm pretty sure it tells you how many people have actually downloaded a FILE of a show, but does it include people who STREAM them as well? Or what?

I'm still not entirely sure, which was why I was OVERJOYED last week to find that there's a whole OTHER page of stats you can access called podwatch that shows our overall CHART position. Sadly for me this only updates once a day, but it does mean I have an Exciting Thing to click every morning, and THIS morning it was VERY EXCITING INDEED, for LO! we were NUMBER ONE!!



NUMBER ONE! The above is a SCREENSHOT as it is a rolling data source, but it is living proof that we hit the top! All right, I know it is not the ALL PODCASTS EVER chart or anything, and that Comedy Fiction is very likely one of the SMALLER charts, though having said that we were ALSO number fifteen in the overall FICTION chart, so it's pretty good all round. This is, I feel, almost entirely due to the FACT that we were in The Radio Times this week, and I'm guessing that we will gently dip down again as that excitement fades into fond memory, but for now I reckon we're going to sit back and enjoy it. Funny Comics Fan Club! TOP OF THE POPS!

posted 20/9/2024 by MJ Hibbett
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Back Back In The Radio Times
Yesterday I received a notification from Mr J Dredge that The Funny Comics Fan Club was in The Radio Times. We both reacted calmly to this as veterans of publicising things and, indeed, being in The Radio Times and anybody who said we both SQUEAKED WITH GLEE had better provide the evidence to prove it.

It WAS all rather exciting, to be honest, as not only was this the Actual Printed Radio Times but we were the PICK OF THE WEEK in the podcasts section, writ LARGE in this august journal! I dashed out to buy a copy and I must admit I was STUNNED to see it in ACTUAL PRINT right there in my local shop. It looked AMAZING, as you can see below!



Even more amazingly, that nice Mr David Hepworth (for it was he) had written this entirely without our knowledge. My guess is that this was because he knew John via him being on his and Mark Ellen's podcast a while ago, and so he'd spotted his ACTIONS that way. I did meet Mr Hepworth 17 years ago when he booked me for The Cornbury Music Festival, and though that LOOMS LARGE in my personal mythos I doubt it occupies a similar space in his!

It was all EXTREMELY exciting and John and I made very merry with it on The Socials, while watching our DOWNLOADS gently skip upwards. It was only at the end of the day when I leafed through the rest of the magazine that I suddenly realised that we were ALSO in the Top Ten Shows To Stream section right at the front of the whole magazine!!



ZOINKS! I couldn't believe it, that's US right there mixed in with all sorts of famous people! I tweeted this saying "Great to see The Radio Times supporting the work of one of the sexiest middle-aged male double acts ever! And also Brad Pitt and George Clooney", which I repeat here largely because I thought this was a GRATE joke that does not as yet seem to have gone viral, as surely it should.

The whole experience was pretty flipping incredible - I flipping LOVE The Radio Times and to be in it AGANE, but this time even MORE so, was completely mind blowing! HOORAH!

posted 18/9/2024 by MJ Hibbett
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The Superhero Project
I spent this weekend just gone in EASTBOURNE for the eighth iteration of The Superhero Project, the conference that discusses SUPERHERO stuff. I had a LOVELY time!

I first went a couple of years ago to Super 6 in Germany and had an EXCELLENT time, so I was excited to be back, especially as it was in a location significantly easier for me to get to. The journey wasn't entirely without issue as the train companies REFUSED to sell me a ticket to get there via Ashford International, which is 1,000 times easier than trudging across London to Victoria, and also QUICKER and with less Rail Replacement Buses, but I used NATIVE CUNNING to HACK IN and get seperate returns for each leg. Take That, THE MAN!

I don't think I've been to Eastbourne before and was expecting it to be a bit run down but it was actually REALLY RATHER NICE. It very much helped that the sun was out all weekend, but it also felt quite ALIVE and FUN - sort of like a Brighton without all the Brighton-ness of Brighton, I guess, or a smaller Bournemouth.

The conference itself was GRATE and also dead interesting. Usually when I got to a comics-type conference I have to PORE over the programme to find SOMETHING about superhero stuff or at least something that isn't about a boring "graphic" "novel", but here it was ALL about GRATE things, although interestingly there were hardly ANY presentations about comics. To my shock and horror there were even people who confessed to never having READ comics, concentrating instead on the MOVIES and TV SHOWS, and so I got even MORE new information as I've not really thought of those in the same DEPTH as what I have comics. I think my favourite was one that examined the effect of different aspect ratios on the film and TV versions of "Superman The Movie" which was EXTREMELY interesting and, even better, made me go and watch it again when I got home!

