“The Beef of the Three Sausages” – a new original story by 11-year-old Lily

Back in December 2020, there was a review posted in this blog of a new movie based on the traditional pantomime Jack and the Beanstalk. It was written by Lily, the then 9-year-old daughter of writer-performer hyphenate Ariane Sherine.

The multi-talented Lily, now 11-years-old, has been writing fiction since then and this is her latest piece:

THE BEEF OF THE THREE SAUSAGES

Once upon a time, there were three sausages: the planet-loving vegan, the intelligent pork, and the beef, who would rave about the strength of cows but was not too strong himself – especially emotionally. 

Every day, the plant-based sausage would brag, “We are simply SO good for the climate! If the whole human population ate only us then the world would never need to fear for the well-being of our planet!” 

And the pork sausage, pig-like as ever, would boast, “Us pigs and boars are the brainiest of the lot – and I’m not telling a porky!” And then laugh at his own ever-so-smart witticism.

As much as the beef sausage attempted to prove that he, and indeed all cows, was equally as remarkable as the other two, all he could manage was a feeble, “We are very strong!” This only earned him guffaws and taunting, and him being a gentle soul, it was simply too much for him to cope with. 

Too much for him to cope with in many senses – for the other two bangers went so much further than calling him a cow. They would hit him with sharp utensils, typically a fork, but one day, it was a knife that hit his flesh. 

It was plunged in by the vegan, who felt no guilt about this whatsoever – despite how strongly he felt about the fossil fuels entering the atmosphere, the beef sausage’s soul leaving the planet did not weigh him down at all. 

A week passed, and suddenly he found that he would start to absent-mindedly pluck the leaves from hedges he walked by, and was even about to order a taxi without specifically asking  for an electric one! But of course, he paid little notice to this – simply intrusive thoughts. 

Perhaps, though, a little more peculiar, was that the pork sausage would continuously somehow get the simplest of equations drastically wrong! When he would ask to be ‘tested’ on his maths (which was only a request for compliments in truth) the vegan sausage would roll his eyes and  say drolly, “55 x 4.” And the pork would reply, “215!” 

Additionally, he began to question famous theories, like finding fault in one of the numbers in the Fibonacci Sequence. Of course, he paid little notice to this – for the sharpest minds would often have intrusive thoughts, and it was simply a sign of creativity, surely. 

But a month later, the vegan would pull up plants, do crazy protests that climate change was a pack of lies, think thoughts that they should buy a diesel car. The most peculiar thing was that he had the strongest feeling that these thoughts were not truly his, as if he was a puppet with dictated beliefs. 

Similarly, the pig would forget his times tables, put down its own species and almost WORSHIP cows, as much as the vegan would lead protests about the ‘dangerous fantasies’ scientists were enforcing into people’s minds. Both felt like they were somehow being controlled. 

It was only when the trees became beef sausages and the pigs suddenly died that they realised they were being haunted by the cow they’d killed. 

And such mental anguish was felt by the vegan sausage, who had committed the crime, that they burnt away the world they had tried so hard to save just 6 weeks ago.

THE END

Comedy clubber Martin Besserman on Greta Thunberg, drugs, dead animals…

Martin Besserman runs the long-established Monkey Business Comedy Club in London. He has decided to give profits from four of his shows to a charity…

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MARTIN: Everyone knows about the bush fires in Australia – it’s been a bit deflected by other news stories like Donald Trump and the potentiality of World War III, but…

JOHN: Yes, I mean, the smoke from Australia has reached down to New Zealand – That’s about 1,500 miles away!

MARTIN: I have a sister who lives in Australia, so I hear about it first hand. It’s an absolute catastrophe. The fires are burning out of control. Many animals are seriously injured, burnt. Not just kangaroos and koala bears: all the other wildlife and birds too. It’s on such a huge level it’s going to be very challenging to recover from that. With global warming, there could be this issue every single year now.

“Young people can sometimes be more perceptive”

I think it’s the responsibility of every individual to try whatever they can to help defenceless animals. Greta Thunberg is absolutely right; I think she’s an incredible young lady. Some very articulate, persuasive people have tried to trivialise her arguments – to bully her and suggest that she should be a ‘happy’ girl. But this is all fake because she’s a thinker. I think young people can sometimes be more perceptive getting it right, whereas many of the older generation have got their comforts and a lot of their behaviour is selfish.

