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Blog Archive: June 2025
Re-writes and Re-singsA week and a bit ago I had a session with Mr D Munro where I performed Data and Doctor Doom and then he done DRAMATURGY on it i.e. told me what he thought, offered suggestions, and worked through some bits of it with me. It was UTTERLY GRATE and since then I have been hard at work doing a massive and extensive RE-WRITE of the whole thing.
Thankfully it did not need a huge lot of RESTRUCTURING, which is HARD, but rather just re-writing, which is FUN. A lot of this was to do with streamlining and TIGHTENING what I say between songs - I did have a SCRIPT but this was more a guide as to what I'd say and when, but it became clear that I needed to work on this so as to cut out some of the waffle. Obviously it is ME doing this here show and so waffle is part of the general package, but a lot of it was coming from my own NERVOUSNESS about what I was saying and where to go next. Over the past week I have very much come round to the idea that if I write it down and (mostly) LEARN it then that will make things SMOOTHER, also easier for the audience to understand, also also less TERRIFYING for me!
The other thing he drew my attention to was the possibility for MORE JOKES. "That sounds like it could be a JOKE", he remarked at various points, and since then I have gone through and identified lots of other places where, rather than e.g. glaring at the audience and saying "THIS IS AN IMPORTANT BIT!" I can do a JOKE what gets the point across much more clearly. I have thus been sitting at my laptop GIGGLING to myself as I think up GAGS, and having a lovely time doing so.
Another thing I've been toiling away at has been a couple of song re-writes, which is something I LOVE to do as it means I can pretend I am working on a BROADWAY SHOW the day after previews and the Producer has come in and said "Hibbett! The end of Act Two ain't getting them off their feet, we needs a re-write, ka-peesh?" (CHARACTER DIALOGUE). The really big deal for this has been re-doing the BIG FINALE of the whole show, which has made me VERY HAPPY INDEED as it now brings in MORE themes (including a couple of new RUNNING GAGS what Dec suggested) and builds to a MUCH bigger ending than before.
It has all been rather delightful so far, although now that I have officially reached the end of the current draft and printed it off, there are two (2) slightly LESS delightful prospects for me. The first is that I've got to actually LEARN it, and the second is that I don't get another chance to show it off to Dec or the various pals who came to the work in progress version. The next time I do it will be to ACTUAL HUMANS who I DO NOT KNOW! YIKES!!
And if you'd like that to be YOU (SLICK MARKETING SEGUE!) you can find details of all the forthcoming shows on the Data and Doctor Doom GIGS page!
posted 23/6/2025 by MJ Hibbett
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I Read The Arthur C Clarke Award Shortlist
For the past several years I have taken great delight in trying to read the full Arthur C Clark Award shortlist. I first did it as a way to read some NEW Science Fiction (i.e. not just the next book by the same people as before OR something designated A Classic) and this worked out SO WELL that I have done it every year since, including THIS year.
For LO! for I think the first time ever I have managed to read ALL of them, all the way through, and also done so BEFORE the final award is announced. This is a PRETTY GOOD result for me, as in other years there has always been at least one book that I have given up on or read the description of and thought "OH DEAR NO". Every one of the books this year was worth getting to the end of, and indeed a good 50% of them were BLOODY GRATE.
I'm sure that everyone is really keen to know my mighty THORTS on them this year, especially in advance of the actual result, so let's go through them in the order what I read them:
Service Model (Adrian Tchaikovsky)
I really really like Adrian Tchaikovsky books, even though it's a bit hard to keep up as he writes SO MANY, and this was one of my favourites of his so far. Excitingly (for me) I read this one BEFORE the shortlist came up, and loved it. It's about a robot whose human master dies, so that he has to go on a JOURNEY through the end of the world and it is VERY FUNNY INDEED.
The Ministry Of Time (Kaliane Bradley)
Cor! I thought this was absolutely flipping brilliant - moving, funny, ROMANTICAL and un-put-downable. There's a government ministry with a TIME MACHINE that picks people out of the past who are about to be killed and then assigns them to a junior member of staff to be looked after, at which point HIJINKS and TWISTS and also ROMANCE happens. It was ace!
Thirteen Ways To Kill Lullabelle Rock (Maud Woolf)
This was not quite as good as it felt like it was supposed to be, although that might be because I read it straight after "The Ministry Of Time". It's about a sort-of-clone who's created to kill the other sort-of-clones of its originator, and it was all right but also Quite Short, which is a type of book I would like to encourage.