My presentation went down all right, I think, and there were a whole HEAP of questions afterwards, which developed into a general CHAT. Almost everyone there was also presenting themselves, so it felt like a SYMPOSIUM with several IDEAS continuing across the three days. Oddly, one of these IDEAS was a series of references to "Only Fools And Horses", which is not something that has happened at any other conference I've been to. One of my OTHER favourite talks, for instance, got deep into "The Ship Of Theseus" as used in "Wandavision" and I was very relieved INDEED when someone ELSE put their hand up to say "Trigger's Broom"!

It was a great VIBE all round, which also involved quite a lot of SOCIALISING. It turns out that decades of experience doing GIGS is extremely useful doing conferences, as it means i can stay up DEAD LATE and DRINK BEER without too many consequences, although having said that I did almost miss the Conference Dinner because a DISCO NAP got slightly out of control, and I had to run to the restaurant to get there before they starting serving up!

Other than that it all went off really really well, and I even managed to get an earlier train home that WASN'T a rail replacement service! There's not much more you can ask for from a conference than that!

posted 17/9/2024 by MJ Hibbett
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The Funny Comics Fan Club Episode Three: Um Bongo Eco
The third episode of my and John Dredge's podcats "The Funny Comics Fan Club" is out RIGHT NOW, available directly from our podbean site, on all of your favourite podcast sites, also all of the podcast sites you don't have strong opinions about, and also also right HERE:



This time we're talking about "Whoopee" comic, which had some flipping TERRIFC strips in it, including an AMAZING "Frankie Stein" story that proves, once again, that our old pal Umberto "Um Bongo" Eco was totally wrong to suggest that comics exist in a dreamlike state without a past or present. You can listen to my explanation of this on the show and also THRILL to John's DELIGHT in my telling of it. It was the sort of SUBTLE DELIGHT that, I think, is the hugest delight of ALL.

In response to Listener Feedback we've also put SCANS of some of the strips themselves on our SOCIALS, so you can see what on earth we're on about - we're now present on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter and Bluesky, so you should be able to find us - and even FOLLOW us - on whatever form of The Socials you prefer.

However you gain access I would highly recommend a listen to this episode, as it made ME laugh several times while editing it, and I'd heard all of the jokes ALREADY!

posted 16/9/2024 by MJ Hibbett
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A Night Of Unnecessary Detail
On Monday night I headed off to see An Evening Of Unnecessary Detail, a night of New Stuff put together by the Festival Of The Spoken Nerd people. It was taking place in The Cockpit Theatre in Marylebone, which is not a venue I've been to before, and in a bit of London I'm not very familiar with, so wasn't sure how to get there. Rather wonderfully, as I was stood around trying to find a map in St Pancras station, I saw the mighty SUSAN, Totally Acoustic regular and all-round excellent gig-goer. walking past. "I bet she's going where I'm going", I thought, and LO! she very much was, and entirely knew the way, so we went together. This was GRATE not only because I GOT there, but also because I had someone excellent to chat to there and back - HOORAH!

When we arrived at the theatre we found Ms H Arney on the door. I haven't seen for AGES, and in the time SINCE I last saw her it appears that she and her colleagues have become Interweb Superstars with YouTube Channels and LITERALLY MILLIONS of Followers and Socials and BOOK DEALS and all sorts of things like that. It's always a bit weird to me when this happens as I tend to think "Oh look, there's Helen who does Totally Acoustic" whereas other people think "EEE! That's Helen Arney Off The YouTubes And Everything!" It's similar to how I think of Mr M Zaltz Austwick as Martin From Big Tim's Gigs And Also The Fire Marshal At My UCL Job" whereas since those days he and especially his wife Mrs H Zaltzman are GLOBAL SUPERSTARS who do gigs on FLIPPING BROADWAY for heaven's sake! It is all rather wonderful, but it does make me think that maybe I'm in the wrong line of work!