As she points out, economic growth is not sustainable. There should be another system where we are not competing with each other.

JOHN: Why is economic growth not sustainable?

MARTIN: Because of the result of continuing to dry up our resources. We are seeing it now with, for example, the meat industry. It’s not sustainable because all those animals create so much pollution in addition to the cruelty aspect. There’s the issue of the animals being injected with antibiotics in the industrial meat industry now. That’s the reason why people are becoming immune to antibiotics and getting very sick.

JOHN: That doesn’t affect economic being sustainable or not though, does it?

MARTIN: Well, a limited amount of economic growth is healthy. But the way it’s going on, obviously, is not. We are seeing catastrophes all over the world. Floods and fires. We can’t continue like this. We rely, for example on Bangladeshi workers but, inevitably, Bangladesh might not operate with the way things are going. It’s a flat country and they have many natural disasters.

The rain in Bangladesh stays mainly where it falls…

JOHN: Well, Bangladesh is a terrible place to have a country. You look at it on a map and it’s basically a delta. When I landed at Dacca Airport, I thought the whole area had been hit by terrible floods – all the fields were flooded and there was water lapping the edge of the runway – but I was told this was normal!

Surely you can’t stop economic growth?

The Chinese are never going to sign up for that.

MARTIN: Well, yes, the Chinese don’t care and Australia, in fact, is one of the largest polluters in the world.

JOHN: All that matters is how China and India develop.

MARTIN: But unless we actually stop to digest what’s going on and consider having less ‘stuff’ in our life – less stuff connected with capitalism and things we don’t really need, especially plastics – we will suffer in the end and we are already seeing it. These are the very early stages of what could be a world catastrophe and it will be a lot more expensive to put it right in the future than to put things right now.

JOHN: But try telling that to the poor in China and India.

MARTIN: That’s obviously very, very hard, especially when you’ve got somebody like Trump in power. Because nobody really rules the world, do they? But, coming back to the issues in Australia…

“The New Year’s Eve fireworks display was costing £3 million”

I’m a huge animal lover, as you know. I was furious when I heard the New Year’s Eve fireworks display in Sydney was costing £3 million – for 30 minutes of excitement and fun!

I personally think all fireworks should be banned all over the world. A lot of animals are very frightened of the noise and really do suffer. It’s very selfish. Man just does not care. It’s something I could never condone. £3 million could have been used to fight the fires or assist more animals.

JOHN: But, in reality, it wouldn’t have been, would it?

MARTIN: Well, you can never tell if money is going to go to the right cause. It does require a bit of research. That’s why, before making this decision to donate 100% of these Monkey Business gigs’ profits, I looked into reputable organisations and several people, including my sister, recommended Wires, an animal help organisation in Australia who are going round rescuing and treating animals. They’re very active, reputable and totally dedicated.

JOHN: Which are the shows that are raising money?

MARTIN: Last Saturday’s, tomorrow’s (Thursday) which is a new act night, Friday which is a cabaret night and Saturday which has big names. 100% of all profits will go to Wires.

JOHN: Surely suffering people should get precedence over animals?

Martin Besserman was down the market

MARTIN: I don’t buy that argument. I’m disillusioned with people.

JOHN: Human beings have been a great disappointment to me.

MARTIN: There are nice people. But there are many not-nice people. With animals… Some people say: “Well, animals eat other animals”. But they only do it for survival and that does not include all animals. The reality is that animals have benefitted Man in many many ways. Dogs and cats are now taken to hospitals to be with people who are terminally ill. Dogs help the blind; they can sniff out cancers; I think we underestimate their value. They give life some meaning and it’s important we don’t only think of ourselves.

JOHN: So you would donate to an animal charity, but you would not give money to cancer research for humans…?

MARTIN: No, no. Definitely not. Some cancer research involves torturing animals. I could never condone that.

JOHN: But if you don’t try out the cures on animals, then you might release drugs that might damage human beings.

MARTIN: I don’t buy that argument at all. There are many good alternatives. Why not use volunteers from prisons if they are prepared to volunteer for shorter sentences?

JOHN: Thalidomide happened because it wasn’t tested enough.

