Reasons to be Cheerful 2019 list

1.     That lady on the front step, in her dressing gown, eating a Calippo on a cold December morning.

2.     The Priest’s speech about love in Fleabag.

3.     Leslie Manville and Peter Mullan in Mum.

4.     The third series of Glow was seriously good.

5.     End of the Fucking World ended brilliantly.

6.     Noticing the Watford FC references in Rocketman.

7.     Spotting symbolism in movies. (I know this is geeky but it’s the satisfying pursuit of an English teacher.)

8.     I don’t really get gifts as an English teacher. This Xmas though a Year 11 lad waited behind to give me a box of chocolates. It was a really nice thing.

9.     We have a buddy system at work where staff are matched up and put a gift in each other’s pigeonholes from time to time. A few weeks ago, I was gifted the Christmas Radio Times – it’s one of the best presents I could have got.

10.  In the same way, a few months previous, I was given a book about comedy writing. To get someone a gift that shows you really know them is a boon.

11.  I’m managed by people I admire.

12.  I work in a team of intelligent, funny, caring people.

13.  I feel valued and respected at work.

14.  I’ve had to do three big speeches this year: one for my mum, one for my wife and one for a friend. Despite botching a few lines, I was happy with how all of them went.

15.  The time The Girl’s mates put into her Hen Do.

16.  My brother organising the kind of Stag I wanted: original fancy dress, crazy golf, pubs, brewery and Indie disco.

17.  My brother’s best man speech. Just the right level of roast: not under or overdone – cooked just right.

18.  Clea singing ‘Your Song’ during the service.

19.  Walking hand in hand down the aisle to ‘Boom Bang-A-Bang’ and smiling so much it hurt.

20.  I married into a good family. You won’t hear Les Dawson mother-in-law jokes from me. Unless the mother-in-law joke’s set-up is, ‘My mother-in-law does a fantastic buffet’ and there’s no punch-line.

21.  My family playing football with her family in the pub garden.

22.  The time and expense our families gave to be at our wedding.

23.  Dec doing a great job with sound for the bridal entry and the disco.

24.  My playlist was a triumph - apart from my Madonna and Elton choices. (In hindsight I chose the wrong singles.)

25.  The mass circle of Liam Gallagher impersonators. ‘YOU’RE MY WONDERWALL!’

26.  The work the staff put into making our wedding day run so seamlessly.

27.  Our photos of the day that we’ll treasure.

28.  My mum having a lovely 60^th birthday.

29.  My dad being recognised for his voluntary work.

30.  My brother travelling the world working for FIFA.

31.  All my mates that have had a baby.

32.  Jonnie getting a job he wants.

33.  Experiencing Business Class for the one and only time.

34.  Those first few hours of the summer holiday where you feel like you’ve retired and the alarm clock won't ever go off.

35.  Drinking by the pool.

36.  Seeing the hotel from Some Like It Hot.

37.  Going to Warner Bros. Studios.

38.  Seeing the Hollywood sign close up.

39.  My brother’s kindness in calling an LA restaurant to organise a bottle of fizz.

40.  The octogenarian waiter who brought us a compimentary glass of champers and said, ‘Welcome to paradise.’

41.  Travelling on the AmTrak train and watching the landscape unspool.

42.  Cycling across the Golden Gate Bridge, even if my ability on two wheels rendered the experience hairy.

43.  Doing the walking tour of Alcatraz.

44.  Our cabin in the woods.

45.  Having a BBQ each night whilst staying in Wawona.

46.  The awe and wonder of Yosemite.

47.  The hospitality of the West Coast.

48.  The seafood in Seattle.

49.  My beer paddle in the brewery.

50.  The theatre show of Pike Place Market.

51.  Returning from a food shop to find two pregnancy kits on the worktop with The Girl’s face an excitable O.

52.  Having that first scan and feeling reassured that things were ok.

53.  My school debate team learning they can hold their own with schools seen as ‘better’ and ‘more academic.’

54.  Finding the perfect cereal.

55.  I’ve enjoyed venturing into pork pie lunches.

56.  A meal at Dishoom.

57.  Any meal out to be honest.

58.  Learning about classic Hollywood.

59.  That bookshop in Paris was an Aladdin’s cave.

60.  Grayson Perry on Richard Herring’s podcast.

61.  Heavyweight is a great podcast that few people talk about.

62.  My brother’s book getting released.

63.  Three Identical Strangers was one of my films of the year. What a story!

64.  It’s been a great year for sitcom: Home, Partridge, Mum, Stath, This Way Up.

65.  I still get so excited about things. The thought of reading something, watching something, listening to something. As long as you’re looking forward to something, then everything is alright.