Anyway, we went in and got ourselves sat in the LOVELY Theatre, what was in The Traverse Style i.e. there were seats on three sides. We were on one of the aforesaid sides which meant I could see the semi-concealed TIMER that all the acts had, showing them how much of their 12 minutes were left. I flipping LOVE this, as it was similar to the timers at the wheelchair basketball last week. Apparently it is A THING with us SPECIAL PEOPLE that we like to know exactly how long an event or other appointment is going to last, and I think ALL shows should have something similar. Imagine how great it would be if a PLAY had a countdown running to the end - especially for SPECIAL PEOPLE like me who also have SPECIAL BLADDERS!

There were many INTERESTING and INTRIGUING topics covered, with my favourites being a talk about LIMPETS and another about CLOTHES PEGS. These were especially good because they were funny but also DEAD INTERESTING. I'm beginning to realise that one of the reasons I don't really like most stand-up comedy is because it tends to be POINTLESS - just someone SAYING things with the sole purpose of getting a LARF, whereas FACT-BASED COMEDY contains LARFS but usually leans towards THE FACTS being the point, with the LARFS coming along as a by-product, which appears to be how I prefer it.

I should also say that the BAR STAFF at The Cockpit were excellent - there was a HEFTY queue at the break which they worked through diligently and at speed. It may seem a trivial thing, but TOO MANY TIMES have I been to The Theatre and been ENRAGED by the vast incompetence of the way the bars are organised, but here it was GRATE!

It was a pretty GRATE evening all together I must say, and also pretty LENGTHY, so it was Quite Late when we me and Susan finally emerged and headed back to Edgeware Station. I've got a couple more of these sort of gigs to go to over the new few months, so I will monitor the FACT-BASED COMEDY situation closely and report further!

posted 11/9/2024 by MJ Hibbett
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The Funday Times
On Friday last week I met with Mr John Dredge to record another episode of The Funny Comics Fanclub, and we did so in HIGH SPIRITS because John had just received news that we were going to be featured in The Sunday Times at the weekend!

Two days later, still EXCITED, I zoomed round to my local newsagents and bought The Sunday Times for the first time in about twenty years. It's been two decades because that's how long it takes to READ one issue, as it is GINORMOUS. but once I had ploughed through the multiple sections, pullouts and magazines I found our mention as promised, and it looked like THIS:



It was, I must admit, PRETTY FLIPPING EXCITING. That's us, right there, in The Famous Sunday Times! COR!

Perhaps most excitingly of all it drew us to the attention of Mr Chris Shaw of MY FAVOURITE PODCAST EVER I Am The Eggpod, who suggested we put some of the actual pages discussed on our socials. I have resisted doing this when other people have suggested it, largely because it involves using the scanner at work, but if Chris from Eggpod says it is a good idea then I am POWERLESS to resist, and so have gone and done exactly that - if you look on our twitter, bluesky or Facebook pages you should be able to see all of the relevant pages from episode one, with episode two to follow later this week and then similar on the day of release for future episodes. You can also find all of this stuff on our brand new INSTAGRAM page, what I set up yesterday and am still not quite sure if I did it right!

Meanwhile, thanks very much to everyone who's said nice things about the podcast so far. As you can probably tell, John and I are having a lot of funning making it, so it's good to know people are listening - ta!

posted 10/9/2024 by MJ Hibbett
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The Lemon Twigs
On Thursday night last week I met with Mr M Sutton and headed South to distant Brixton, there to go and watch The Lemon Twigs. Here is the executive summary of how it all went: AMAZINGLY.

A couple of years ago I asked for recommendations of New Acts to listen to, and the most popular reply was "The Lemon Twigs". I listened to their second album "Everything Harmony" and FLIPPING LOVED IT, as it seemed to have been hand-tooled from loads of bands I LOVE e.g. Simon and Garfunkel, early Paul McCartney and so on. When their new album "A Dream Is All We Know" came out it had also added a heavy dollop of The Beach Boys and Carole King, which obviously I ALSO loved, so I LEAPT at the chance to get gig tickets, not least because I was thinking "How on earth are they going to carry off that HUGE sound in The Live Environment?"

When they came on stage I was thus surprised to see there were only four of them, arranged in the super-traditional two guitars, bass and drums line-up. "Oh right," I thought, "they're going to do a stripped down live version that isn't really like the records. FAIR ENOUGH." The first song started with one of the brothers singing and all was as I thought... until it got to the chorus and they UNLEASHED THE THREE-PART HARMONIES. My GOODNESS but it was incredible, suddenly this GINORMOUS SOUND erupted and it was ASTONISHING. Me and Mark - and pretty much everyone else in the room - just LOOKED at each other in amazement. They sounded incredible!

