Fresh Meat

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to Heaven, we were all going direct the other way – in short, the period was so far like the present period, that some of its noisiest authorities insisted on its being received, for good or for evil, in the superlative degree of comparison only. 

(A Tale of Two Cities, Charles Dickens)

I didn’t leave to go to college; I went to the same school for seven years. It wasn’t a horrible school; it was a school that instilled values of community and charity. But it was not an exciting place. Alternativism was listening to Coldplay and watching BBC2. School was drab and monotonous like Bill Murray's Groundhog Day- if eviscerated of humour. Consequently, I couldn’t wait to move from the monochrome of home to the technicolour of university. I was leaving Kansas for Oz on a whirlwind of A Levels and euphoria. This was my time.

One of the main selling points of university is the opportunity to re-invent yourself. If you have been in a school for a long period of time, there is a very real chance that you’ve become typecast in a role you never wanted. My part in the shit theatre of adolescence was Unrequited Boy #43. Like every idiot with a confidence problem, I stood sheepishly in the corner of school playgrounds, common rooms and parties furious that no girl had taken an interest in me, despite doing nothing to indicate I was interested in them. I was quiet, prone to over-thinking and quite useless with women. Given I also attended a Catholic school, I had all the skills needed to be a Monk. However, I did not want to be a Monk. I was eighteen. I did not want to be of noble mind; I wanted to be of ignoble flesh. Figuratively, I wanted to rip off my cassock and throw my penis to the wind. I was going to change. I was going to break out of the rules, the conformity, the sterility of life. This was to be Ryan's Three Year Off: a break from being me, a chance to forge a new 'I.' This was it: I was quitting my part, sacking my agent and seeking sexual employment in the bedroom farce of undergraduate study. 

In case you didn't get the reference.

It didn't work out.

At university I was pretty much the same as I was in school: a timid, anxious, insecure over-thinker with a GSOH. You can take the boy out of the town but you can’t take the character out of him. Like Coldplay, a band beloved by me at the time, I stuck to my tried and tested formula; consequently, I was well liked but a long way from the cool that magnetizes women. Despite taking the well-worn path, I did experience some new sights on the journey. I befriended – or they befriended me – people that I thought I would never be friends with. In my first year, I lived with a girl that was everything I was not: free-spirited, irresponsible and unfiltered. I thought I would never get on with her. I was wrong. Although we were never best friends, I found her exhilarating company. A textbook lesson in not to judge a book by its cover, especially when that cover has Goth make-up and a Marlboro cackle.

Also, university was the place that made me politically minded. I didn’t go on any demos (I’m too precious for the cold), but I did appreciate my fortune and misfortune. Fortune in being supported by my parents through uni; misfortune in understanding that the opportunities afforded to my peers were not afforded to me. In seminars students from private schools would talk about literature as if they were talking about the weather – they were bilingual, fluent in academia. For those of us educated by the state, we spoke about books with broken English: hamstrung by a history of large classes, we weren’t used to giving voice to our thoughts. (I know get out the violin and play the working- class hero a tune, but this felt true.)

I'm so working-class that this chap is middle-class to me.

For me, university wasn’t the proverbial land of milk and honey, rather a cesspit of red bull and deadlines. I know this definition doesn’t sound flattering, but to a large degree it is. Like a Glastonbury attendee wading in the mud, pleasure can come from embracing squalor. In my second and third year we lived in a flat that was so far below ground that we passed Satan on the stairwell. There was no sunlight at all. For two years, our letting agents held us hostage underground. We had our fights down there, but we also had many, many good times: Cups of tea in front of Deal or No Deal; pasta bakes with Neighbours; friends coming for pre-drink drinks; house parties until sunrise; hangovers ‘til sunset. The best of times; the worst of times.

Fresh Meat is a Channel 4 comedy-drama that captures this dichotomy brilliantly. It meets the Triumph and Disaster of university and treats those two impostors just the same. It begins in a student flat in Manchester, Howard is naked in the kitchen blow-drying Peking duck; Vod, looking styled by 430 Kings Road, swaggers in and tells him to ‘why don’t you tuck your cock away so I can make us a nice cup of tea.’ Following the title credits, we’re introduced to Kingsley, an academic over-achiever and neurotic over-thinker; Josie, an angel-faced potty mouth; Oregon, an assured speaker but shifty mover; and JP, a plum-mouthed braggart that would have been Bullingdon if he weren’t in Manchester. The first episode is tentative with writers Jesse Armstrong and Sam Bain (Peep Show) understandably unsure at this point where to take the characters. Director David Kerr plays it woozy with the slightly trippy camerawork of Spaced being an inspiration. By the end of the series though, the programme - like its student characters – grows into itself, becoming less tricksy and arch, delivering note-perfect humour and sentimentality.