66.  Some of my really old blogs getting extra views. I don’t know who is clicking on them, but it’s nice to know they’re being read.

67.  Stewart Lee is the best out there: he can do silly as well as cerebral.

68.  I’ve organised a night where I’m going to read some stories I wrote. February 17^th. More details to follow.

69.  The poster for the show. Serdar did a great job on it.

70.  The Girl feeling better in her second trimester than she did the first.

71.  Glenda Jackson was phenomenal in Elizabeth is Missing.

72.  Listening to Kermode and Mayo in the car with the good lady.

73.  Running on a sunny winter’s day.

74.  77,000 at Wembley for women’s football.

75.  That Deulofeu goal in the semi-final.

76.  Troy Deeney slamming that ball in.

77.  Seeing the yellow, black and red on cup final day.

78.  Watford beating Man U at the weekend. In Pearson we trust.

79.  Reading students answers and thinking, ‘Ooh, I never thought of that.’

80.  My Saturday afternoons where I sit there with a cup of tea, football scores in the background, and write about something I liked that week. Lovely stuff!

81.  Despite winning, Boris Johnson has been found out. He can’t hide behind that clown make-up any longer. People know he’s a buffoon; it’s just he had a good slogan that resonated.

82.  I like watching The Crown and learning about different Prime Ministers.

83.  The pub quiz in Berkhamsted was great. A picture round, quick transitions, fish and chips at the interval and the collection money going to charity. Sweets for the Top 3. A perfect format.

84.  Stephen Graham on Desert Island Discs. A great bloke!

85.  The times in my classroom where I feel completely myself.

86.  Clapping in the cinema.

87.  Standing ovations in the theatre.

88.  I live with someone who regularly makes me laugh.

89.  The occasions where I write a sentence and it feels balanced. Like the clauses are dancing.

90.  Twitter has been good for me. A few times this year I’ve had nice correspondence with some of my favourite writers.

91.  The morale at work is good. People are fun, friendly and supportive.

92.  Although I’ve cut down on caffeine, I like the buzz it gives me. Temporarily, it speeds up my mouth and brain. I feel more talkative and creative. Like booze does when you’re in that sweet zone between sobriety and smashed potato.

93.  Running over The Downs when the weather is just right.

94.  Dashing across the seafront to get to the pub to watch Stokes save the series.

95.  Super over!

96.  Katarina Johnson-Thompson winning gold.

97.  Going to Fopp.

98.  Having a browse in a book shop.

99.  I’m drinking for two.

100.        A baby is coming.

Marriage Story

Somebody, need me too much
Somebody, know me too well
Somebody, pull me up short
And put me through hell
And give me support
For being alive
Make me alive
Make me alive

(Stephen Sondheim, Company)


Two of Sondheim’s songs feature in Noah Baumbach’s Marriage Story. Sondheim’s musical is a rumination on marriage: the pros and cons, the joys and tribulations. Baumbach’s is similar: despite featuring embittered characters contesting a bitter divorce, this isn’t a bitter movie.


The characters are Charlie (Adam Driver) and Nicole Barber (Scarlett Johansson). He is a theatre and company director; she, his leading lady. Neither came from New York; both have set up home there. 


In a tender opening, Charlie’s voice-over begins: ‘What I love about Nicole …’ What follows is a rhapsodic eulogy. Compliments include, ‘She’s always inexplicably brewing a cup of tea that she doesn’t drink’ and ‘She always says when she doesn’t know something or hasn’t read a book or seen a film or a play (whereas I fake it or say something like, ‘I haven’t seen it in a while.’). 


Nicole then returns to the paean, listing such things as, ‘Charlie eats like he’s trying to get it over with and like there won’t be enough food for everyone’ and ‘He loves being a dad, he loves all the things you’re supposed to hate, like the tantrums, the waking up in the night.’