Annie Bot (Sierra Greer)
OH MY WORD I had to have a BREAK from reading this one as it was UPSETTING, but in a really good way. This wasn't hugely funny like my other two favourites but was VERY exciting and thought provoking and all round AMAZING.
Extremophile (Ian Green)
Crikey this one took a REALLY long time to get going, and was quite "Look everybody! EDGINESS!" so it's the one I came closest to giving up on. Also, there is lots of stuff about people being in BANDS in East London which felt really WRONG e.g. yes it's the future and everything is terrible, but I'm sure that bands still wouldn't bring their own microphones and stands with them to these sort of gigs. I think it was things like that that made me a bit grumpy about it, but it did get quite exciting in the end.
Private Rites (Julia Armfield) This one took even LONGER to get going, and when it finally did it felt like cheating a bit. The vast majority of the story is about some very posh sisters being a bit cold and rude to each other in a near future where it always rains. It was a little bit dreary to be honest, and mostly about dystfunctional posh people being dysfunctional and posh, so when A THING happened near the end it didn't feel particularly earned. It was very nicely written though!
BOOK REVIEWS! PEASY!
As for my PREDICTION as to what will win - it's usually one of the ones that I found a bit boring and worthy that wins, especially if it's one by somebody who would be midlly offended if someone said that it was science fiction at all. HOWEVER, this year I have a strong feeling that it will be one of the ones I actually liked, specifically "Annie Bot" as a) it is dead good and b) it Speaks To This Current Moment. I really hope it wins, it was dead good... which almost definitely means it won't!
posted 23/6/2025 by MJ Hibbett
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Funny Comics Best Of
The latest episode of The Funny Comics Fan Club is out NOW and it features the VERY BEST of what we've done so far.
Some might say this makes it a REPRINT but I prefer to think of it as a SUMMER SPECIAL, featuring John and I
The whole thing was put together as part of a LENGTHY process of going through all the episodes so far in order to create slightly smaller BEST OF compilations for us to enter into some COMPETITIONS. Quite a lot of work went into it and John suggested it could also form the basis of a special episode to tide everyone over until season 3 (which we hope to start recording soon). It ALSO proved extremely useful for me as a way to gather THORTS for a presentation I'm giving at The International Graphic Novel and Comics Conference in Brussels in a couple of weeks, wherein I shall be guiding various international academics through our findings. I may try and RECORD that as well so we can issue it as a further BONUS EPISODE, but it does rather rely on me remembering to do so amidst all of the conference excitement/hangovers, so we'll see!
posted 18/6/2025 by MJ Hibbett
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Poster Patrol
At the weekend ago I headed into town to do a ye olde ROCK ADMIN job which I haven't done for DECADES: going round shops asking them to display some FLYERS!
Back in the previous century before we had THE INTERWEB this was a crucial part of ROCK promotion, although back then I tended to focus on POSTERS rather than flyers, largely because I could get away with photocopying 10 posters for Leicester's various record shops and venues, but would be NOTICED if I tried to do thousands of flyers at work. I would trudge into the city centre, usually on a weekday lunch break, and go round all of the above humbly handing over posters, and then go round again the next day to see if anyone had actually put them up. I really really did not like doing it, so was happy to pack it all in just as soon as T Berners-Lee came along and liberated us all.
HOWEVER, the advice from ALL of the various Fringe organisations where I'm taking Data and Doctor Doom this summer was that you HAD to have posters and flyers for the venues, and so I have embarked upon a series of orders from the lovely people at Banana Print, who did a GRATE job of it. In most cases I just got the posters and flyers delivered direct to the venues, but for the Camden Fringe show at The Hen & Chickens I realised that I could get everything delivered to ME and then a) have a LOOK at it and b) take some round London's COMIC-related establishments.
So that is what I did, and it went SURPRISINGLY well, with flyers happily handed over at The Cartoon Museum, Gosh and Forbidden Planet. It was all much like a DREAM really, a feeling enhanced by popping into Fopp to buy the new Half Man Half Biscuit CD and having a YOUNG PERSON behind the counter eloquently discussing its merits. Young people? Listening to Half Man Half Biscuit? That can't be real, can it?