Fresh Meat cast.

Now in its forth season Fresh Meat has developed into a show loved by its audience. Just like my own university experience, I’ve grown to like characters that I didn’t think I would. JP, played by Jack Whitehall, is a fine example of this. On the surface JP is reprehensible: born into privilege, he is the flatmates landlord whom lords over them. He is only too happy to remind them that he’s at the top of the food chain and they’re at the bottom (My accents make foreigners shit themselves. If I was born 40 years ago – I’d be running India). Despite the bluster though, he is vulnerable, needing his flatmates far more than they need them. Although I'm no fan of the stand-up Jack Whitehall, I have to acknowledge he is brilliant in this. In fact episode 6, anchored by Whitehall, is when the show becomes truly special: at the beginning of the episode JP finds out his dad is dying – here, his mask slips and we see the boy underneath. The fact that the emotional pay-off comes at the end with JP crying next to Oregon’s dead horse tells you everything you need to know about the show’s counterbalance between humour and melancholy. To make a loveable Tory is hard work, yet JP is now many people's favourite character.

Ultimately, Fresh Meat really is a show that you must catch up on. It’s even made me like Jack Whitehall - it really is that good.

The whole of Fresh Meat is available on 4OD

Chelsea Does ...

The thorny issue of race is yet again in the media. Donald Trump seems to be in a personal battle with himself to see if he can surpass each preceding inflammatory comment. He believes the inauguration of Barack Obama proves racism towards black Americans is over. He wants a wall built along the Mexico border to keep the ‘rapists’ and ‘murderers’ out. He thinks a ban on Muslims entering America would neuter terrorism. On his very own War on Intelligence, Trump has mobilised his few remaining brain cells and scored a resounding, ignoble victory.

The reason I speak about race is because this week I’ve been watching Chelsea Handler’s Netflix series Chelsea Does… Her first two episodes tackle love and technology in an engagingly forthright way.  Previously, Chelsea was proud of her marital status, but of late she’s been wondering whether she’s happy ticking the ‘single’ box; consequently, she goes about exploring why she’s single by visiting the ghost of boyfriend past and interviewing future brides on why they might want to spend their future with a significant other. What makes the documentary novel is how it begins with an alcohol-sodden round table discussion, then moves between interview and reportage, whilst splicing excerpts from her therapy sessions. I appreciate the segments with Handler probably aren't spontaneous, are possibly preordained, but I think the variety of the format works, giving balance and subjectivity.

Handler’s opinion is always interesting because she says it how it is. Normally, I hate these type of people; the kind of people that proudly say, ‘I’m a bitch’ as though they were saying, ‘I just won the Noble Peace Prize.’ With Handler though there is enough vulnerability to make a virtue out of her abruptness. But when it comes to the highly flammable topic of race is an incendiary comedian like Handler the right one to tackle it? In my eyes, the answer is ‘yes.’

The episode begins with her and her multi-ethnic friends discussing the programme. All agree that there is absolutely nothing new about a white person investigating the subject matter. Admittedly, normally it’s old white academics pontificating over race, whereas this time it’s a female Jew with a filter problem. Handler knows as a Bel Air resident that she is coming from a position of privilege; she lives in a hermetically sealed neighbourhood impervious to colour. She is by her own admission guilty of ‘self-segregation.’ Because of this, she goes on a journey around L.A. and the globe to see whether different cultures are rubbing alongside one another or whether we're all living a poorer type of self-segregation.

Exclusivity: the price of Bel Air.

Handler’s trip takes her to LA's Little Salvador where street food vendors tell stories of being confused for ‘the help’ when they deliver their take-outs. It appears that in some corners of America the only dialogue between white and colour is through a post-it note detailing what jobs need doing. Most disturbing is Handler’s trip to the Confederate South. There she meets homely people, angry over the South’s small town racist depiction in the media. They argue the stereotype is unfair, how the south has advanced, that black and white live side by side – a black woman goes to their Church after all. Despite my mocking tone, the people seem genuinely sweet-natured exhibiting the kind of decency that the Finch family show in To Kill A Mockingbird; however unlike Atticus, they deny mockingbirds are harmed. They admit that some slave-owners treated black slaves with disregard, but counter any claim that this was commonplace, arguing many black people were so happy with their treatment that after emancipation they asked to stay with their masters. The ascension of Handler’s eyebrows to heaven tells the viewer everything she thinks about that.

The uneasy relationship between confederacy and racism.