However, the rug is pulled from under us when it’s revealed these words have been written for mediation. These love letters aren’t the effusive outpourings of sweethearts; they are a homework task set by a counsellor to remind each other what they once liked about the other. Unfortunately, Nicole can’t bring herself to say the words aloud. Rationally, she knows voicing them will begin the healing process, but her feelings are too raw for bridge building. Charlie feels able to do so. Maybe his role of director gives him the forensic detachment to be outside of himself and deliver the lines without being in them. The counsellor nods his approval. Nicole feels the patriarchy has aligned against her and walks out.


From here, Nicole takes their son Henry with her to Los Angeles. Her family are from there and her new work too. For the first time in years she is going it alone, starring in a television pilot. Charlie, a theatre man, can’t hide his contempt, commenting on how he can’t judge TV because he doesn’t watch it (the TV is on in the background). Theatre/television isn’t the only dichotomy here; LA and New York is another; old and new money too. Nicole’s parents were in the entertainment industry; Charlie's in the volatile drinking racket. For Charlie the theatre represents the collective, any money you make should be put back in; for Nicole acting is cut-throat, casting calls and rejection- you have to put yourself first. To pigeonhole Nicole as a selfish capitalist and Charlie a selfless socialist would be reductive though. When Nicole meets her lawyers, she confesses how she saw herself shrinking under Charlie’s ‘genius.’ As a younger woman, she gave up her first shot of stardom to work with him in NY theatre. Just as in work, she felt as though she ceded her life to him, having him direct their marriage. When she said about moving back to LA, she wasn’t listened to. Being the actress, she couldn’t give the notes, only take them.

Emotional tug of war.

The two want an amicable divorce. Less bitter wrangling, more conscious uncoupling. They are from the arts and have no desire to be cast in a legal drama. However when Nicole is advised to hire a lawyer (Laura Dern), Charlie responds by finding his own. Initially he baulks at enlisting Jay (Ray Liotta), finding him abrasive. Instead he favours Bert (Alan Alda) who understands the human cost of court room battles. Wise and worn, Bert offers the dictum, ‘Criminal lawyers see bad people behaving at their best, while divorce lawyers see good people behaving at their worst.’ Given how the film unfolds, the words are prophetic. 


What makes this a terrific film though is how even-handed it is. Baumbach has been through divorce himself, and could have directed this from a male perspective with Charlie getting a better deal than Nicole. This would have made the film a harder watch and a less nuanced one. By feeling for both, we don’t root for either. Divorce isn’t cut and dry. Sometimes there aren’t heroes and villains. The person who had the affair might have been mistreated. The person who walked out may have spent a lifetime behind domestic bars. Some couples are tested more than others. You don’t necessarily have the greatest marriage because you’ve never had a row, you might just be lucky and never had a death, a crisis, a dilemma to contend with. Baumbach gives these characters dignity, even when they're being undignified.


A special mention to the score by Randy Newman. Handling a 40-piece chamber orchestra requires a special talent. The opening minutes are a nod to Woody Allen’s Manhattan with voice-over, New York and romanticism all featuring. As Gershwin’s Rhapsody In Blue did for that, Newman does for this. With Sondheim numbers featuring, you have a film that features two of America’s greatest songwriters. 

Marriage Story is the story of many marriages. All of them begin in happiness, but many end in the reverse. It’s a seismic chapter too frequently ignored by filmmakers. They want love stories depicting happy-ever-afters. Unlike lawyers, Hollywood doesn't find divorce as lucrative. Baumbach has been brave in his subject matter. He has shown the brittle, brutal battle of divorce, but done it with a sense of beauty. The combatants are so often reluctant fighters, fighting out of lost love, as opposed to fiery hate. It’s a story worth telling; a story worth seeing.



Marriage Story is on Netflix.

The Baby Has Landed

This week I experienced a filmic moment. I had to run to get somewhere when the odds were against me getting there. 


