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Mitch's Podcast:

a plea

Friday 20th March 2009

Sorry it's been a while, I'm still a bit ill and such energy as I have I've been conserving for the unavoidable stuff like writing Now Show songs and driving to Cheltenham.

The other reason I've been slightly putting off blogging is that I have something to say which I've not been looking forward to saying, as I know however I phrase it it's going to come over as graceless and mean-spirited, but here goes anyway...

From time to time, aspiring - or perhaps accomplished but as-yet unrecognised - comic songwriters email me funny lyrics they've written.  Since The Now Show came back a couple of weeks ago this has picked up to the point where I'm now receiving one of these emails at least every other day, sometimes more often than that.

Here's the bit where I put my Git Head on, apologies in advance...

PLEASE STOP SENDING ME FUNNY LYRICS.

I'm sure a lot of them are very good; I say I'm sure because I haven't read any of them.   Some of the senders explain in their emails that they'd be interested in writing for me, some others simply want my feedback, but here's the thing; I'm not reading them.  Because I can't.

In the case of those who want to write for me; my deal with the BBC is that I write and perform the songs for The Now Show, not simply that I come up with them by whatever means present themselves...  it's Mitch Benn original compositions they're paying for and it's Mitch Benn originals that I'm contractually obliged to provide.  Even if the terms of the deal allowed for me to "sub-contract" other writers, frankly they're not paying me enough for me to pay anyone else, and besides, if the resultant song were wholly someone else's work I'd be morally obliged to pass on all the money, and then there's no point my being there.   So even if I wanted to "hire" someone to write "my" songs I couldn't, either legally or ethically.

There's another, even bigger problem which also concerns those who just seek my input or advice...  It's very sweet of you to ask, but sending me your funny lyrics - especially while the Now Show's on - actually makes my job, which is never easy at the best of times, considerably harder.  I'll explain:

I can only write about what's in the news, and at any given time there are only a few stories which are in any way good candidates for the funny song treatment, and most weeks at least a couple of those will have been "bagsied" by Steve and Hugh for the week's big themes.  So I'm left with maybe four or five possible stories a week if I'm lucky, and out of that I have to get three songs. 

The hardest part is coming up with the comic "angle"; what aspect of the story to pick up on and make the focus of the song.

Now if, while I'm in the middle of this process, someone in all eagerness and innocence sends me the words to this great song they've written about one of the big stories in the news - I've now lost that idea from my list of potential songs.  I can't use the sender's lyrics (see above) and, worse, while a minute ago I might yet have had that idea or one very like it for myself, I now can't go anywhere near it.  Even if the sender wouldn't mind me using their idea at all, I can't do this (see above again) and I can't come up with something similar because now that's plagiarism.  Even if the BBC never finds out, I'd know (and the sender would know when something very like his idea comes out of the radio a few days later). 

So the result of the sender's actions - and I'm guessing by and large the people who do this are fans - is just me being required to find three funny songs from a pool of three or four news stories rather than four or five.  Exponentially harder.

It's got to the point now where I'm not even opening any email with "idea for song" or such like in the subject bar.

Now please, those of you, don't feel hurt by this, and whatever you do, KEEP WRITING.  Send your lyrics to the BBC and try to nick my job out from under me, send them to ad agencies, send them to cabaret artistes who DO use writers, get up on stage someplace and perform them yourself, just don't send them to me.   There's nothing I can do with them and I'm not going to pass them on to anyone else.  I'm ugly but I'm not stupid.

Sorry to be such a sour old bastard, but you see my point, don't you?

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weigh-urrgh

Monday 16th March 2009

21st dead, so 3 pounds gone this week, but that's what a couple of days off your food sweating under a duvet will do for you.  It's all to the good I suppose but I'd rather not employ that particular technique again in the foreseeable future.

Feeling better today, if not quite 100%.  Just has well, I have lots to do (so off he goes to do it).

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the last real journalist

Saturday 14th March 2009

Just a short one as I'm a bit under the weather and the schedule for the next few days is kind of heavy-going. The closest thing I have to a night "off" in the next week and a half is Wednesday, and since that's when I'm generally up till the occasionally not even particularly wee small hours writing Now Show songs I'm not sure that counts.

I've just been watching Jon Stewart's showdown with Jim Cramer (click here for the background on this - it's worth it)...  it's possibly the single most exciting and impressive thing I've seen on TV in years. Fair play to Cramer for taking it like a man but Stewart had him so utterly nailed there wasn't much else he could do other than leap over the desk and strangle him. 

The fact that it's taken Jon Stewart - a man who doesn't even consider himself to BE a journalist - to point out the effective complicity of US financial punditry in the wholesale robbery and squandering of billions of innocent people's dollars, and the rancid hypocrisy of these same pundits now decrying the "profligacy" of Obama's stimulus proposals, or, worse, blaming small investors and mortgage holders for their own misfortune when it was the advice they themselves had been giving for years which led those investors into trouble, should give the rest of the US news business some serious thinking to do. 

It should also give those who clamour for our own news media to go down similar paths (I'm looking at you, the Abolish-The-Licence-Fee crowd) some VERY serious thinking to do.