The next song was the same, and the next, and pretty much onwards throughout the evening - every song sounded like THE MASSIVE HIT AT THE END, except there was always another one after it. There were also GTR SOLOS and TWIDDLY BITS and LUSCIOUS BASS and the whole SOUND was fantastic - we were a long long way from my early days of gigs at The Charlotte where everything sounded like DUB. The rather wonderful thing about it all was that DESPITE (I said DESPITE) the fact that they were all ludicrously talented at their instruments it was still loads of FUN, and also full of TUNES. Usually when people are even SLIGHTLY good at their instruments everything becomes IMMENSELY DULL and TUNELESS, but here not only did it remain exciting and catchy but also all the songs remained SHORT. They just rattled through song after song, each with 17,000,000 hooks but rarely over four minutes long.

It got a bit much half way through when they CHANGED INSTRUMENTS and were STILL GRATE at everything. The bass player went on keys, one of the singers went on drums and so on and so forth and then they ROCKED ON through three or four songs that way. It felt rather like SHOWING OFF at this point, but by now we were all in and AGOG so were powerless to do anything about it.

The first encore featured one of the brothers doing three songs on a Spanish Guitar which involved a) him checking the tuning by knocking off 30 seconds of AMAZING gtr playing b) performing a song he'd apparently written that day AND KNEW ALL THE WORDS ALREADY c) and then doing my favourite song off the second album with us all singing along. The band then came back for the second encore, and this culminated with them playing a cover of "Good Vibrations".

Good vibrations. The whole thing. With just four people. PERFECTLY. I mean, by now it was like they were DARING us to be FURIOUS at the amount of SHOWING BLOODY OFF that was going on. I have honestly never seen anything like it - I've been to AMAZING gigs and I've been to gigs where the ARTISTES were really good at it, but I've hardly ever been to see a gig where it was BOTH and definitely not one where everyone on stage appeared to be LARKING ABOUT quite so much while doing so.

We staggered out into the night BATTERED by what we'd seen, and also a bit worried that whatever we saw NEXT would seem to be a bit rubbish. On the way home we bumped into Former Fortuna Pop Supremo Mr S Price, who said that he'd seen them three times THIS WEEK, and we agreed that it had been GRATE. Because, in case it isn't clear yet, it really really had been. WOW!

posted 9/9/2024 by MJ Hibbett
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The Paralympics!
Earlier this week myself and the Agitos In My Logo got up very very early INDEED to go on a day trip to PARIS, there to go and see the ACTUAL PARALYMPICS!

It was all very exciting, also delightful, also GRATE. After an entirely pleasant journey on the Eurostar we rolled into Gare De Nord and found ourselves almost immediately confronted by a celebrity - for LO! The Paralympic Phryge was casually hanging around in the station, happy to have their photograph taken with anybody who happened to pass by. Including US!



With that completed to everybody's satisfaction we zoomed off to Gare de Lyon and then strolled round to The Bercy Arena, where we were due to watch the Wheelchair Basketball. It was a lovely sunny day and everybody seemed to be in a good mood, even the native Parisians who were MARKEDLY less grumpy than usual. It was all very similar to 2012 when an outbreak of GOODWILL spread across crusty old London Town, and reports were even heard of people chatting on the tube. It was fab!

We'd been forewarned that there would be no BOOZE in the arena so when we arrived at the Bercy we asked a Games Maker - un Créateur De Jeux, if you will - if there were any bars in the park next door. "No it is just a park" he said, so we went to the supermarket to get some cans. It was only when we went back that The Lager In My Tin pointed out that he'd actually been standing right in front of a bar in the park when he'd told us there weren't any! It all turned out for the best though as we got to sit in the sunshine drinking our Beer de Francais, soaking in the atmosphere as we watched hundreds and hundreds of French schoolchildren going into the venue.



As you can see, I was by this point going NATIVE!

