I’ve always been proud of the way that I can hold myself in any social occasion whatever the cultural aspect. I could enjoy a night at the opera and pop into a working men’s club on the way home and have a pint of bitter and a pickled egg and not feel uncomfortable in either place.

Although I’m not a football fan I have developed a way to join in with conversations in a pub, should I ever find myself in a pub with a big screen on a Sunday afternoon, which hasn’t happened for a long time. All you have to do is remember the pearls of wisdom that comes from the pub gobshite and re-hash them the following week.

Last Sunday’s pub gobshite punditry:

“Why aren’t they playing Timpson? He’s the best upfront we’ve got; Johnson’s just a fucking plodder”.

Shame Johnson’s injured, he’s the best goalie since Timpson. Perkins can’t cope under pressure that’s why he let those two in.”

The following Sunday, should you inadvertently find yourself being asked for an opinion on ‘the match’ by the pub gobshite:

Gobshite: “What do you reckon mate? Last week’s match was shit!”
Me: “Fucking terrible, you can’t blame it all on Perkins though. Poor fucker lets the pressure get to him and he let in two easy goals.”
Gobshite: “Too fucking right, I’ve heard Johnson’s better and might be fit to start.”
Me: “I hope so, best fucking goalie in the league. Watching him in action takes me back to the days of Timpson.”

(Throw in a lot of swearing as these people tend to use ‘fuck’ as a comma rather than a full stop).

Culturally I am all over the place; musically I can be a bit of a snob although that flies in the face of my love of musicals. I don’t like a lot of television because most of it is aimed at idiots, but I have a strange affection for 1970s sitcoms. Comedy, drama, music, theatre, film, and literature all appeal to me in various forms, yet there is one thing I just cannot get on board with no matter how hard I have tried; art galleries. I like a good painting but I could walk around any art gallery in the world in less than an hour because I can judge immediately whether or not I like a painting simply based on the painting either being good or being rubbish, without having to stand looking at it for an hour pontificating on what the artist was trying to say. The thing I hate the most though is modern art, or any attempt to be ‘conceptual’. As much as I like Nottingham Contemporary as a place to watch live music, I have tried to use it as an art gallery and on both occasions it has left me cold. Worse still is the fact that people go and look at this stuff and pretend to understand it in order to impress other pretentious drips that might be in earshot. If one person had the wherewithal to loudly proclaim “this is all just bollocks really” then I believe that everyone would breathe a sigh of relief at not having to pretend anymore.

In order to satirise the art world, I once came up with the idea for an exhibition of my own, (another idea I recently found on a piece of paper in my box containing abandoned bits of paper) called ‘Art Is Whatever You Want Art To Be’. The idea was that there would be no paintings, just blank canvasses in frames and every piece was going to have a question mark on the little square underneath where the title and description goes. The advertising blurb was going to say something like “art can be what the eye dictates” or something equally as wanky and the newspaper advert was going to be a blank page with the address of the gallery underneath. I was going to employ an actor to play a cliché of a pretentious artist giving a talk imploring the visitors to imagine what each painting was; a bowl of fruit, a landscape, a nude, and at the launch I would have had waiters handing out empty glasses so that people could picture the drink they preferred.

To summarise, it was going to be a joke event that only the most head-up-arse art ponce would pretend to ‘get’. Nobody would like it, critics would slag it off mercilessly, and the art world would be destroyed forever. Such a ridiculous idea would never work which is presumably why it ended up in my box of abandoned ideas.

But was it such a stupid idea? Obviously not according to a report that I found online today in which an artist called Lana Newstrom has done almost exactly what I’ve just described in America. The truth is that Lana Newstrom is a made up name and the whole thing was a hoax designed to show that people who pretend to enjoy this kind of thing are just pillocks.

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One of the perks of being a Z-list media type, the free stuff you get sent! pic.twitter.com/4Ai1baAqRf
— Steve Oliver (@SteveOliver76) August 21, 2014

Last week I received in the post a complimentary copy of the autobiography of the Chuckle Brothers as an incentive to review it, as I have publicly said how much I enjoy their work. When I first started working in radio and my name started to be delivered to be known to the right people I imagined cases of champagne and sports cars being delivered to my house. Maybe it’s a sign of the economic climate but gifts aren’t as glamorous as they used to be. Record companies no longer have the spare money to fly broadcasters to the Caribbean to interview their clients, not the ones I deal with anyway. Gig tickets is the main perk these days, although if anyone wants to send books, records, tapes, CDs, DVDs, toys, or gold bars I would be happy to write (with honesty) about them. All you have to do is email steveoliverpress@gmail.com for a postal address. I am also willing to accept stuff as competition prizes for my podcast listeners.

Anyway, this blog isn’t a begging letter.

I have never written a book review before so it is nice to be able to stretch my ability as a writer. Autobiographies of comedians and musicians accounts for about 95% of my book consumption and as a fan of the Chuckle Brothers I would have got round to reading it sooner or later anyway. The difficulty I have is the fact that I can’t read it for pleasure as I would with a bought book. I also have a relatively short amount of time to read it while at the same time writing notes in pencil and sticking Post-It notes (maybe Mr. Post-It wants to send some free samples as gratitude for all of my years of use) in the pages.

