Unhappy Funny People

I’ll be quick today. I’ve got to be off soon to the daily grind and I’ve got to feed my ex-cat on the way.

Actually first something that made me chuckle at work. A domestic incident - ‘BOYFRIEND AND GIRLFRIEND ARGUE OVER BOYFRIENDS ATTITUDE.’

Well, perhaps you would be upset if your boyfriend was buying a magazine for gay men. Or perhaps she wanted to read it and he wanted it first? Who knows?

I’ve had almost a week off from writing and have been instead watching BBC4’s season of programmes about unhappy funny people. First off was ‘Steptoe and Son’.

‘Steptoe and Son’ is a memory from my early childhood. I didn’t know that Harry H Corbett wanted to be a serious actor, or Wilfred Bramble was a repressed homosexual. I didn’t know that they hated each other, and the show, and their lives.

It was all pretty grim.

I thought about my life. If they made it into a tv show would it be equally grim? Is my life tragic because I go to work in an office doing a job I don’t particularly like? And I have something that I’m passionate about, can escape to. (The writing. I don’t own a caravan in Skegness if you were wondering...)

What about the people who don’t have this thing that they do? Are they more tragic than Corbett and Bramble?

They must have good times I thought. This was upheld by the Mark Lawson interview with Galton and Simpson, the writers of Steptoe (and Hancock’s Half Hour). Of Hancock, ‘He wasn’t depressed when he worked with us’. They talked about how happy Corbett and Bramble were to do the Steptoe series.

And they talked how happy they were to get their first letter from the BBC. In their late 70s they still had a big smile on their face. Two weeks ago I got my first call from the BBC. I can understand that.

Sellers in ‘The Life and Death of Peter Sellers’ seemed to be unhappy in a different way. He was equally trapped, by the Clouseau role, but his belief in himself seemed to allow him to treat everyone around him badly. You don’t have to be nice when you are powerful.

I can appreciate that. The things I quietly seethe about now I would stand on rooftops and shout about if I had more than two half-pennies to rub together. Which is why it is a good thing that I will always be a complete failure. It keeps me nice.

I also read some good books this week. Finished ‘Submarine’, which was great. Then ‘Boy A’ which is a good companion piece to ‘Submarine’. I read a collection of brilliant short stories, ‘Caravan Thieves’ and started to read also the history of Penguin books, ‘Penguin Special’.

Yesterday I started writing again. A new short story. Or it might be a long one.

Currently reading - Then We Came to the End - Joshua Ferris

Currently listening to - Beginning of the Twist - Futureheads