Why is it that a man who describes himself as a comedian fronting a comedy show is looking a lot like The Last Real Journalist In America?

Lap it up (there's some fruity language, but rightly f__kin' so):

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altitude problem

Wednesday 11th March 2009

As you may have seen on the news page, at the end of the month I'm appearing at the Altitude Festival at the ski resort of Méribel in France, at the behest of my old friend and colleague Marcus Brigstocke, the Hardest Skiing Man In Showbusiness (TM).  It's been a hard-won behest as behests go; I've been on at Marcus to get me on at Méribel ever since he started booking gigs out there a few years ago, and this year I guess the whining just got too much for him.

I've been wanting to learn to ski for a while; not specifically because I have any interest in skiing per se, it's just that having learned in the last few years to drive and to scuba dive (although not in that order, interestingly) I figure if can can get skiing together than I will be able to do Everything James Bond Can Do.  It's important to throw your inner eight-year-old a bone occasionally.

Since we don't get many holidays these days I've managed to wangle it so that if I play the festival for Not That Much Money, the organisers have graciously agreed to fly Clara and the kids out with me and we can make a bit of an occasion out of it.  Long-term readers will recall I pulled off a similar stunt with a gig in Malta about eighteen months ago (our last overseas "holiday"). 

Of course, Astrid has arrived in the meantime and as such we're now furiously trying to get her passport application together, which has involved taking a photo of an easily distracted ten-month old which conforms to HM Passport Office standards.  This isn't easy.  At least we've done this once before; applying for Greta's first passport when she was much the same age, so we knew the only thing for it is to lash her to a high-backed armchair with a dressing-gown belt and get as many headshots taken as possible before she started crying (which she never did, bless her).

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weigh-hey

Monday 9th March 2009

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this looks a bit good

Saturday 7th March 2009

The more I see of this the better it looks:

Oh, by the way, I haven't seen Watchmen yet and have no idea when I'm likely to, so no spoilers please (I've read the book, obviously, but apparently there are significant changes).

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I'm back

Friday 6th March 2009

I've only been gone for three days but I feel like it's been weeks.  As the Twitterers among you will know, last night (as in Wednesday) I had a bit of an episode with a B&B bed which turned out to be full of bugs, requiring a 3am flit to the Travelodge.  I'll take corporate and soulless over Full Of Bugs any day, thanks awfully.  I won't name and shame the B&B in question as they seemed like good people (they were very apologetic when I phoned them this morning) and I wouldn't want to drop them in it. Bloody would have done if they'd tried to charge me, mind you.

Anyhoo, back to London on the train and straight into the new run of The Now Show.  Good to be back in the saddle (and God knows the money's going to come in handy).  

Better go; poor little Greta isn't at all well. Rotten cough, keeping her (and as such all of us, I fear) awake.

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break in transmission

Tuesday 3rd March 2009

Just a brief note to re-iterate the fact that I'm away in Edinburgh and then York until Thursday afternoon, at which point I'll be Now Showing until late Thursday evening...  While it's not outwith the bounds of possibility that I'll find some way of accessing a computer between now and then, nor is it outwith the bounds of etc. that I WON'T find a way.  As such it may be a few days before I post here again, for which contingency putative apologies in advance.

The Twitterers among you may take some comfort from the fact that I can still "tweet" using my phone (but not, I find, send or reply to @-messages or DMs, annoyingly enough) so I should still turn up on Twitter from time to time.

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stones and rock

Monday 2nd March 2009

According to my new digital über-scales I am 21 st 5, which according to my Mum's digital über-scales means I've lost two pounds this week, so that's good, I think.

Meanwhile good ol' Justin Hawkins is back with his new not-quite-comedy metal outfit Hot Leg, as wilfully silly as ever.  I like that fact that this song ("Cocktails")  is precisely as rude as you choose to interpret it as being...

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do not disturb

Monday 2nd March 2009

Tomorrow is going to be a cloister-day. 

I'm away from Tuesday morning until Thursday afternoon, gigging first at Edinburgh University (my old uni - should be interesting) and then in York on the way back south.  This would be onerous enough except for the fact that The Now Show begins recording again on Thursday evening.  So basically I need to do at least the bulk of my writing for this week's show by tomorrow night.

I've been trying to get some of it done over the weekend but it hasn't been happening, for one reason or another.  I've got the backing track done for one song and a couple of ideas for the other two, but there's still a hell of a lot needs doing.  As such I've given notice that tomorrow (well, today now) I'm getting up, weighing myself (it's Monday), then I'm into my office, closing the door and I'm not coming out until it's all done.  I've told Clara that if the house catches fire or if one or both of the kids turns blue, she can knock on the door, but otherwise I'm Not In.

If you're a Twitterer, you can do your bit to help me by, if you see me on Twitter, telling me to stop Twittering and get on with my work.

It's odd; on the one hand we're all railing against the "Surveillance Society" and signing petitions against ID cards; on the other hand we're all voluntarily joining networking sites which make it possible for anyone to trace our movements and activities at all times...

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