Salford Lowry

My dad and I went for a couple of beers after the second Harrogate gig before we made our way to our B&B. He told me he was really enjoying driving me around. I wasn’t sure how much fun it was for him so it was good to be reassured it was going well. Sometimes when I’m having a horrible time though I pretend I’m really enjoying myself just to make other people feel better, so maybe he’s just doing that. Either way my conscience is clear.

The roads were still icy and dangerous when we checked out after our massive breakfasts and drove to Salford. I was quite interested in seeing the new complex at Salford, the BBC have moved their offices to Media City UK, which is across the way from the Lowry. I’ve still not fully worked out why FiveLive has had to relocate from London to Salford, I’m not sure anyone does. There’s probably an article to explain it all somewhere if I Googled.

The Lowry is an iPad to Harrogate Theatre's rotary dial telephone. Whereas Harrogate Theatre is traditional, rustic, with a plaque saying Charlie Chaplin, Arnold Ridley and Ben Kingsley had performed there, the Lowry is modern, vibrant, when you arrive there it feels like you've just fallen inside a Dulux paint chart. I wandered around the building for ages, it was too cold to go outside so I paced the primary colour carpets running through my lines. The venue is huge but it was deserted, in fact the whole of Salford seemed completely empty. Maybe it's because it was Chelsea v Man Utd, or because of the weather, but it felt a bit eerie, walking up and down the huge desolate corridors.



I didn’t really enjoy my first show. I was doing two back to back, at 6 pm and at 8, and this was the first show of my tour that I thought I fluffed my lines a little bit and I was really rattled by a girl at the front who looked SO BORED. To be fair to her, she probably didn’t know it was going to be so boring, just a man saying ‘radio is nice.’ When you’re at that level of boredom it can be hard to disguise it. I know. I've been at things I hate and I am a bad audience member, analysing every line hoping a denouement is imminent. I’ve been doing this show for a year now, and poetry gigs for five years, but I’m still really bad at coping with distractions like that; latecomers, mobile phones, a sneeze. Maybe this is why I enjoyed the 8 pm show so much, I think I was making up for being slightly lacklustre earlier.



My friend Si came to the gig, as well as my friend Tom from school, and they both brought friends along, so we stayed drinking in the Lowry bar til late, then Si suggested getting a taxi into Manchester to find somewhere we could watch the Superbowl. I only ever see Si at Christmas, weddings and festivals these days, so whenever I see him there is a Pavlovian response that immediately suggests it’s going to be fun, and beer and crap nachos was the perfect way to spend the night after a couple of stressful days of gigs and snow. Si’s a dead keen American football fan and the bar was full of people in both Patriots and New York Giants shirts, so it was good to watch my first Superbowl with people who knew what was going on. By 3 am the Patriots had lost and it was bedtime, but I’d had enough beer and fun to forget about the yawning girl; the snow had melted and another venue had been ticked off on my little tour.

A review of the Lowry show is here, complete with chaotic spelling of Osborne. If you are a journalist aim to either spell names right or wrong. Don't fluctuate between the two.

Harrogate

I felt super super nervous before my first of two nights at the Harrogate Theatre, so went to get a beer in the bar beforehand. There was a lovely atmosphere in there, people really excited about seeing a very cool show. I guess this was Chris Addison’s crowd, he was doing the big room downstairs. It’s a very affluent area, Harrogate, and there were lots of men in Sunday best and ladies in posh furry hats. The theatre is an old traditional one, where a man in a white coat sells ice cream in the foyer. An usher told me that recently the theatre celebrated it’s centenary and they’d had an event in the main hall replicating the very first performance ever to be shown at the venue. I told him I was on a tour for the next six weeks but thought it was unlikely I’d be doing any theatres as traditional or elegant as this one. Unfortunately all this conversation only resulted after he’d run up the stairs after me, telling me I wasn’t allowed to go up there because it was for artists only. I need to get myself a bitpart in Skins.