The day finished even MORE surreally when, after dropping the remaining flyers AND a load of posters off at the venue, I got a Mildmay/Overground train DIRECT to Stratford with no stops. It was AMAZING - it was running really late so they changed it to a non-stopping service, with the next one 2 minutes behind doing the stopping instead. This was a bit annoying for people who DIDN'T want to go direct to Stratford but for the rest of us it was AAMAZING - so amazing in fact that when we arrived approx 20 seconds later Actual Londoners expressed DELIGHT - OUT LOUD - at the speediness of it all! I don't think I've heard Actual Londoners expressing collective delight in public since The Olympics - what a day!
posted 17/6/2025 by MJ Hibbett
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Outside Eye
A few weeks ago I did what I thought would be my EARLIEST EVER gig, getting up early to do a show at UAL at 10.20am o'clock in the morning. However, on Friday last I got up similarly early and went to do an even EARLIER gig (or sort of gig) at 10.00am o'clock in the morning!.
It was a "sort of gig" because I was doing it for one (1) person, and that person was Mr Declan Munro for one of his Outside Eye sessions. The idea of this is that he watches you do a runthrough of your show (or similiar) and then basically gives THORTS. I had tried a couple of times to do this as part of a PROJECT what the Arts Council utterly refused to countenance, but this time I was able to wrangle it via some CA$H wot I had secured via work for TRAINING PURPOSES for ME, and thus I was booked in for a session to go through Data and Doctor Doom.
To be perfectly honest my main DREAM for all of this was that Dec would say "Oh this is marvellous, well done, here are 3 extra jokes that can be put in otherwise TOP MARKS". After all, I'd already done the Work In Progress show and REViSED everything accordingly, so I was mostly hoping for REASSURANCE and the afore-stated Extra Gags.
I got a WHOLE LOT MORE than that!
I originally knew Dec from many moons ago when Steve and I did Total Hero Team at the Edinburgh Fringe, with him looming large in my personal memory of that time as the person who INSISTED we Do The Show Right Here on the day that our venue was temporarily shut down. I bumped into him many times over the years, notably at the launch for Mr R Manuel's Fesshole book, where I discovered he was a DRAMATURG (i.e. someone who helps with THORTS on performances) and resolved there and then to SOMEHOW do something with him like this.
ANYWAY, what that means is that we did some catching up first of all, during which I told him of my hopes for a) reassurance b) more gags, and then I launched into doing the SHOW. It was a bit nerve-wracking at first because we were doing it in a small office where other people were coming and going, so I had to keep reminding myself not to sing at FULL BELLOW, and also because even one such as I who is used to SHALL WE SAY small, intimate venues with small, intimate audiences gets a little thrown by doing the whole thing AT one person.
Still, it all went OK, we had a little break, and then came back for about an hour of AMAZING THORTS. COR! It was incredible - I DID get the reassurance I craved, but then Dec talked me through a HUGE range of ideas, thoughts, CONCEPTS, suggestions, analysis and ALL THAT taking in many many things which had never even occurred to me but, now that he was saying them, seemed utterly obvious. One of the big ones was when he asked me what I wanted out of the show as a whole, and I told him of my hopes that, for instance, when the "Avengers: Doomsday" movie comes out it would be ME who media outlets would contact to talk about it. "You should actually say that in the show", he said, and OF COURSE I should! OF COURSE!
There were lots and lots of other thoughts like this which I shall not go into here for fear of SPOILERS, but goodness me he was full of GRATE IDEAS. Also, wonderfully, he talked me through THEORY and CONCEPTS of performance and stand-up that I had never really thought of. One really really BASIC one was to pause and focus on one person before delivering a punchline, so that there was no distraction and the audience knew it WAS the punchline. COR! I mean, that sounds straightforward when put like that but I have been TREADING THE BOARDS these many decades without even considering IT.
It was, not to put too fine a point on it, AMAZING, and if this was a TrustPilot Review there would be five stars and even MORE super superlatives than what there are here now. It was also really EMOTIONAL - there is a whole lot of ME in this show and so having someone so BRAINY give it respect, attention and IDEAS was surprisingly moving. I thus staggered away and towards home EXHAUSTED but also DELIGHTED by the whole experience.
Now all I have to do is Actually Re-Write It! YIKES!
posted 16/6/2025 by MJ Hibbett
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London Data Week
Let joy ring out around the nation, for LO! the final date on the Data and Doctor Doom SUMMER TOUR can now been announced!
I am VERY PLEASED to say that I'll be performing the official WORLD PREMIERE of the show on Friday 11 July at The Hub in Peckham, in conjunction with UAL's Creative Computing Institute as part of London Data Week! The show is FREE to get in but has a strictly limited number of tickets, so if you fancy coming you'll need to a) register in advance and b) be free at 3.30pm, as that's when it's on.
