Tag: Blogshambles

From the desk of Laurence Havelock, bon viveur and inventor of several cuts of trouser

Friends, family, fans and others,

You’ll be pleased to know that Paddy and I have slightly moved ourselves from our resounding arse-sitting position and have actually bloody recorded some stuff for Podshambles, due to lap up against your ears like the shore of a gentle lake or the tongue of a randy dog in the coming weeks. To make sure you can get the whole series of updates (YEAH THAT’S RIGHT, MORE THAN ONE), make sure you subscribe on iTunes here or make sure your reader is updated with our podcast RSS feed.

So please, rest assured that we are actually bloody doing something and will have lots of stuff for you soon. Promise.

Paddy and I have both been pretty bloody busy. Well, maybe he has had more reason to, after being at the centre of a bloody news storm, even getting blogged about by Stewart ‘Comedy Vehicle’ Lee on the Guardian. In between meeting his publicist for machiattos, getting outrageous new hairstyles and publicly lambasting political parties, he’s also organising a tour of the country which you should definitely look at – if only there was somewhere you could get tickets.

As for me, well, it’s all been looking up. After my second-hand speedboat company went under – a small incident involving a family of belligerent seagulls claiming that after their aunty Josephine was caught in a particularly violent turbine engine meant that we were sued for several million pounds – I tried my hand at vaudeville dance, but was quickly found out for being far more of a rag-time kinda guy (a completely humiliating experience, I tell you).

Anyway, after the lengthy court proceedings, I eventually made my way to Bremen, with the sole intention of becoming the world’s leading kitchen and BBQ tongs entrepreneur. I met up along the way with a sardonic gannet called Henrik, a tax collector from Coventry named Beryl O’Monkeys, and my own lingering sense of self-doubt. Together, we crossed the mighty autobahns of south-western Germany, overcoming the grim wardens of many roadside service stations and protecting our sacred burden, The Galvanised Sausage-Switchers of Morrison’s, the most fantastic set of tongs we’d ever laid our eyes upon.

In the end, though Beryl O’Monkeys ended up being a sleeper agent for the wicked Lord Armpit, king of the Orang-Utans and the opposite of an all-round swell guy. After many moons of fighting, our precious Sausage-Switchers were wrenched from my possession and brave, brave Henrik fell. And died. As did my lingering sense of self-doubt.

Anyway, the long and the short of it is that I’ve got a lot more time on my hands, especially if my self-basting turkey idea takes off. In the mean time, if you’re in the UK make sure you continue squeezing every last ounce of good out of this lovely weather, if you’re abroad then celebrate our good fortune with a traditional British jellied eel, and have a listen to this while you do. Good evenday!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mlrXFk6RjDk

We hope you like the picture. It is of us aged about 16 when we were carefree young overambitious little ‘uns.

Here we go.

It’s the wee hours of Saturday morning. A buzzard floats aggressively past the window, the distant moan of a capsizing boat ululates across the dense expanse of London, an eagle is born somewhere – and all alone in a little wooden (not wooden) house (flat) two chimps sit wrestling over the final Salt ‘n’ Vinegar chipstick. We are those chimps. Those chimps have just realised they have a small amount of free time tomorrow afternoon. They know what they must do.

Commence.

The metaphor is clearly self-explanatory but JUST IN CASE FOR THE SLOW ONES Laurie and I will be starting actual work on Podshambles Season 2 tomorrow. Actual actual work. Like hosting sites, ideas, new music, perhaps even a little warm-up recording. It’s been two months now since the built-in microphone of my laptop had to deal with us but soon that absence will come to an end. Although technically it will continue, as we have an ACTUAL MICROPHONE now. That’s damn fucking right. It’s still only one mic – we’re not ready for this dual audio stereo two-mic caper that the big dogs use. It will still basically be the two of us sat in the same place as always, but this time with a high-quality microphone (oddly shaped like a sort of…chrome…bollock) sat in between us. BOY ARE WE STOKED. We’re genuinely stoked. I haven’t got to use that word in a while but now I’m doing it and don’t you try and stop me you toadbastard you.