After a while it was time to go in and we rattled through the queue, pausing only to say "Is that David Milliband" when we realised that Actual David Milliband was just ahead of us. Once inside we got sat down and THOROUGHLY enjoyed two games of Wheelchair Basketball - Japan vs USA women and Germany vs Canada men - which were both BRILLO. It was also quite EXHAUSTING as, apart from the break between the two matches, they did not allow a single second to go by without ENTERTAINMENT. There are GAPS between each of the four quarters of the game plus very brief stoppages for timeouts etc, and so these were all filled by either a roving host who kept getting everyone to SHOUT things, songs played that we had to sing along with (although these were mostly recent French pop songs so approx half the audience had never heard them before), dancers doing dance routines on the court, match commentators doing GAGS, and/or shots of people in the audience dancing, shouting or anything like that. It was all quite exciting but as someone whose experience of in-game entertainment doesn't extend much further than The Mick George Skip Challenge (kicking a football into a skip - literally) it got a bit KNACKERING!

In between the matches we bought some MERCH and also some Alcohol-free beer, which we drank on one of the nicest Smoking Terraces I have ever been on. We also got to see Official Officials sticking the Official Scores for the games on the Official Scoreboard, which felt VERY exciting. The whole thing was BRILLIANT - we were actually THERE!

Once the matches were over we left and went for a walk along the Seine, heading towards Notre Dame. It is a constant truth that Paris is REALLY BIG, and this BIGNESS is ALWAYS even bigger than you think it's going to be. London is also REALLY BIG but the bit in the middle, where all the famous SITES are, is pretty much all walkable, whereas Paris has everything spread out MILES apart so the MAP has to be smaller scale to fit everything in. We thus had a lengthy hike but it was worth it when we got there to see the Cathedral and the big exhibition outside explaining how they were mending it.

By now we were Quite Tired and so headed back via the RER again, which the French had cunningly hidden on a bridge - Paris was much more welcoming this time than I think it's ever been before when I've been there, but the public transport system was still a MENTAL MINEFIELD of incomprehensibility, including actually FINDING it in the first place! Eventually we DID get to the right platform and zoomed back to Gare de Nord where we were alarmed to find not a drop of BEER to be had anywhere. It was weird - there were no bars in the station, and the shops round about had no beer for sale either. We went into an actual French Supermarket and there was NO BEER! In a supermarket! IN FRANCE!!!

It was all very peculiar but somehow we bravely got through it and - eventually, after quite a lot of delays - we got onto the Eurostar and headed home. It was an utterly magical and wonderful day - we were there!!

posted 4/9/2024 by MJ Hibbett
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The Funny Comics Fan Club Episode Two: Attack Of The Crocs
The second episode of The Funny Comics Fan Club is out NOW, and available pretty much EVERYWHERE that you can get podcasts from. I mean, it might not be available if you get them from a dodgy bloke down the pub, but it should definitely be on Spotify, Apple and all those sort of things.

You can also find it right HERE:



This one sees myself and Mr John Dredge reading a copy of NUTTY from 1983 - yesterday it appeared to feature us talking about The Beano, but this was a freak time travel accident which broadcast an episode from the future by mistake, and definitely not just me uploading the wrong one. Anyway, it's definitely Nutty that's up there now and, as you will hear, we had quite a LOT to say about it, not all entirely complimentary. It's still very much full of DELIGHT though, including an in-depth discussion of Bananaman, an analysis of anthropomorphic CATS, and a surprisingly large number of CROCODILES. All this and more, and it's still only 16p!

posted 2/9/2024 by MJ Hibbett
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A Newsletter Of News
Let joy be unconfined around the land, for LO! it is the last working day of the month which means a) it is PAYDAY for those of us what gets paid upon this day and b) it is time for the latest edition of The Last Working Day Of The Month!

This month's newsletter is UNUSUALLY rich in content - or at least it is in terms of recent times. Many years ago, when I was in my full GIG POMP, the newsletter was always PACKED with forthcoming dates and recording details, but since COVID and so forth these have been rather sparse. I am thus DELIGHTED to say that this time around there are no less than FIVE (5) gigs listed, and not just in London neither.

Which reminds me - I have just started PRACTICING for these gigs (if you noticed THE MAN looking afeared this week, that's probably why) and have a LIST of about 30 songs to try and learn up. I will probably end up doing the same 8-12 songs at ALL the gigs as I usually do, but in this early period of OPTIMISM I am looking forward to trying out a few songs I have rarely - or even NEVER - done in public before. THUS if anybody has any songs they would PARTICULARLY like me to play (preferably at a gig you might be attending) do please let me know - it takes a minimum of about a MONTH for me to learn anything up, so get requests in early and I'll have a go!