It’s Wednesday afternoon and we’ve left a lot of time. We arrive forty minutes early; it will give us time to sit down in the café and get some lunch. Approaching, we find the road has become a queue, a thoroughfare we can’t cross. We turn around and head to the next car park which has no space. A lady lies her car across a row of vehicles, hoping this stakeout will prove fruitful. On the flip side, we prowl for spaces, looping the loop, doing laps of the track. All is in vain. The time ticks on. 14.10 gets closer. The next car park we go to has all the bays of a landlocked state. In the end we concede defeat. I drop The Girl off at the maternity clinic. I’ve resigned myself to missing it.


You see we’re having a baby. This is our twenty-week scan. We’ve decided against finding out the sex of the baby. When asked by people what we’re having, we simply reply, ‘A Watford fan.’ It won’t wear blue or pink. Yellow and red will be its colours. Although we’re not finding out what's between its legs, we’re excited to see the rushes on the baby production.


Only it doesn’t look like I’ll be there.


All the parking is taken. I contemplate knocking on someone’s door and asking if I can park on their drive. I consider leaving my car in the middle of the road like Michael Douglas in Falling Down, giving uzi eyes to anyone who crosses me. I think about parking in a disabled bay: the heart is willing, but the conscience isn't. In the end I find somewhere at the bottom of the road when the phone rings. 

‘I’m just about to go in. Where are you?’

‘I’m running. I’m coming!’


So like Kate Bush I’m running up that hill. It’s a romcom ending- only the love is secure. I’m dodging and darting between patients, staff, trollies, relatives. Like a rat in a maze, I scratch and scurry for the exit. A text goes: ‘I’m in Room Two.’ I dispense with manners and jump the two person queue, apologising profusely, ‘My wife’s in there. I’m sorry can I go in front?' (I’m already in front.) The receptionist waves me through and there on the bed is my wife, there on the screen our child.


I was only a minute or two late. Everything is checked and measured. At the end, the scan returns to an overview of the foetus. It’s palm opens and closes. The Girl says, ‘Look it’s waving.’ As a child of two teachers, I think it's got its hand up. It’s a lovely moment that to them means nothing, but to the us suggests meaning, a connection of sorts. I turn my head, my wife turns hers, meeting in the middle we smile. It’s really happening. In a few months we will hold what we see. Our lives will change.


In preparation for this momentous moment we’ve been watching BBC Two’s The Baby Has Landed. Initially, I thought I would just watch it as homework, revision of sorts, to prepare me for the big day. Quite quickly though I found it moving, illuminating, entertaining. In many ways it takes the form of Gogglebox in that it drops in on the homes of disparate families. There’s young couple Mo and Syler expecting their first; Craig and Paul who are having their first through a surrogate; childhood sweethearts Shabaaz and Hermisha waiting on their third; and Helen and Nigel readying themselves for their fifth. Some small families, some big then. Some traditional families, some modern. All are united though by one common factor: soon the baby will land.

The first episode mainly features on the preparation for the baby’s arrival. It’s interesting to see how first-timers respond compared to old hands. Mo is under pressure to be in the delivery room. His wavering is making Syler tense. Mo explains how in Egypt the man gets a call when the baby arrives. Syler’s retort: we do things differently here. It’s a revelatory scene that highlights the cultural differences of childbirth. Helen and Nigel are a different case. With this being their fifth, they have the procedure down to a tee. For them having a baby is as routine as getting your car insured. With four children running around, you get the sense that the delivery room will be a holiday, a mini-break from the joyous chaos of home life.


The second episode concentrates on those first few days. What is fascinating is how Shabazz and Hermisha’s boys react to their sister. The boys have been prepped in advance. Mum and dad have made them part of the journey. They’ve bought presents for them too, signed from their new sister – in the same way your mum signs from Santa. They’re so excited to see her. The tenderness they show is a credit to their parents. Although over time you see how the younger son looks for attention: he plays dead so his dad will carry him; he curls up on the bed with mum. He wants to feel their touch. Never once does he complain though. He appreciates he has dropped in the pecking order, recognising the reason why - just wanting to hold on a moment longer. I’m sure the way a child can feel is the way a parent can too: you no longer become the number one priority; you’re rightly displaced by something more vulnerable that necessitates care and attention. This reduction in status though, this humbling, must be a good thing. To cede importance to another is maturity in action.

Hermisha and Shabazz (centre) with their kids.

