My crowning achievement in life
When I was still only a kid, my mum won the highly coveted Woman’s Own’s ‘I have the worst son in the world’ competition. I admit the competition was pretty stiff, but I came up the worst. There were two things that clinched it for me:
Firstly, my mum kept this huge record collection in a big wooden chest that she loved dearly. So one day, when she was doing something else, I snuck in, spread the records all over the floor, and started using them as stepping stones and just generally jumping around on them; ruining a large number of them. And this is where she made the crucial mistake; she went nuts and got really annoyed at me. Fair enough you may think, but I was a bitter child. So when she went to sleep, I snuck downstairs, opened up her chest, and shat over the entire collection. I’m not sure this whole bit works as a piece of stand-up. While it’s a very amusing anecdote to tell to a friend, a friend will be assuming that it’s true without you really having to assert the fact. A stand-up audience generally assumes the stories told are fabricated – that they’re jokes. The thing is, if you try and overcome this by saying something along the lines of “Trust me, I promise you this is a true story” you’re raising expectations to the extent that the audience will be expecting something so fantastic and hard to believe that it warranted the insistence of the man on the stage that it’s true and not made-up. I guess what I’m trying to say is, it’s not funny/clever/surreal enough to be amusing as something you’d expect a comedian to concoct, and not incredible enough a true story to be something you’d expect a comedian to go on stage and tell.
Secondly, and this is my favourite, in summer we used to have these wasp-traps, which consisted of an old jam-jar filled with water and a bit of jam at the bottom. So the wasps would fly into the jar and drown. One summer I got really bored and start fishing the wasps out, then cutting them up and super-gluing them together to create ‘SUPER WASP’; my first attempt at genetic engineering. A hundred-odd dead wasps dissected and stuck together in a huge ball. I think I must of have some kind of Frankenstein's monster concept going on, whereby I would attach it to some kind gothic device and then, after lighting struck, I would have my very own loyal, (if not slightly fucked up) Pokemon type pet. Although this is tied in with the first part, I think this has a lot more potential and mileage. More elements that you can make something of and develop – which I think shows as you’ve supplemented it with your Frankenstein’s monster thing. As opposed to a large bunch of really fucked off, confused wasps. This part of the whole thing is funny. I laughed out loud at the idea when I read it. Why the fuck should the wasps serve you? Your hope/expectation that you’d end up with some kind of organized servile warrior super-wasp, played off against the reality of what you’d actually end up with; a disorganized collection of wasps/wasp parts ranging in character from aggressive (towards anyone and anything including its ‘Master’ and, indeed, the other wasps making up itself) to confused, is funny.*(see bottom of document)
But all I actually did with it was to take it to school and throw it at the other kids in the playground until a dinner lady confiscated it. Pathos – like it.
Now for all this we won an all-inclusive holiday to Blackpool leisure beach, which was absolutely fantastic. Unfortunately it took me another year to figure out no matter how many times I pissed on dad or generally abused the family pets, there was absolutely no way I was going to Disney World. Think you could make more of this.
I worked in insurance for years and the concept really, really, annoyed me. Now, the whole thing about insurance is it’s a negative bet. What you’re basically doing is saying, “I bet you £40 a month that someone will rob my house”. How pessimistic is that? You might as well go into a real betting shop and see what odds they’ll give you. “What odds will you give me on my house burning down? Actually, sod it, make it an accumulator with my untimely death – I’m feeling unlucky”. May be best expanding this part in a different way or ending it here – see below.
(Needs a big audience)
Show of hands.
Has anyone here attempted to claim something on travel insurance just to find out that they weren't actually covered for it? (I bet few people put their hands up) Now, more importantly, has anyone every attempted to claim something on travel insurance and they've actually paid out? (I bet no one does). Life insurance is the oddest one, you'd have to be an incredible saint to buy that. I really have trouble paying to give people a reason to want me dead. Like it, but you’re trusting quite a bit to luck here – what will you say if things don’t go as planned with the show of hands? What I think would be a better idea is that, say they want £11 a month to have a pay out for £20,000. That means you have odds of 200/1 that you’ll die that month. Which must mean they're giving you odds of 200/199 that you will survive the month. So if you bet that 11 pounds that you'll survive the month, you may only win £11.65 but that’s far better than any saving account you can find. I get what you’re saying here, but not quite sure it works. Here are my workings – with more favourable figures:
Say you pay £20 per month for a payout of £20,000 – that would mean that the odds the insurance company is willing to accept of you dying that month are at least 1000/1. If you were to put £20 each month on you not being killed and got the same odds (but, like you said, reversed as it’s on you surviving) this would be 1/1000 – meaning the monthly payout on a win would be £20.02 (the £20 you bet + 1000th of that amount – 2p). And 2p per month on £20 (just over 1% AER) isn’t a better return that you’d get in a savings account.
And it doesn't matter cos People don’t die anymore they just get smaller and slower. As a throwaway comment I liked this. It made me laugh. Maybe I laughed because I know you and can imagine you saying it, and thinking it so not sure it’ll work on an audience, but you never know for sure unless you try.
Why the hell is euthanasia illegal? Who are we to tell our elders that they can’t die gracefully. Let's keep everyone alive forever. “She's still a productive member of society, look at her dribble; we could use it as industrial lubricant.” Not sure about this on its own – how about supplementing it with something like ”It's certainly no longer any use as a sexual lubricant.” Even then, I’m worried it might make the ‘industrial’ part look like it was only thrown in as a lead-up to crack that bit I just put in. Up to you. She’s enjoying life; she's watching Trisha reruns. That's worth living in arthritis-ridden agony for.
Hang on in there granny, don’t give in now, you haven’t found out which one of these Burberry-coated Neanderthals impregnated their mother.
Actually I have real guilt trip every time I say that bit, because I have this vision in my head of my mum crying as my nana sits there with a cotton bud, desperately trying to get poo from between the treads of her precious record collection. Was thinking you could end on something like “I guess I shouldn’t have blamed it on her” or something like that. Or maybe your Nan did it and you only took the blame so she wouldn’t tell about when she woke up to find you using her saliva as a masturbatory lubricant. But then I guess this re-incorporation working depends on you keeping the beginning bit, and if so, in what form.
*Incidentally, both Sheila and I (you’ve told her the story of the wasps and the record collection before) think that this, if expanded, would make a really good written piece. There are always tons of small literary journals looking for short story pieces of all kinds from people. I’m going to be writing a few pieces myself for similar stuff. Just something to consider.