So far I can say that the book is an odd one. It is written by Paul Chuckle (or Paul Elliott when he’s off duty) with Barry “holding the inkwell”. Although I can read it with his voice in my head (the sign of a good autobiography) the narrative is very stilted. It is likely that he attempted to write it in the style of his Chucklevision character with lots of contrived asides thrown in. After a while it becomes tiresome but shouldn’t ruin an interesting history lesson regarding the workaholic nature of that generation of comedians; three month pantomime runs followed immediately by summer season with one-off gigs thrown in. The TV series that made them famous only warrants one chapter which I found strange at first, until I realised that this book coincides with the 50^th anniversary of the double act. For my (and subsequent) generations, ch-ch-Chucklevision was essential viewing and it isn’t entirely clear why CBBC discontinued the show in 2009. Their route to fame was a traditional one for comedians their age; working man clubs, talent shows, holiday camps and the grind of summer shows and pantomime. Their dad was a comedian too who the brothers never heard swear or tell rude jokes on stage, (although he was once banned by the BBC for using the punch line “as smooth as a baby’s bottom) so they vowed never to go blue. It is admirable given that they could have made more money on the club circuit, (Roy ‘Chubby’ Brown once said that his notoriously filthy act was born out of financial necessity as there weren’t so many of his type at the time), but on the other hand they would not have achieved the longevity that they have through being the best family entertainers we have in this country.

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The art of creating a truly endearing comedy character is to make sure that you don’t stray too far away from reality. Alan Partridge is a brilliant example of this rule; that can be heard on radio and seen on television in many forms, mainly Richard Madeley. Not just Madeley but any number of local radio presenters and regional newsreaders. Ali G was clearly influenced by Tim Westwood but the character is also plain to see at every bus shelter, white kids trying to talk like black rappers and looking ridiculous (and borderline racist) in the process. Television comedy has endless examples of characters that make you think that you have seen them in real life, I’m sure that any East London pub will tell you that the original inspiration for Del Boy is alive and well in their local, and everyone who has ever had a dead-end job in an office will recall a real life David Brent. If you have worked in an office and don’t remember a Brent, it was you.

I once worked in a traditional northern Working Men’s Club when I lived in Teesside, and remember discussing the television series Phoenix Nights the day after every episode. Although Peter Kay’s stand up career nowadays only caters for the terminally gullible who don’t realise that he is essentially ripping them off, his series That Peter Kay Thing was a brilliantly observed piece of writing. Most realistic of all was In the Club, the pilot episode of Phoenix Nights, and as a former employee of the C.I.U. (Club and Institute Union), I can vouch that every single character and situation was frighteningly true to life. Harry Enfield’s sketch programmes were also well observed; Smashy and Nicey was every Radio 1 DJ (surely it is time for an Operation Yewtree episode), Kevin the Teenager is my daughter last year, and Lee and Lance were every gobshite tradesman that we have ever had the misfortune to employ. The Fast Show was slightly more exaggerated, but I’m sure that Bob Harris watched the jazz club sketch with a smile.

The series Bo Selecta was a work of genius, totally unrealistic when it came to the characters but hilarious and at the same time very clever. Leigh Francis has not only damaged his reputation but has also wiped out the intelligence of the three series of Bo Selecta by introducing the character Keith Lemon. He must have information on someone high up in television as he is everywhere. It wasn’t so bad when Keith Lemon was just a character in a show for simpletons (Celebrity Juice) and you didn’t have to watch it, but ITV have invested so much in this joke free creation that it has taken on a life of its own. ‘Keith Lemon’ presents programmes in character and appears on chat shows, the line between the performer and the character is fading away.

When it comes to unbelievable, unrealistic characters though, it would take a lot to beat the worst one of the lot. I don’t even know the name of the actor/comedian who created this caricature of a cor-blimey-apples-and-pears-cock-er-nee geezer, and gave him the name Danny Dyer. Although I have never seen the sketch show or stand up act that the Danny Dyer character was first seen, the character is now doing panel shows in character. It was bad enough when Barry Humphries used to go on chat shows as Dame Edna, but at least we knew and were in on it. A brilliant example of a real life chat show host talking to characters was Clive Anderson Talks Back when Peter Cook was all the guests for one episode. There was once a The Office style ‘mockumentry’ sitcom about a punk rock band called Towers of London, the series ran briefly on one of the higher number cable channels to a small audience. As had happened before with spoof comedy parody bands like Bad News, Spinal Tap and The Darkness, Towers of London started doing some gigs, then something really brave happened. The actor who played the role of Donny Tourette (a twattish punk singer who tries to be all swagger) went into the Celebrity Big Brother house. Appearing on panel shows is one thing but this poor sod now had to spend twenty four hours a day in character, not an easy task. He did mange it somehow, although he left early due in part to the arrival of Jade Goody and her unbearable mother, avoiding all the racism shitstorm that followed. (This was after ‘Jade is a thicko’ and during ‘we love Jade’, but it led to ‘racist bitch’ until it was time for ‘brave cancer Jade’ before the final chapter ‘rest in peace the legendary Jade Goody'; a brief cycle of tabloid hypocrisy there).

Spending all of your time in character, especially a comedy creation, can’t be easy. The actor/comedian who plays Danny Dyer has apparently signed up to star in Eastenders as the new landlord of the Queen Vic. I am curious as to whether he is playing it as the Danny Dyer character (cockney geezer, back story as a film star who appears in Happy Shopper versions of Lock Stock And Two Smoking Barrels as a cock-er-nee hard case, has appeared on panel shows too), or if the papers got it wrong and it’s the actor who plays Danny Dyer appearing as a different role. It would be a good chance to prove he can act.

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