You’ve all been very patient, and that’s marvellous and hugely appreciated. Podshambles will be back soon, and with it will come storms and plague and naughty prophets. Or similar. Does anyone have anything in particular they would like to see in Season 2? Or something they wouldn’t like to see? Or hear, perhaps more appropriately? Or actually see, perhaps also appropriately (lolyoutubechannelcomingsoontoolol)? Or is everyone happy to basically just let us do whatever we want again? Do tweet or email us, you know all of this by now but just to reiterate it’s @podshambles on twitter, or podshambles@gmail.com. Wow I haven’t written those in a while. This is going to be seriously fucking fun.

Oh also has anyone read Among Thieves by Douglas Hulick? And if so is it good and should I read it? Sorry that’s an aside.

Here is a sequence of hastily constructed haiku to make this post have haiku in it.

Is haiku plural?
Or was that my first mistake?
I sure love haiku(s).

A penguin shits ice
Literally everywhere
Poor penguin, cold arse.

Laurie is asleep
Little does he know, I’m there
Trimming his beard.

HOw mAny DuCKS noW?!
ThaT IS FAr tOo MANY ducKS!!
throW AwAY the DucKs.

I’m ending this blog
Right here, right now, with this:
Podshambles cometh.

So as you will (or won’t) have noticed (or not noticed), I have been absent from the internet and life for at least a week. I was struck down with a terrible illness known in the medical community as ‘fucked’, which left me dilapidated and at best, awful. But hooray – I have re-emerged from my cocoon of telekinetic energy (a reference to the worst line in X-Men: The Last Stand, and possibly the worst explanation ever given for anything in the history of shit explanations) a new man. Due to the nature of that long section of parentheses, that whole ‘a new man’ bit may confuse you (as it did me), as it had literally been ages since I started that sentence. To reiterate – I have re-emerged from my cocoon of telekinetic energy (CoTE for short) a new man. I sort of did it again there, further confusing things. Basically I’m fine.

Laurie was going to do loads of Blogshambles posts whilst I was fucked in the CoTE, but he didn’t. He has a pretty good reason though, as he totally caught whatever I had because we share food and baths and long walks on the beach and the soft crunch of autumn leaves underfoot as we frolic through the avenues of our mind/London. Laurie went a bright shade of red for about seventy hours, and I became antisocial and afraid of light – a terrible combination I will assure you. I also had to cancel everything so am now very behind on existing. Which is annoying. Laurie is also mending – do not panic geese.

So what else is there. Um.

Oh! The official release/press and PR whatnot push is on Monday but I might as well tell you now that my comedy band Jonny & The Baptists have just released our new single and music video! It’s called UKIP. I will post a link imminently:

There you go. For those of you who don’t know (and why would you) Jonny & The Baptists is the thing I spend 95% of my time doing with the marvellous Jonny Donahoe. Do check it out if you haven’t already at www.jonnyandthebaptists.co.uk. Laurie gigs with us sometimes on the big-violin or smaller version of a baritone saxophone. Also we really need to Stop UKIP so…get involved.

What else what else what else…eurgh sorry I’ve become a bit slow over the past week. What I HAVE been doing is reading a lot of graphic novels, primarily Fables, From Hell, and The Unwritten. I will explain:

Fables is a phenomenally brilliant ongoing graphic novel (final issue ETA 2015 I think?) by Bill Willingham about all the fairytales and fables being forced out of their kingdoms and setting up camp in New York. It sounds odd but is just stunning, beautifully written and well worth all of the time you have.

Likewise From Hell. Ignore everything you know about Jack the Ripper or the From Hell movie because this is so much better than both of those things. Written by Alan Moore and artist Eddie Campbell, this is something really special. It’s much grittier in it’s premise and design than Fables, and the artwork totally reflects that, but it will suck you in and take over your life (until it ends – which it will because it’s just one big book and then you’re done). Buy that. Or borrow it. You can borrow mine if you live right near me and know me already and it isn’t weird.