In the meantime, do please have a look at the newsletter when you have a mo, it is full of loads of other stuff to READ and READ ABOUT, we may not see it's like again for quite some time!

posted 30/8/2024 by MJ Hibbett
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Podcast Metric Number Stats Analysis Systems
One of the GRATE delights of The Funny Comics Fan Club (LIKE AND SUBSCRIBE TODAY!) is that it involves lots of Rock Admin. Long-time readers of this here blog will recall that, back in my ROCK POMP, I used to thoroughly enjoy a bit of Rock Admin, so it is very nice to have some of it back in my life. I have spent the past few weeks Tinkering With Websites, Submitting To Podcast Databases and, most excitingly of all, Counting Page Hits.

Counting Page Hits is one of the great lost JOYS of the early interweb, back when we all had one of those COUNTERS on their page so that everyone could see how many times it had been visited. If I remember correctly they tended to start off with a capacity to have a THOUSAND people visit you, although it was mostly a THRILL to think you could ever get to a HUNDRED, for LO! that was about how many people were actually ON the interweb way back then. Nowadays the whole thing is a giddy mess of BOTS and SPIDERS and GOOGLE ANALYTICS and all of that so it is pretty much meaningless, and that early fun has gone off to the great Geocities in the sky.

HOWEVER, our Podbean page tells you EXACTLY how many people have downloaded each EPISODE, and so ever since we UNLEASHED the series I have been watching the counter very gently go up. I was doing exactly that on Monday lunchtime when I receievd a message from my colleague Mr John Dredge to alert me to the FACT that we were mentioned in that day's Podnews newsletter - John has MUCH experience of Publicising Podcasts from his Award Winning Podcast Enterprise The John Dredge Nothing To Do With Anything Show (LIKE AND SUBSCRIBE IMMEDIATELY!) and it was he what had sorted this out.

"How lovely", I thought. "Hopefully this will enable episode one to exceed the 50ish downloads that the trailer got!"

THUS throughout the day I very occasionally (only a few times an hour) went and clicked REFRESH on the website, and watched as the counter did indeed go past our initial 50... and then kept on going. It was WEIRD - it got to 100 downloads within an hour or so, and over the course of the day went up and up and up. It turns out that LOADS of people subscribe to that newsletter, so by close of play yesterday we'd had over SEVEN HUNDRED downloads!

Rather wonderfully I was able to impart this news to an otherwise unaware John Dredge that very day, for LO! we had arranged to meet up to record a new episode after work. We are stacking up quite a healthy back-log of shows, so that it was episode FIVE what we had gathered to record, and we began doing so in HIGH SPIRITS, buouyed not only by the aforesaid downnloads but also by the fact that we were talking about KRAZY COMIC, which (SPOILERS) is FANTASTIC.

However, our glee swiftly turned to HORROR when, forty minutes in, we noticed that the recorder had stopped and, on further investigation, FROZEN! We record on my little digital four-track, which I've had for MANY years and has never done anything like this before, so I've no idea what was going on. It had completely gone KER-PLUNK though, and in the end I had to take the batteries out just to restart it!

ALAS we had lost THE LOT and so we had to pick ourselves up and go right back to the start again, this time recording in shorter bursts and SAVING it. Weirdly it felt like it was all slightly BETTER the second time around, as it forced our MIGHTY BRANES to REPHRASE the thoughts we'd wanted to get across and then to think of NEW things to say, which I am very pleased to say we DID. I'm even more pleased to say that, when I got home and was able to fully CHECK, all these new segments had recorded properly and had WORKED, which was a huge relief!

If we stick to the PLAN of fortnightly episodes then, by my reckoning, this one will be out in OCTOBER, so who knows, by then we might be into QUADRUPLE listener figures. Watch out, G Linekar and R Stewart, we are coming for you!

posted 28/8/2024 by MJ Hibbett
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Pearls Aloud
At the weekend myself and The Shows In My Listings had an extremely FRINGEY experience. This was partly due to going to see a show at The Camden Fringe, but also because a) it was in a room above a pub b) we were meeting some pals beforehand and we ended up in different pubs to each other c) one of those pubs had a big courtyard and d) most importantly, it was raining. We could have BEEN in Edinburgh!