Martin Besserman – armed with good food

MARTIN: It might also have happened because it WAS tested and we are quite different from a mouse. So I don’t buy that argument. And the vast majority of drugs are not very effective. There is a huge debate, for example, about statins. I’m of the opinion they are not good for people, having done my research. Many people have muscular problems as a result of taking them.

All of this is to keep the pharmaceutical companies happy and rich as opposed to treating people comprehensibly.

JOHN: I’m always a bit unsettled we are said to be so close to rats.

MARTIN: We are definitely closer to pigs. Apparently, we have the same digestive system.

JOHN: Pigs have a bad rep. Apparently they are very intelligent and, left to their own devices, are very clean.

MARTIN: Yeah.

JOHN: The trouble is they taste so good. I have no moral defence about eating meat. You are a vegetarian?

Greggs’ now has meatless steaks

MARTIN: A vegetarian – almost vegan. In the UK, people are increasingly deserting meat-eating.

JOHN: When I was a kid, if you went past a butcher’s shop, they would have half an opened, gutted-out pig hanging up. That would cause offence now.

MARTIN: I remember years ago, when I worked in the market, there were dead rabbits hanging in the window and it really did upset the children.

JOHN: When did you stop eating meat? Was there a Road to Damascus, if that’s the right phrase?

MARTIN: I just realised it was not morally defensible.

JOHN: So you went vegetarian for moral not health reasons?

MARTIN: Yes, though the health benefits are…

JOHN: I had a friend who went into Canton free market in China in the 1980s. She went in a meat eater and came out a vegetarian. She said it was the owls that did it. The pussy cats too. But the owls in cages staring at her with their big eyes, waiting to be killed.

MARTIN: Yes, I think anyone thinking about giving up meat should certainly visit a slaughter yard.

JOHN: I have no moral defence at all. So what WAS your turning point?

MARTIN: I just worked it out. I thought about it.

JOHN: I’m sure, in 20 or 50 years time, the idea of eating meat or even seeing dead animal meat displayed in shops will seem stomach-churning.

Pret a Manger introduced a vegan croissant

MARTIN: Some people say we will be embarrassed that we ever engaged in meat-eating. Whether that will happen in China or not, I don’t know. But certainly in Europe I think we are becoming more and more concerned.

JOHN: In the 1960s, vegetarians were seen as freaks. And more recently – maybe the early 2000s – vegetarians were seen as OK but vegans were seen as freaks. And now vegans are becoming mainstream.

MARTIN: Absolutely. The world is changing and it has to change.

Donald Trump’s message to the world on climate change… and my bad back

My spine got damaged in 1991. I got hit by a large articulated truck. It has never mended properly. My spine, not the large articulated truck. I think the truck survived unscathed.

Occasionally, though thankfully rarely, if I twist or bend slightly oddly, my bones go out of alignment at the bottom of my spine (I think that’s what happens) and I have to sleep on the floor for three nights which, somehow, sorts the problem out.

It is Saturday morning now. The bones went out of alignment on Monday morning and I am still moving slowly around inside my house with the aid of two walking sticks and a stick which picks things up off the floor or low-lying surfaces. Every now and then it feels like an anarchic invisible presence stabs a long sharp sword into my back at the bottom of the spine..

I am seeing a new osteopath later this morning. I discovered on Wednesday that the excellent osteopath I have gone to since maybe 1992 died two years ago. So it goes. It gave me quite an unexpected shock. You don’t expect healthy medical people to die before you. Certainly not osteopaths. I mean, he was a strong man.

But back to me… and my back.

I also have a cough. Not the normal and – I’m told – very annoying dry cough which I have had since my early twenties and which I inherited from my father who had it throughout his known life. This is a dry, hacking cough given to me a couple of weeks ago by an eight-year-old who, in all other respects, is entirely amiable.

So, every now and then, I suddenly get slight coughing fits which result in what feels like 10-15 rapid atomic explosions at the bottom of my spine with the pain then zooming out in all directions.

What I am trying to say is that, although I have been sleeping a lot, I have been occasionally waking up unexpectedly. And I had a dream. It is 5.00am in the morning as I write this. I woke up unexpectedly, in the middle of a dream.

Yesterday, there were worldwide protests about climate change.

I had a dream about President Trump. Never a good thing. It woke me up. He was speaking about climate change. His speech went something like this. Truly. Would I lie to you?