I don’t know why I was feeling so nervous. Maybe it was the comedown of the back to back shows at the Crucible, or maybe I was thrown by the slight technical problems during the set-up but once I got to my dressing room, bottle of beer in hand, I was terrified, and had to put my MP3 player on and play my special song, the one I listen to loud and dance around, in the way that poet and asthmatic Ross Sutherland has taught me. Dance the nerves away.

We were back home by 10 pm, but the forecast for the next day was so bad we had to rearrange our plans. Instead of rocking up at the venue at 6pm for day 2 of Harrogate, we had to leave at lunchtime to beat the snow. We were just outside Harrogate when the sky turned the colour of someone who’s just realised they’ve left their bag on the bus, and snowflakes fell across Yorkshire.
I had packed preparing for the worst: spare pair of clothes, big jumper, the podcast of this week’s News Quiz. I was slightly worried that although I had got there, I might not have an audience, that people would have looked at the falling snow and the ice and their cars buried under white blankets and then looked at their telly and kettle and hot water bottle and made a sensible decision. But luckily the lunatics decided to brave the conditions and get to the theatre and it was another really fun show. Thanks if you came along. You are brave. Like fireman and bullfighter.

Sheffield

I've just got back from Sheffield Crucible, where I performed John Peel's Shed twice. My favourite bit was running across the venue in the half an hour I had between the two shows to have a shower, a banana and a Mountain Dew energy drink. It was one of the three times in my life I've felt genuinely alive.



Both shows were really fun, both were sold out which made life much easier, and the second show was probably the most I've ever enjoyed performing John Peel's Shed. Probably because of that banana. As soon as I saw the itinerary for the tour the Sheffield date was one I was really looking forward to. It's one of the most prestigious venues I've ever performed at, and as someone who spends way too much time watching snooker on telly it was pretty exciting to be there, seeing the glass entrance where Hazel Irvine talks to Dennis Taylor about the disappointing form of Alan 'Angles' McManus. Also Nick from Pulp was in the audience. He told me about going to John Peel's house and John Peel playing them records. I wish I was Nick from Pulp.

Got back home at about midnight. I'd put a load of beer in the fridge because I thought I'd be really pumped and full of energy after doing two shows but I just feel really tired and lethargic. I'm drinking the beer anyway, just cos it's there. That's the way I roll.

Have to go to the post office in the morning.

Tour blog: Hull

Last night I did my first tour date of John Peel’s Shed. The tour is starting off fairly low key, I’m staying with my mum and dad for the first week of my tour as all the venues are pretty close by, they’re all very Lincolnshirey. I like Hull. I still get messages in my inbox from Hull recruitment services from a few years ago when I was looking for a job and thought I might have to leave Norwich to get one. I should probably unsubscribe from getting those emails now but I hate having an empty inbox. I like it when there’s things to open.

My dad drove me across the Humber Bridge and were at the Hull Truck Theatre within half an hour, where we saw Josh, the paramedic from Casualty outside the venue. It was the opening night of his play Sixty Five Miles. I always liked Josh in Casualty. I remember the episode his whole family died in a fire. That was a grim episode. Why did they do that?



I was really nervous in the lead up to the Hull gig. I wasn’t sure I knew my words, and it had been a while since I did the show all the way through, as well as the potential for equipment breaking, record players and overhead projectors are very brittle. Luckily all of us muddled through, was a lovely audience, I didn’t mess it up. My friend Katie’s mum and dad were in the audience. They’re among my favourite mum and dads, probably in my top 5. The best thing about doing gigs close to home is the familiar faces. Am sure there will be more in Lincoln in a few days. I was home by 10 pm, had a cup of tea, went on Twitter to watch my friend Paddy send messages to former Aston Villa player Paul McGrath, then went to bed. I got up to have a wee at about 3 am.

Tour blog. Day 1.

Tonight I start touring my show John Peel’s Shed. I’m going to write a blog on every day of the tour. I know lots of people say that kind of thing when they start out on something like this and don’t get past Day 3, but I’m going to try and still have this running by the last date in Penzance on March 17th. It won’t be interesting, but it’ll be thorough.