Finally The Unwritten – by Mark Carey with art by Peter Gross. I think this really is the best of the bunch (at least so far). I don’t even want to tell you anything about it because it is so mind-blowing and so hard to explain. It’s the story of stories. I genuinely urge you to go and get a copy of it. Buy Volume 1 (5 issues, about a tenner?) and see what you think because it’s a real game-changer for me.

So yes. That is that. I’m working early tomorrow so must to bed, but here is me getting the Blogshambles back on course. Havelock will be joining us shortly and helping me make the rest of the website work because I’ve somehow made it not work as it should. Joy joy.

Big love xx

I’ve been forcing myself to finish some video games recently. I guess everyone has those games that they got excited about and went out and queued and bought and read the manual on the bus and got home and then played it for like 90 hours straight until every single little thing that it was possible to do in the game was done and then you sit back and smile and go ‘that was hands-down the best 90 hours of my entire life‘ but there are also…others. These are the games that I waited in anticipation for and really really loved playing but through some distraction or another eventually fell by the wayside, freeing up valuable hours for more loitering, capers, tomfoolery and cereal.

I had a look through my game collection and found an alarming amount of these and decided to do something about it. So in the past few weeks I’ve finally finished L.A Noire, Tomb Raider, Skyrim, Sam & Max: The Devil’s Playhouse and Puzzle Agent (1 & 2) – and it was definitely a good call. I was at endgame for all of these (or at most a few hours from it) and within minutes of loading each of my save files I couldn’t believe I had put the game down in the first place. I think once ‘the end’ seems near I just panic because I don’t want the game to end, and I know future-me will relish in rediscovering it so I give myself some kind of meta-time-future-gift by convincing myself I have other things to do and consequently leaving the game for anything from a few weeks to years and years.

I’ve now finished all those games and they were ace. L.A Noire was beautifully concluded, Tomb Raider showed she could totally raid tombs, the Puzzle Agent series was a lovely human simple delight, Sam & Max was everything I wanted it to be and more, and finally I actually experienced the main quest on Skyrim (having put about 200 hours into it solely doing side quests and exploring). I feel bloody great.

I don’t really know why I’m writing this, but I just found it really interesting that every time I tried to pick them back up over the past year something in my head said ‘Nah that game wasn’t all that – you don’t wanna play that right now, you’ll finish it one day’ and it took me physically MAKING myself play them to unlock that little part of my brain that adored them. Real weird. Everyone get those games by the way (you probably already have them).

With those off my plate it has freed me up to play Assassin’s Creed: Black Flag on Laurie’s PS4 and it’s amazing. I love it. However that could partially be me just getting excited about next-gen. Are we still calling it next-gen? Is it now current-gen? Please advise.

After that Laurie has bought me Red Dead Redemption and is insisting I play it start to finish as soon as possible. I’m fucking excited because it’s one of those games that just passed me by despite somehow ALL MY FRIENDS playing it and talking about it constantly for like two years. I want to be ready. Might have to finish Bioshock Infinite or XCOM: Enemy Unknown before I allow myself to become further involved in yet another (probably) astounding game.

Wow that was all a bit specific and serious. I feel like I need to do something to offset it.

THE FANTABULOUS TALE OF GREGORY FUCK-PIPE

Gregory Fuck-Pipe was on his way home from the shops where he had been buying meat and KEVLAR. ‘What a lovely day!’ crumped Gregory, shitting himself once again. It was at that very moment Gregory ran into Flint Steel, the renegade vigilante. ‘Flint! Over here!’ excrumped Gregory, waving enthusiastically at Flint. But Flint paid him no mind. ‘Flint! Hey! FLINT! FLINT STEEL! FLINT! HEY!‘ Gregory crumptinued, to no avail. Flint just didn’t seem to notice. In fact…Flint didn’t seem to notice anything at all. Flint seemed almost shimmery, as if he was fading. Everything was fading. The canvas of Gregory Fuck-Pipe’s world melted away, drifting into deluge as he came to the stark realisation that there was no Flint. There never had been. Little did Gregory Fuck-Pipe know that he went through this every day. Flint was just a construct created in his own head, a catalytic cipher that Gregory Fuck-Pipe used to cope with the loss of his most treasured possession – his fuck-pipe. And mortgage.