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The whole Global Warming thing is #FakeNews – Did you see that footage of the big winds in the Caribbean recently? Big winds. Cold. Wet. Big winds. Not hot weather! What are those guys in the Bahamas even thinking about? Build your houses of brick! Have they never read The Three Little Pigs? Dumb.

Global Warming is #FakeNews started by #BadHilary to hide her crimes and made worse by #BadObama’s policies. But I saw a Fox TV program on rising ocean levels last night. Those Fox guys are great. Great. And rising sea levels is real. It’s all real. Really real. And dangerous.

Rising sea levels will affect important US infrastructures – oil installations, golf courses and historic national sites like Mar-a-Lago in Florida

But it’s easy to fix, right? I figured out how this morning over breakfast. I have time for breakfast, right? Right. And no-one else has thought of this.

My people told me about a Wikipedia news report on this Greek guy called Archie Meads. Hundreds of years ago. People have forgotten him. But I rediscovered him. He was a stable genius. It takes one to know one, right? 

And Archie Meads had this idea. If you take something out of water, the water fills the space where you’ve taken out the object. Right? Obvious. But people have forgotten that. I figured it out again.

So the fastest, quickest, simplest way – it’s quick and simple, right? – is to kill all the whales in the oceans. Take them out and  that will create all these big, big gaps. And the water will rush in to fill the gaps. It’s pure science. And the ocean levels will get lower.

I have asked the guys at the Pentagon to work out a plan to do this as quickly as possible.

Kill the whales and keep America great. And safe. And dry.

It’s simple.

Comic Laura Lexx – a comedian/writer who could be on the cusp of success…

The last time comic writer and performer Laura Lexx was in this blog was back in July 2015 when she was about to stage her first solo Edinburgh Fringe show.

Laura Lexx, when last espied in this blog in 2015…

This week, she will be starting the run of her fourth solo Fringe show Knee Jerk at the Gilded Balloon venue.

I think her career turned an important corner with her appearance on BBC TV’s Live at the Apollo show last Christmas. So I asked her about it.

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“London is probably the place I gig least” (Photograph by Karla Gowlett)

JOHN: Success is strange in comedy…

LAURA: Yes, it’s weird. You look at someone and think: Well, they seem to be doing very well, yet no-one’s ever heard of them. But they’re doing a 110-date UK tour, so people HAVE heard of them, yet TV isn’t… it isn’t doing… Well we still have TV held up as ‘the thing’ and actually maybe it isn’t ‘the thing’ any more.

JOHN: People say the live comedy ‘circuit’ is dying.

LAURA: Shut up! No it isn’t! I gig six nights a week quite happily all round the country – there are loads of gigs everywhere; there just aren’t the big chains of gigs (like Jongleurs) any more. You have to know lots of individuals and get on with it. London is probably the place I gig least.

JOHN: Really? Why?

LAURA: It pays absolute dogshit. Apart from the Comedy Store, I don’t think I know a single other London club that pays more than £200 a night.

JOHN: Whereas, if you play, say, up North…?

LAURA: Yeah… £250, £240, £220.

JOHN: With accommodation?

LAURA: Sometimes, yeah.

JOHN: Transport?

LAURA: Not usually.

JOHN: Your Live at the Apollo appearance must have got you loads of online hits and a higher profile.

LAURA: Kinda. It did. But I got way more general public interest and followers from doing Ouch on BBC Sounds because of my set on mental health.

JOHN: Why?

LAURA: I think because all the stuff I did on mental health and more niche topics at the Apollo recording got edited-out of the final cut. You do 20 minutes and they edit it down to around 8. What was left was a funny but mainstream thing which didn’t have much shareable viability online.

Whereas the stuff I did on Ouch about not having children and climate change and eco-anxiety did have shareability online and I picked up thousands of followers from that.

JOHN: So a niche subject actually got you greater hits than a mainstream TV show.

LAURA: Yeah. I guess cos there’s less of it and you’re maybe saying something people haven’t heard before.