The whole experience of booking this one has been a DELIGHT, not least because I've been working on it with the very cool cats at the Creative Computing Institute. The CCI is part of University of the Arts London, where I WORK, so I have had the extremely unusual experience of not only doing ROCK stuff during work time (which OBVS I have never otherwise done) and that being ALL FINE and part of my job. It also means I've had several MEETINGS with the people who work there, which is ALWAYS lots of fun as they are ARTS people but also MASSIVE NERDS i.e. MY SORT OF PEOPLE!
That, barring any unforseen emergency bookings, brings the SUMMER TOUR booking to completion, sitting alongside the shows in Watford, Buxton, Bedford and Camden. There should also be some more gigs later in the year, but there'll be more on that ANON. In the meantime I'm REALLY looking forward to being Officially ON TOUR again, and it would be even more fun if you, dear reader, came along!
posted 11/6/2025 by MJ Hibbett
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Administration and Secrets
I realise that the recent absence of fresh and exciting new blogs might lead one to think that there has been no fresh and exciting ACTIVITY recently, but nothing could be further from the truth - it's just that a lot of said activity has been either SECRET or ADMIN-BASED.
There have been not one but TWO secret things occurring lately, one of which is SECRET PROJECT to do with music that I am very very VERY excited about but am unable to speak of as yet. I think it's OK to say that last week I spent a whole DAY specifically on it, and that this was the SECOND day of work, but otherwise I had really best go no further than that. The other one is to do with COMICS but I have signed an actual bit of paper to say I won't talk about that yet either, so won't. I wish I could though, they are both GRATE!
What I very much CAN speak of, however, is the ROCK ADMIN what is currently gushing through my THORT TUBES, all of which is to do with the imminent commencement of the Data and Doctor Doom TOUR. I'm currently in the pre-publicity phase, which means I've been sending out a lot of EMAILS, getting together some more thoughts for VIDEOS, pondering maybe releasing a SINGLE of one of the songs, answering various questionnaires, and most recently sorting out some POSTERS.
Posters! Crumbs, I had forgotten about the need to do these, and so was taken slightly unaware when various Fringe organisers started asking for them. I had designed some a month or so ago but when I looked upon those again I realised that they were a bit cluttered and also gave no idea about what the show actually WAS, so have been TOILING away trying to make them a bit more informative and ZINGY. Part of this involved writing a STRAPLINE, but after discussion with The Images In My Logo we couldn't decided exactly what it should BE - rather wonderfully the aforementioned Ballots In My Box suggested putting it up for public discussion on THE SOCIALS so that is exactly what I did, and we got the final version as "a musical extravaganza of slides, statistics and super-villainy". It was like OLDEN TYMES when The Socials were actually USEFUL - I also got a GRATE recommendation for a printer in a similar way, and have now begun the process of ORDERING them. You can see all the ones done so far over on the gigs page, but here's the one for CAMDEN as an example:
Keen observers may notice that, technically speaking, this is MORE cluttered than possibly any other poster EVER, and includes some new images that have previously not been associated with the show. The new images come from the REVISED version what I have been working on since the work-in-progress show a few weeks ago, including a picture of ME at my PhD graduation which I suddenly realised would be PERFECT as a Publicity Picture for the tour - not only was it taken by a Professional Photographer, not only does it clearly demonstrate that I am INDEED a Doctor Of Doctor Doom, but it ALSO clearly shows that I look FABULOUS in purple!
Also, the cluttering is DELIBERATE as all of the guidance I got from various places said "the best way to do a poster is to have one single distinctive image" and it made me think of the row upon row of posters showing A Comedian Looking Whimsical that you see EVERYWHERE during Edinburgh Fringe. As ever, the fact that everyone else was doing their posters one way made me want to do it in the totally opposite way. I am PRETTY SURE this will lead all neutral observers to think "Why, this fellow is clearly some kind of maverick who doesn't play by the rules, I must buy multiple tickets for his show IMMEDIATELY."
Anyway, it all feels very EXCITING, as if this krazy idea of a show about Doctor Doom is actually going to HAPPEN. If you'd like to come and see it in Watford, Buxton, Bedford or Camden there are links for tickets available (and indeed TICKETS very much available) with some more shows to be announced hopefully fairly soon. Do come if you can, I think it is going to be Quite Good!
posted 2/6/2025 by MJ Hibbett
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An Artists Against Success Presentation