My first date is Hull. I went to see my first ever gig in Hull, at the ice skating arena, Blur supported by Super Furry Animals. I’ve also seen Space in Hull, so it doesn’t hold entirely positive gig memories. I’ve been really nervous about this for the last few days, but as I’ve been back at my mum and dad’s since yesterday I’m much more relaxed. Life is much easier once your mum has made you a casserole and your dad is driving you places.

The last thing I had to do in Norwich before I left for my tour was present my Future radio show.



Normally this is something I do every Tuesday with writer, wit and Guinness drinker Tim Clare, but because of his work commitments I was left alone this week. This meant I didn’t really talk that much, I just played loads of good songs, any radio show that starts with Roxy Music is doing something right. I played The Specials, Blur, The Kinks, Pixies, Velvet Underground, Talking Heads. It was so much fun, and also it really sunk in how important Future Radio has been to me. It was when researching my book Radio Head I first visited the station, and gradually became more and more involved, recording my own show called John Peel’s Shed in 2010. It was after listening to those shows that Tom Searle of Show+Tell suggested trying to turn it into a live show, and since then it’s been at Edinburgh, on Radio 4 and is now about to be toured around the UK.

My phone broke a couple of days ago, so until my replacement arrives I’ve been using my crappy replacement one. It doesn't even have predictive text. The last time I used it was when my phone broke in the first week of last year’s Edinburgh, so I’ve been having a nostalgic scroll of my inbox and sent messages from what was one of the most fun months of my life - all of them planning things Edinburgh related; drinks at the Pleasance, climbing Arthur’s Seat, telling people I’d go and see their show and then the next text an apology for not going.



I was so nervous before my shows in Edinburgh I spent most of my time playing the Formula 1 game on the phone. I’ve been playing that this morning. I’ll probably play it in my dressing room in Hull, 20 minutes before I’m due to start when there are a hundred more useful things I should be doing. My highest score is 97.

Have a look here for full details of the tour.

Chris Morris cancels the Radio 1 news.

The New Blur Album

Here's a review for my 2011 poetry pamphlet The New Blur Album, published by Nasty Little Press. You can read it in full on the Sphinx website, a comprehensive reviews service for poetry pamphlets with each pamphlet reviewed by three people.

Charlotte Gann:

This short sweet collection from John Osborne is really good fun. It’s an easy read, not a word out of place—a poetic Nick Hornby for the next generation. The formula seems simple: humour, with a pinch of pathos, perfectly scanned, and away you go. But it is really good fun—and I could have happily read three times the number of poems at one sitting, chortling away to myself.

Osborne’s jokes are funny—if, at times, well worn (I found the jilting-girlfriend theme a tad hackneyed, for instance). But his work throughout is immaculately executed. It’s generously packed with contemporary references to popular culture, jokes, and flights of wonderfully imagined fancy—like this, from ‘A go home moment’:

......Maybe hailstones will start smashing through the pub ceiling
......more biblical than Moses.
...... 'Follow me!' someone will say, running outside,
......climbing down a manhole cover
......and they’ll all gather in a nuclear bunker
......and see the Mayor in full regalia,
......local celebrities playing computer games on beanbags.
......'Were you followed?' the Mayoress would ask,
......taking drinks orders.

More than once I thought I’d reached the end of a poem, only to turn the page and find, with real pleasure, there was plenty more where that came from.

Some of the pieces moved me. My favourites included ‘Pages from Ceefax’ (“‘Let’s all quit Facebook!’ I type as my status update”), ‘A go-home moment’, and ‘Ambition is like a bumbling tourist guide’:

......'. . . I’m pretty sure if we take a shortcut through this field . . .'
......The man next to me tells me he was almost an airline pilot
......as we wade through the muddy grass,
......but he failed the final exam

‘The admin of being PM’, on the other hand, left me rather colder: though perfectly well turned, it seemed to exist simply for the sake of its one central joke. That said, ‘Frozen’ made me laugh out loud, an experience I very much enjoyed while sitting reading a poetry pamphlet.