Handler doesn’t just interview deniers of racial equality; she meets champions of it too. In a heated debate she meets with representatives from respective ethnic groups. In America Handler is a divisive figure: she invokes stereotypes to target all creeds and colours. Her defence is: if you attack everyone, then no one can get offended. This is a similar position comedians Jimmy Carr and Jerry Sadowitz adopt: Sadowitz, impoverished and broken, arguably is better placed to do this material than the affluent Handler and Carr – he is coming from a position of weakness; they a position of strength. In her grilling in front of committee members, Handler is accused of pedalling stereotypes (black men have big penises) and denigrating the defenceless (Angelina Jolie’s Cambodian baby). Handler believes her freedom of expression shouldn’t be suppressed by political correctness; I disagree, for me it comes down to the argument that just because you can say something doesn’t mean you should. I found it illuminating to hear how positive stereotypes can be harmful: the idea that black men being well endowed seems like a compliment; but as the African-American spokesman says, it celebrates physicality over intellect. Stereotypes like this are just a reductive way of telling people to not have ideas above their station.

Chelsea is challenged by a racial equality council.

I can’t say I’ve seen Handler’s stand-up- my guess is that I would find it a little too direct; I do, however, think she’s fantastic in her role as Gonzo journalist. She listens to her subjects, but isn’t afraid to argue with them too. She doesn’t hide behind a voice-over in the same way Louis Theroux does. She also isn’t afraid to show her prejudices and foibles, making her feel honest and real. She is quite the character, but quite the human too. All in all, a documentary worth watching.  

Chelsea Does... is available on Netflix now.

Stewart Lee's Comedy Vehicle

In life we all have different guises. There are times at work where we have to dress up our serious side and play the professional. Then at home we can kick off this costume and return to our default role of leading goofball. I mean, this blog I write is another form of characterisation: it is and isn’t me. Despite being far from articulate on this, I’m far more articulate here than I am in real life. In my day-to-day existence I couldn’t hold an audience for five minutes; I don’t have the verbosity to hold someone’s attention. But on here, I have time to pause, to think, to hone and check before pushing send. I don’t see your faces when you read this. Therefore, I’m unconcerned by what you think of me; consequently, I write more personally and honestly about art, religion and politics. In real life I wouldn’t challenge someone on what they watch, practice or think because I’d be worried about hurting someone’s feelings. Herein, lies the pleasure of the arts: it allows you to present your opinions without seeing the reactions of others.

Stewart Lee is a comedian and character. In real-life he is avuncular, a paroxysmal laugher, satisfied with the success he's attained. On stage he is something else: embittered and strained, dissatisfied with the level he's reached. Lee is going through something of a renaissance with this the fourth series of his Comedy Vehicle. No comedian, other than Russell Howard, has had a show devoted to their stand-up for such a sustained period of time (even then Howard’s is more of a magazine show with content deliberately unitised for YouTube viewing). Lee, on the other hand, is a comic that doesn’t ‘chunk’ routines for easy edification- his work will not go viral. Rather, he plots his work with the precision of a playwright: lines that appear inconsequential at the beginning will resonate by the end. Creator of TV masterpiece The Wire, David Simon was once asked his philosophy on screenwriting; his response, ‘Fuck the casual viewer.’ Lee is the same: he is not interested in people who have one eye on Mock The Week whilst they play Candy Crush on their phone, instead he wants people that will invest time in him and be rewarded for their patience. He is the closest thing comedy comes to theatre.

Lee, when he hadn't let himself go.

Lee nearly lost patience with stand-up altogether. Following his successful 90's partnership with Richard Herring, he found himself in a rut. His stand-up was regarded without being celebrated. The routines he wrote were well crafted with a Dali eye for the surreal, but they were no masterpieces. By Lee’s own admission, his character didn’t make sense when he was young. People thought he was too precocious, too studenty to be taken seriously. Considering a move away from comedy, he collaborated with Richard Thomas on Jerry Springer: the Opera, a smash hit that was enjoyed by Joe Public and Seb Critic. Unfortunately, a payday was to elude Lee with the Christian-right picketing the show, crying blasphemy. The ensuing lawsuit ate into Lee's profits, leaving him disconsolate. Unwilling to be silenced, Lee took his rage to the stage, turning in a bravura performance in his show 90’s Comedian. Lee begins the show by drawing a circle in chalk around him, a move conceived by Medieval clowns to protect themselves from heresy. Lee proceeds to use his freedom to rail against the restrictive thinking of the Church. The fact that this is done with a closing 40 minute routine that sails so close to blasphemy that the audiences goodwill could capsize at anytime makes it a career turning-point, proving that people could be receptive to long-form jokes.