Crumping isn’t even a thing.

Sleep well.

Big love xx

He’s found us out. The eye of Lauron has seen us and is totally on to us – it was only a matter of time.

So Mr Laurie Havelock* himself has found out about the Blogshambles and is now going to be severely involved**. He approached me this very afternoon, wringing his hands and walking around like David Suchet*** as he went through every meticulous detail of how he came to the conclusion I was the culprit. It was inspiring, impressively deductive and phenomenally extraordinary****. I was truly impressed*****.

The Blogshambles will soon have the voice of Laurie in it’s midst – I hope you are prepared. His words are like risotto: slowly cooked, oozing with parmesan and Italian. Please welcome him as you would a risotto.

I’ve been working on some comics. They will eventually be up on the site for all to see but I need to a. think of a name for them, 2. buy a scanner, and D. make sure they are actually funny. I should have all nine of these tasks finished within the next few weeks so keep an eye out for that. Also what does everyone think of the new site? Coming along nicely, eh? Laurie is the real computer-ferret so he’s going to make it better/actually work as if you look hard enough you will notice I’m really not very good at doing websites. I am also bad at:
– Sitting still.
– Raw tomatoes.
– Using lists sparingly.
– Not doing impressions of my father to people who have never met my father.
– Whisking.
– Kneading.
– Baking.
– Keeping boats the correct way up.
– Anything fragile.
– Correctly identifying certain types of cutlery.
– Quick-fire Haikus.

I’ve eaten far too many Jolly Ranchers and played far too much Vid Dev Tycoon tonight (THANKS TO A CERTAIN LAURIE) and now I must recharge my small but semi-reliable engines in my small but semi-reliable bed. Which is actually fairly large. And never fails to be a bed. It’s basically the opposite of what I described it as. Oh and it is also red.

I wonder if I should sign this off as Paddy? After all, the next one may be from not-Paddy.

Sleep well,

Gregory xx

* Laurie from Podshambles.
** He’s made no promises.
*** David Suchet as Poirot in popular television show ‘Poirot’, as opposed to David Suchet as Sir Nigel Fountain in TV Mini-Series ‘Hidden’.
**** It was actually a very short and simple process with a tremendously small amount of exposition.
***** Exaggeration.

Need a loan? Also ham?

LoanHam.

But enough of this idle badinage!

Hello – above is an idea that I will one day fit into the podcast but as of yet have not been allowed to as it is very weak and doesn’t really have any content or coherent sense embedded inside it.

But enough of this idle badinage! Again.

It has now been three days and Laurie hasn’t noticed yet. He’ll see – THEY’LL ALL SEE. I’m going to add an artwork page to the site soon. Basically you guys have sent us some amazing stuff (I’m looking at you [name of someone who is omfgerrific]!) and I want everyone to see it outside of us just posting it on twitter (ehem @podshambles) or facebook (ehem the facebook equivalent of @podshambles) because they are shitting brilliant. We’ve got a bunch of postal salmons, a few flagons and even a little menagerie of Laurie & Paddy pictures. They are beautiful. I’d like everyone to know that these pictures get printed (in an internet café – we don’t own a printer but I really wish we did because they are now relatively essential) and get put up on our Shamblewall* where we treasure them daily. Please keep sending stuff as it validates us as people. And they are pretty cool too.

Everyone should read all of these books right now:
– All of A Song of Ice and Fire by George R.R. Martin (I know it seems cliché but seriously get on it right away because genuinely do it now).
– All of Joe Abercrombie’s books (The First Law series, Best Served Cold, The Heroes and Red Country).
– The Braided Path by Chris Wooding (currently reading this and it’s fucking great).
– Everything by Scott Lynch in The Gentlemen Bastard Sequence (so far that’s The Lies of Locke Lamora, Red Seas Under Red Skies and The Republic of Thieves in that order – all brilliant).
– Anything you can find by Patrick Rothfuss (The Name of the Wind and The Wise Man’s Fear).
– The Mistborn series by Brandon Sanderson. Also start reading his new series The Stormlight Archive – he’s only just started it but they are awesome).
– The graphic novel series Unwritten by Mark Carey and Peter Gross (I’ve just got into this and am gutted I didn’t get into it sooner).