In the last episode we watched it focused on Craig and Paul. Although the show does follow a trajectory of lead-up, birth and aftermath (is that the right word?), the chronology is staggered so we see different couples go through these events at different times. In a show of selflessness, Mel is surrogate for her friends Craig and Paul. She met one on a flight (they’re cabin crew) where he told her of his desire for children. Mel’s mother was a foster parent, which educated her in the philosophy that taken on more work might lessen someone else's burden. She gives her womb to Craig and Paul. She is headstrong and brilliant, guiding her own children through what surrogacy means. When the babies are born, she hands them over. She does not weep in loss, but joy. She has delivered happiness to another. Craig and Paul cry, feeling guilt over leaving her. Later, Mel’s husband picks her up. She’ll return to her family, aware she's helped create another.


All of the families on The Baby Has Landed are wonderful. You see their fears, their struggles; the teamwork, the tenacity. I wasn’t really broody before. Watching the show could have put me off. Opened my eyes to the sleepless nights, made me recoil that beneath the beauty is a bum, a bum that will shit shit everywhere. But seeing how the parents look on receiving their newborn. Seeing their heart hit their face has brought it home. I can’t wait to experience that. 
(I hope the baby doesn’t come too early though. I’m really not ready.)


The Baby Has Landed is on BBC Two, Wednesday 9pm. All episodes are available on iPlayer.

Poking a Dead Frog

Humour can be dissected as a frog can, but the thing dies in the process and the innards are discouraging to any but the pure scientific mind … (Humour) won’t stand much poking. It has a certain fragility, an evasiveness, which one had best respect.

(E.B. White)

Christmas is a time for giving. A poorly chosen gift can make someone feel misunderstood. A well-chosen gift, noticed and valued. A few weeks ago, I received a gift as part of our buddy system at work. (We’re paired up with someone at the start of term and put treats in their pigeonhole throughout the year). In return for my buddying last year, I received a book on comedy writing. I was really moved to be given it because, for me, it was a perfect present. So often in life we’re asked what we want: people feel it better to meet a request, than take a chance and have them react like Brad Pitt at the end of Se7en. "What's in the box? (Looks) OH GOD!" But when someone gets you something that you didn’t see coming, that recognises you and your interests, there is no finer thing.

I love the craft of comedy. I tried my hand at stand-up, gigged three hundred + times, but never got beyond mediocrity. I found the art of stand-up writing extremely difficult. In retrospect my problem was to treat it like conventional writing. I would sit in the library writing pages and pages of monologue, emboldening the punch-lines, checking I had a laugh every other line (something I was taught on my comedy course). The result never sounded right. Through listening to Stuart Goldsmith’s Comedian’s Comedian Podcast, where he interviews comics on their craft, many talk of ‘writing on stage.’ Now this isn’t meant literally. It isn’t performance art where comics turn away from the audience, grab a stool and type up potential routines live to an increasingly enraged audience. What they mean by this is material can be dismissed, elongated and elevated depending on the crowd’s reaction.  A lot of acts will go on with a bullet pointed idea of what they want to say, over time this will crystalise into syntactical form. My approach meant that if I missed a pre-rehearsed line the whole thing collapsed. Simply, I didn’t have the confidence to deviate from the rigidity of writing into the spontaneity of conversation that gives rise to great stand-up. 


Because I couldn’t do comedy, I venerate people that can.  For me, they’re greater than dramatists, worthy of more praise and study. Few think this way: comedy often being overlooked by taste-makers (only seven out of ninety-one Best Picture films have been comedies). With this in mind, I appreciate anyone who takes comedy seriously. In Poking a Frog: Conversations With Today’s Top Writers, Mike Sacks does just that. He sits with a lab partner (another comic writer) and together they put laughter under the microscope, ruminating on its origins, its intricacies, sometimes defining the roots, other times conceding its mystery.

The book is a series of chapters that takes disparate forms. There’s interviews with the likes of Mel Brooks and Terry Jones, short essays from Stephen Merchant and Amy Poehler, bespoke advice on how to write for sitcoms and awards – there’s also a long list of films aspiring writers should watch by Bill Hader. The nature of the book means it doesn’t have to be read in any particular order. I chose to read the chapters about the writers I was familiar with first, nodding with recognition as they discussed scenes, episodes and arcs I know and love; then I focused my attention on the artists I was unfamiliar with; consequently, I now know the role SNL, National Lampoon and The Onion have played in American comedy. As a comedy fan based in Britain, I therefore found the book educative, giving me an insight into how things work across the pond. 