However, where we actually were was The Hen And Chickens, there to meet the Mylands and see a show called Pearls Aloud which (SPOILERS) was GRATE. All I knew before going in was that it was about three things - Feminism, a chip shop, and Girls Aloud. Two of those are ALREADY among my favourite things and I was prepared to learn about Girls Aloud, so in we went.

I thought it was going to be a One Woman Show about Experiences In A Chip Shop, but the fact that four people came onstage right at the start disabused me of that notion. It was actually a MUSICAL using the songs of Girls Aloud to tell the story of four young women working in a chip shop, and it was ACE. There were MANY jokes, there was SINGING, there was DANCING, there were Entirely Plausible Character Arcs For Every Character, and there was a general air throughout of CARE and QUALITY. I love it when you go to see a show and feel like you are in SAFE HANDS, with people who have actually put some LOVE into the production, and that's what it was like throughout. It was ACE!

I think my only complaint was that the FLYER didn't tell me who had WRITTEN it. It didn't FEEL like a Devised Piece because of the aforesaid ARCS and STORY and all round SENSE, but then maybe it was? I do not know and would like to! Otherwise it was all GRATE, and we left the pub full of JOY, and with a feeling that we should maybe go and see 15 other shows one after the other, drink loads of BEER and then go to SNAX. Instead we went home and watched Girls Aloud At The BBC on the iPlayer, which wasn't, to be honest, quite as much fun as the show itself had been. Which was a LOT of fun!

posted 25/8/2024 by MJ Hibbett
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It's Yoko!
On Sunday myself and The Concepts In My Art went to Tate Modern to see the big Yoko Ono exhibition. It was AMAZING.

It started off brilliantly in the entrance area with the sound of a phone ringing, being picked up, and then Yoko saying "It's Yoko" (or sometimes the same but in Japanese). Personally I think "It's Yoko" would have been a better title than "Music Of The Mind", which is what it was actually called, because the whole rest of the exhibition was basically her saying "It's Yoko!" in the form of ART.

As we stepped into the first room we found lots of people looking Serious because it was Serious Conceptual Art, but as we went along from room to room everyone's faces very gradually changed as it became abundantly clear that Yoko is VERY FUNNY INDEED. I don't mean that in a disrespectful way at all - the more you saw the more it became clear that she has a COLOSSAL sense of humour and was inviting us all to join in.

She was ALSO inviting us to join in with lots of the exhibits too, and so we did. I had a go in one of the bags, we shook hands through "Painting To Shake Hands", hammered in nails, outlined shadows and so on and so forth, up to and including taking a piece of SKY near the end. It was BEAUTIFUL throughout, bouncing with ideas that were a) LOVELY and b) INCLUSIVE. So often when we go to these here conceptual art exhibitions the entire point seems to be for the ARTISTE to put out how much cleverer they are than we mere plebs who can't possibly understand the Serious Political Points they are making. Yoko was very much inviting everyone in to join her and it was ACE.

My favourite parts were the section about the exhibition she did at the Museum of Modern Art, which a) she didn't tell them about and b) she called "Museum of Modern (F)art", and the instruction for "Painting for a Broken Sewing Machine" which said "Place a broken sewing-machine into a glass tank ten or twenty times larger than the machine. Once a year on a snowy evening, place the tank in the town square and have every one throw stones at it." It made I LARF!

Weirdly, for me at least, the bits with AN ACTUAL BEATLE in were some of the least fun, especially the pictures of the Plastic Ono Band playing live, as you could FEEL the other musicians being grumpy. This was, I guess, partly understandable as she WAS someone from a whole other world stepping in as an equal with the person they all looked up to, but a lot of the coverage did demonstrate that the main thing was that she was a WOMAN and a FOREIGN one at that.

Some of that attitude still seems to be about - one of the main disappointments of Craig Brown's Beatles book of a few years ago was that it seemed to fully buy into the idea that Yoko was a laughable posho "artist" who broke up the Beatles - so it was wonderful to see her being appreciated this way, both by virtue of it being a HUGE exhibition in our biggest modern art museum and ALSO by the faces of the other people who were clearly DELIGHTED by it all. It was GRATE!

posted 21/8/2024 by MJ Hibbett
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