Also listen to all of these things:
– ‘Immortality‘ by Pearl Jam (try and find a live version – trust me).
– ‘Rhinoceros‘ by Smashing Pumpkins.
– ‘Winter Coat‘ by The Martin Harley Band.
– ‘Sleeping In‘ by Postal Service.
– ‘Out of the Woods‘ by Foals.
– ‘Rooster‘ by Alice In Chains.
– ‘Not the Same‘ by Ben Folds (once again – find the live version with the West Australian Symphony Orchestra).
– ‘Loro‘ by Pinback.
– ‘Farewell to Welfare‘ by Grace Petrie.
– ‘Peace and Quiet‘ by Barry Cryer and Ronnie Golden.

I’m done ordering you around now, however do read/ear-read (a better way of saying ‘listen to’) all of those things.

I just found a pack of Jolly Ranchers in my desk. This is the best 4.07am EVER! Laurie and I shared a bottle of port** this evening (fancy I know – he treats me right) and Jolly Ranchers are exactly the right thing to consume after fortified wine – we all know this. I’m also teaching a guitar lesson tomorrow, so should probably go to bed. On that note: if anyone wants guitar lessons in London, email us on podshambles@gmail.com and I’ll happily teach you. Seriously. Like actually seriously. For an additional fee I will teach 1/3 of the lesson as popular Podshambles character ‘Engine-Room Phil: The character who just won’t die’.

I feel super awesome that my desk is a map of Skyrim stretched over a bit of wood. I’m also relatively pleased with myself that I am sticking to actually doing this internet writing malarkey (Blogshambles?) and I hope you are all enjoying it/not hating it/are not on fire and that it’s keeping your senses busy whilst we do all the groundwork for Podshambles Season 2 and the upcoming YouTube channel ThisIsAShambles. There’s a lot of work to do, and unfortunately two severely under-qualified people attempting to do it.

I’m sure Laurie will also write things on this when he realises it’s happening. He’s much better with words (he has a DEGREE in ENGLISH from CARDIFF UNIVERSITY – WHO FUCKING KNEW?!) and I’m sure will give you everything you could ever want in a text-based format.

Oh we’re also going to start a Shambles Family page that links you to everyone who we love, idolise, cherish and work with to bring you content and fun. These ladies and gentlemen are all brilliant people who are going to have a bit more of an active involvement in The Shambles in the near future – stuff outside the podcast like comics, design, artwork, videos, editing, support and most of all love. Keep an eye out for that – there’s going to be a lot of names contributing to The Shambles. Thanks guys – you fucking rule.

Just remembered – if you are looking for some other podcasts to quench your audio-thirst (?) during this Podshambles drought do check these out (YES IT’S ANOTHER FUCKING LIST DEAL WITH IT):
– The YogPod. These guys are huge influences on us, and their content played a big part in bringing Laurie and I together to do Podshambles. They are just phenomenal – genuinely
– Adam & Joe (XFM & BBC 6 Music Podcasts). What can I say – they’re Adam & Joe. You must have already listened to them. If you haven’t, you should have and you should feel bad.
– Peacock & Gamble. Two of my friends from the comedy circuit who have pieced together possibly the funniest podcast on iTunes. They are heroes.
– Gods of Comedy. An amazing podcast that looks into the everything and everything of comedians. Wonderfully produced by our good friend Liam Welton.
– Critical Hit. It’s the best Dungeons & Dragons podcast out there, and this is what I’m currently listening to. There are shitting hundreds of episodes and each one is a bloody gem. Get into D&D now. Just do it.

I think I have run out of fuel and jokes. I am to sleep. Thanks for reading – do twitter/email/facebook us if you like us doing this because then I’ll keep doing it and everyone’s happy. JOYJOY.

Big love xx

* a normal wall.

** this does not make us seventy years old or racist.

(Awesome Postal Salmon picture courtesy of Ross James – thanks man!)