I’d definitely recommend this little book, with its 14 eloquent poems. I loved its look and feel too, and almost-pocket format, although I was a little interrupted by a couple of typos, including one in the very first poem.


Ross Kightly:
This one comes in a curiously-sized format, not quite half of A5, and it has a nice feel in the hand—though its compactness does mean the print is rather small on the attractive yellow paper.

Enough of the carping: this is a fine collection combining many virtues: humour combined with pathos, plus effective characterisation, all demonstrated in the first poem 'Surprise' which also displays another of the collection's virtues: colloquial and conversational rhythmic vigour. A birthday party thrown by a girlfriend to which none of the narrators friends turn up—things do not go well and

......By the time we sang the happy birthday song
......the waiter was so pissed he'll probably be fired
......but anyone who can dance like that
......is wasted in catering.

And the poem also has a satisfyingly rude ending involving an uncomfortable recollection of attempting to show everybody "a massive bruise on my knob".

'Our waitress is Employee of the Month' illustrates the anecdotal and observational qualities of the work: the waitress wonders if she won the award for helping an amputee and this leads to a conclusion in which

...... we know that if any of us start to choke on a bone
...... we will feel her arm around us.

'Most people aren't that happy, anyway' is a bit more wide-ranging though it still focuses on one character who is always getting things wrong possibly because of "his son/on a kidney dialysis machine" and it ends with a very intriguing image that uses popular culture rather well. There is no portal to jump through "into a time before you lost your glasses" and when

...... you remembered to put the oven on

...... before you went for that walk
...... on Christmas afternoon

In fact there is quite a range of popular and contemporary cultural reference in the collection, ranging from the metaphor of a substitute goalkeeper to stand for an inability to take centre stage and visits to Ceefax, Scalextric, Macbook, Facebook, cryogenics and answering machines or automatic call centres. Both computer Firewalls and tourist guides become effective metaphors and the last poem has a fine surreally apocalyptic feel to it. What more can you want?


D A Prince:
Little?—yes: this A6 pamphlet makes most A5 pamphlets look overblown and gangly. Nasty?—definitely not: cream paper, serifs, and poems that are compulsively readable. Still, it’s an eye-catching name for a press.

Read the opening lines of the first poem, ‘Surprise’, and I don’t think you’ll be able to resist reading on:

......It’s you I feel sorry for.
......You hired the room
......and when no-one RSVP’d
......you assumed my friends were too cool to RSVP
......and ordered a finger buffet for fifty.

I’m not going to tell you what happens (you’ll have to buy the pamphlet for yourself, plus some as presents while you’re at it). Osborne’s territory is the poetry of social embarrassment and small failures, bravely borne with a stubborn optimism; he is a performance poet but one whose poems are just as good on the page. Deceptively easy in style—free verse, natural rhythm, casual everyday idiom—these fourteen poems sit happily together. Pulling out quotations for this review has been hugely time-consuming because each attempt led to a delighted re-reading of the whole pamphlet—and I’m not complaining about this. A stanza from ‘The admin of being Prime Minister’ gives the flavour:

......On your first day in Number 10
......you need to read the instruction manual
......for the central heating, work out how to get into the loft.

This is the level the poems work at—domestic, everyday, until even the Prime Minister’s role is reduced to getting books from Amazon, and a Yahoo password. Osborne knows this is his strength, as he brings out in ‘Our waitress is Employee of the Month’:

......because she knows it’s important
......to appreciate the small things.

This couplet is used first of the waitress’s mother, and then—changed to a single line—of the waitress herself. Out of context this appears minor, but it sums up the appeal of this pamphlet and its focus on the life-affirming human contacts that keep us going. Luke Kennard’s description on the back cover has already claimed the adjectives I wanted to use— “imaginative, big-hearted and refreshingly life-affirming” —so I won’t spend time looking for others. Instead I’ll settle back to enjoy these poems again.


Another review of The New Blur Album is on the Sabotage website, an imagined conversation between me and fellow Nasty Little Press author Molly Naylor.