Richard Thomas and Stewart Lee

Lee is now one of the most venerated comedians on the circuit. In a Channel 4 poll he ranked 41 in the World’s Best Stand-Up Comedians – just one place behind Bernard Manning. If only he was more racist. He regularly sells out his tour show, writes a weekly column for The Guardian and is the (self) appointed spokesperson for alternative comedy. Comedians such as John Robins argue that this position is undeserved: Lee’s Second Coming has made him rich, which makes his stand against commercial comedy ring hollow. This is true to an extent: I remember seeing Lee play the Channel 4 sponsored Udderbelly venue in Edinburgh 2007, yet today he attacks comedians that play the big venues. On the other hand, he has used his name to promote other comedians through his curated show, The Alternative Comedy Experience, in which left-field acts have gained screen time on Comedy Central. Despite his growing reputation, Lee’s persona comes from the resentment of his wilderness years. The fact he is now critically acclaimed doesn’t make it any better. Instead of objecting to no one liking him, he now objects to the people who don’t get him. Why when he’s got a loyal following are some people not on board? Why when he’s getting 5 star reviews do people write in to the BBC to tell him his show isn’t funny? Why when he’s clearly a genius do people think he’s incompetent?

Lee’s genius lies in using these slights to make his arrogance more palatable. His recent show begins with a joke that falls flat. He turns to the camera and makes a play out of it, remarking, ‘Where do they get this crowd from? Normally, my audience would go ‘Ha, Ha! Imagine liking Mock The Week.’ Lee has orchestrated his own downfall to make his ensuing pomposity seem less cruel and more ridiculous. In reminding the audience he is against the ropes, they root for him when he hits back. (I don’t know James Corden personally, but he’s always going on in interviews about how brilliant I am. And the feeling is not reciprocated. Britain’s loss is America’s loss also). Lee has cultivated too strong a following to ever be up against it: he is Ali, feigning rope-a-dope to floor his opponents. 

First rule of alternative comedy: look like you're failing.

For the comedians on the end of Lee's ire, he is a traitor: comedy is a hard enough fight without its participants turning on one another. For me and many of Lee’s fans, it is refreshing: many of his millionaire targets have made their money through selling cheap observations, therefore it’s gratifying to see them pay the price for this. Opponents would argue that Lee’s televisual status makes these attacks nasty and pernicious - Lee Mack being one- but Lee is no household name: if you showed the casual viewer a picture of him, they would say, ‘Terry Christian has let himself go. Leonardo DiCaprio has let himself go. Todd Carty has let himself go. Morrissey has let himself go. KD Lang has let herself go.’ They wouldn’t know who he is. He remains an obscure figure. As long as that stays the same, he is well within his right to stand outside the tent and piss in.

KD Lang has let herself go.

Even though I love Stewart Lee, I cannot guarantee you will like him. I think this fact alone indicates why he is an artist and not an entertainer. Artists write for themselves; entertainers for an audience. Stewart Lee is not an entertainer. His Comedy Vehicle is not entertainment. But only a fool would deny that it isn’t comedy.

Stewart Lee’s Comedy Vehicle is on BBC Two, Thursday at 10pm.

Love

I’m a romantic. I’ve always wanted to find love and have love find me. While other boys in primary school in primary school answered the question, ‘what do you want to be when you grow up?’ with careers as unlikely as ‘astronaut’ and anachronistic as ‘cowboy,’ I would answer ‘in love.’

As a teacher, this message resonates with me.

In my teenage years my favourite book was The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole Aged 13 3/4. Adrian is the pseudo-intellectual from the suburbs, a romantic for whom ‘unrequited love’ is a specialist subject. He loves Pandora Braithwaite but is too scared to make an advance; instead he watches her from afar, writing lamentable odes to her that strain the parameters of rhyme (Pandora!/ I adore ya/ I implore ye/Don’t ignore me). At school I was very much like Adrian: I would create Pandora Braithwaite’s to mope over because it was easier to play thwarted than it was to risk rejection. Love was what happened to lesser beings. The true romantics were ones that thought about it day and night. Love for me wasn’t a participatory sport, but an academic subject. I had studied it through literature, movies and music. I knew about its ability to embolden, to diminish, to harm and to save. I knew that it could render a clever man stupid and a weak man strong. If there was a test on it, I would pass it – as long as the exam weighted theory over practical. Love was an abstract noun, not a verb.

I wrote worse poetry than Adrian.