JOHN: And, of course, on the Apollo show, all the niche stuff was quite reasonably edited out. It’s a mainstream show and…

Live at the Apollo – the Christmas Special show, 2018, with (L-R) Gary Delaney, Sarah Millican, Laura Lexx and Ahir Shah

LAURA: Why reasonably, though? It was just as funny as the other stuff. It just happened to be on the night Ahir Shah also had a joke about anti-depressants and you couldn’t really have two comedians on (LAUGHS) the Christmas Special going on about anti-depressants. Which is OK. That’s up to the producers. It was not like they were censoring talk on mental health. We just both happened to cover it.

JOHN: It’s a very mainstream programme.

LAURA: But depression is mainstream. Lots of people have depression, so why not talk about it?

JOHN: It’s a bit depressing.

LAURA: Not if you’re doing it in comedy.

JOHN: I think you are maybe at a turning point in your career.

LAURA: Well, most of the general public have no idea who I am, so I can turn up at a comedy club at a weekend and be ‘surprisingly’ good. But now people in the industry know who I am, so I can do the things I want to do more easily and get booked in the gigs I want to be booked on. And pitching ideas is much easier now… And I think I’ve learned to be cleverer with that.

JOHN: How does one get to be a successful pitcher?

LAURA: Well, I haven’t had any success yet but I think what I’ve learned is to go to the Edinburgh Fringe already having written the stuff that people are going to want off the back of my show.

“Feminism, innit, John. It’s huge” (Photograph by Karla Gowlett)

Every time you do an Edinburgh Fringe show in August, you sit down in meetings in September and they say: “Oh, we liked that theme. We would like an outline for a thing on that theme”… and, by the time you have written that outline, they have changed jobs and gone somewhere else.

JOHN: Whereas, this year…?

LAURA: I have a big set-piece about netball and I have already written a show about netball.

JOHN: Why netball?

LAURA: Feminism, innit, John… It’s huge at the moment.

JOHN: Is it?

LAURA: Yes. The Netball World Cup.

JOHN: How do you make a netball show funny?

LAURA: Anything can be funny. You just need a vehicle to add funny characters to. So why not a netball team?

JOHN: So you have that eternal ambition of comics: to eventually write a sitcom?

LAURA: I’ve already done it. I’ve written one; I’m starting my second one; and I’m pitching a couple of… I have one entertainment magazine show project that I think might be on the verge of being optioned. And another idea I’m really only at the research end of, which is… (DETAILS CENSORED IN CASE SOMEONE STEALS THE IDEA!). I also have an idea for a podcast…

JOHN: There’s no money in them…

LAURA: No, but they’re really good for exposure and then you sell off the back of it. Podcasts are a massive way to boost your popularity. My idea is… (IDEA CENSORED AGAIN, TO PROTECT IT!)

JOHN: There’s a lot of politics around at the moment: Brexit and all. You told me your new Fringe show Knee Jerk is a bit political.

Knee Jerk – Laura road-tested her new comedy show before its Fringe run at the Gilded Balloon

LAURA: I’m not trying to be political like the ins-and-outs of politicians; I’m trying to be political in terms of people’s behaviour to each other, which is what I’m interested in. The general premise of the show is I want to deal with climate change and I feel climate change should be our priority as a species and as a nation and it feels like we are at what is hopefully more a death rattle than a resurgence of a lot of divisive stuff between the general public.

JOHN: Doesn’t everyone agree climate change is a bad thing?

LAURA: But who’s dealing with it properly? If a human army was invading, we would have a million measures in place. Here, we’re vaguely going: “Oh, we’ve asked this company to maybe try and do this by 2028… if they can…” And then we fail on all the targets.

JOHN: You are odd in that you’re a good stand-up AND a good MC. They are often different mindsets.

LAURA: Well, I think they’re two different jobs and I quite like them both.

JOHN: There is that cliché of a punter saying to an MC after the gig has finished: “You should try doing stand-up comedy yourself.”

LAURA: Oh God! That happened all the time! That’s why I stopped MCing as much as I was. For a while, I was MCing for maybe 80% of my gigs. I just maybe got a bit frustrated by not being able to do my act. I had all these new bits of material I wanted to get out of the box and play with and, as an MC, I couldn’t really. So I pared it back a bit and now I’m a lot happier and I think I’m a better MC for not doing it all the time.

I like gigging and writing stuff. I’m a club comic that has smashed Edinburgh too. (LAUGHS) So give me my own television show, already!… I might have a sandwich now. Do you want a sandwich?

…Laura’s new 2019 Edinburgh Fringe show…