I genuinely enjoyed all the chapters; by the end appreciating how comedy is a broad church that accepts a whole spectrum of lunatic: cartoonists, satirists, improvisers, stand-ups and script writers are all welcome. No heed is paid to race, creed or religion. The only thing that matters is you bring the funny to the offertory plate. If you can make them laugh, then pull up a pew.

Some of the subjects of Sacks' book.

Given I’ve read through the whole thing, I would like to share with you some of my favourite nuggets from Sacks’ investigation and talk about them one by one:

People do not become angry if you’re writing tragedy and you don’t do a good job. But people get extremely angry when you create comedy that isn’t funny – or, at the least, with the comedy they don’t find funny.

(Terry Jones, member of Monty Python)

There is much truth in this. In comparison to drama, just think of newspaper reviews and Twitter comments on comedy. You would think some comics had pissed on the critic’s grandmother, such is the level of vitriol fired their way. And what an impossible position too. Jones rightly adds the caveat ‘or, at the least, with the comedy they don’t find funny.’ When someone doesn’t find something funny, they don’t look at the rest of the room and go, “Well, they’re laughing, so there must be some worth in what the person is doing.” Instead, they throw pragmatism under a bus, decrying: “What is wrong with these fucking people? Why don’t they see what I see?” Comedy brings out the best in an audience, reminding them they’re part of one body, all responsible for each other, united  in laughter; it also brings out the worst, making people take leave of their senses, forgetting that opinions aren’t facts, that not enjoying something doesn’t make it worthless. 

 ‘Good stories beat good jokes every day of the week and twice on Sundays.’

(Mike Schur, creator of Parks and Recreation)

This is so true. There are comedies on television that have a joke every other line – like my model for comedy earlier – however, it doesn’t mean anything if it hangs on something artificial and insubstantial. What really makes people laugh is when characters we care about are put in danger. If a character doesn’t inhabit a recognisable story, then the jeopardy they face feels contrived and unimportant. We laugh at David Brent because the cringe comedy is framed in the body of an aspirant social climber. The joke has more weight and depth because we empathise with his motivation. Two-dimensional characters thrown into revolving comic scenarios might make us titter, but laugh? No, that’s for the stories and characters we’ve bought into.

‘As long as your unconscious is preoccupied with work, you can get into a kind of zone where what seems to be inactivity is progress.’   

(James L. Brooks, creator of Taxi)

This seems like sage advice. The rare time I did come up with good comic ideas was when I was running, on the loo or in the shower. In other words, when my mind was at rest. This sounds paradoxical: to work better when you’re not working. But the only reason this happened was because I’d been at the laptop hours before, spraying graffiti on the screen, eventually leaving the room, sated with loathing and self-disgust. Although I left the car, I'd kept the engine running. Tick, tick, tick, it ticked over. Away from concentrated thinking, my brain joined the dots, forming the picture I wanted.

He (his improv mentor) had two key tenets: one was to always go to your third thought….Another lesson was always to play to the top of your intelligence.

(Adam McKay, Anchorman writer)

This reminded me of Bill Hicks view of comedy: play to the smartest person in the room. This doesn’t mean talk quantum if a physicist is in the room or Nietzsche if a philosopher comes by, it means communicate your truth in an original and creative way. Comedy is a genre that depends on unpredictability. If you can predict the punch-line, then the magic is gone. If a comedian makes a joke and everyone guessed it, should anyone make a sound? My feeling is no. Don’t encourage the bastards. Make them go away and work harder.

Einstein thought something similar too.

These were lessons that really resonated with me, only I wouldn’t have the skill to articulate them so well. I guess that’s what a good book on comedy should do: pin down the butterfly, capturing what's evasive for display. White is right: comedy is fragile. It must be handled with care. Sacks’ book does that, demonstrating the beauty and complexity of the form.


Poking a Dead Frog: Conversations With Today’s Top Comedy Writers is available on all good online bookstores.