Creating a fantasy of love is a mistake that many of us make. For years, I sat in an the audience, observing it played out on stage: initially, I thought, “This is very interesting. I like the complexity of the piece. There’s pathos and comedy. There’s strength and insecurity. It seems to contain the whole gamut of human emotions.” Then, I thought, “I’ve been sitting here for twenty years, which is too long for any performance. Three hours should be the cut-off. Four hours tops if it’s Hamlet. This is just ridiculous. I’m not even down the front. I’m back in the cheap seats. My arse has gone numb. My legs feel like they’ve been in a car accident. It’s not even a very good play. Everyone is very melodramatic. I can’t stand the way the actor’s lip curls when he says, ‘heartache.’ This is bullshit!”

So on passing my theory test, I put in for a practical.

There have been major faults along the way. Times when I’ve felt like my heart has been torn, chucked and run over by a heavy moving vehicle. Crashing failures where I’ve lay at the side of the road wondering how I’m ever going to move again. Then, there are the experiences of elation. To be loved is an incomparable feeling. It’s all very well your mum loving you, but they are contractually obliged to, in terms spelt out in your mother’s stretch marks. If I’m going to put my body through this much, I might as well love the thing. Through no one’s fault but my own, I went a long time without the love of a good woman. And I can now say is that experiencing love first-hand is so much better than experiencing it vicariously through the movies.

This clash between fiction and reality is what the characters in Netflix comedy-drama Love have to contend with. Written by real-life couple Paul Rust and Lesley Arfin, alongside Judd Apatow (40 Year Old Virgin and Knocked Up), Love is a realistic portrait of romance.

Gus, a Midwestern, and Mickey, a New Jerseyan, are thirty-somethings lost in LA. Neither have the emotional capacity to maintain a relationship: Gus because he believes too much in love and Mickey because she doesn’t believe enough in it. Episode one manifests this through the breakdown of the pair’s respective relationships. Gus is dumped because he doesn’t read the signs; he is too in love with the idea of love to appreciate that his partner isn’t a concept that might not feel the same. Whereas Mickey pulls the plug on her dying relationship when her boyfriend skips sex to go clothes shopping with his mum. Both are treated poorly by their ex’s, but neither are model citizens. Gus tends to play the nice card to imprison girls in relationships, and Mickey gorges on men in the same way she does alcohol and drugs. If each wants to find love, they will have to find the intersection where romanticism and sex meets, otherwise they’re on the slow lane to lonely town.

Mickey (Gillian Jacobs) and Gus (Paul Rust)

The two meet at a gas station at the end of episode one (Mickey has forgotten her wallet so Gus offers to pay for her groceries: coffee and cigarettes), and the episode that follows is a doozy. The two walk and drive the City of Angels with the tentativeness of a new friendship. This isn’t the hyper-articulacy of Linklater’s Before series where on meeting the two discuss the great existential questions; rather it is the uncomfortable silences and mistimed jokes that arise from creating rapport out of anonymity.

Mickey: My mum always says I should date a Midwestern because they’re really sweet and honest

Gus: Oh really, well tell your mum to go fuck herself. (Worried at the impact of his mock-insult) I’m sorry that was … a .. joke.

Mickey: (finding the humour) I got it

Over the episodes the relationship of the two develops, albeit at a casual pace. Much of the series has the two characters apart, exploring Gus’ travails as an on-set tutor for precocious twonks and Mickey’s inability to keep a lid on her wild impulses. I read an article the other week about how the romcom is dying at the multiplex but thriving on television – with shows like this it’s easy to see why. Given the limited running time, a movie has to bring a couple together quickly and apart even quicker before they can be re-united at the end. This is hardly conducive to providing a realistic view of love. In a long-running series, you can focus on the intimate intricacies of love with the mistakes and missteps that make a relationship examined. For example, much of an episode is devoted to Gus’ paranoia over a text message he sends to Mickey. Some people will feel that this naval gazing is a mark of the Indie genre’s bloated obsession with extraneous details over plot; I would argue that it perfectly represents a society where too much emphasis is put on thought over action. Instead of going over to ask someone out, we now do it via text. Rather than leaving a message on someone’s house phone and expecting to wait a day for a response, we now agonise over how many minutes they’ve taken to reply to a text. Technology has over-complicated courtship and made screen-chained idiots of us – why shouldn’t a programme reflect this?

Gus composing the initiating text.

Apatow’s recent films have been criticised for being over-long, perhaps with TV he’s found the right medium to fully explore and stretch his ideas. Whatever his next move, Love is a shambling triumph. Like Catastrophe and Girls, it makes a virtue of its profanity, capturing the ugliness of a beautiful emotion. 

Love is on Netflix now.