Charlie Chuck in Leicester last night
Yesterday, I drove up with a friend to see the first of Charlie Chuck’s two shows at the Leicester Comedy Festival. The Looking Glass venue was a bit like the Black Hole of Calcutta with laughs. The venue was filled to the brim.
Charlie Chuck is one of those comedians with a fan base that just goes on and on. I think it is because his first TV fame with James Whale and Reeves & Mortimer was among impoverished students who have grown up and now have the money to go out and see him live on stage.
Before he set off for the show, he cooked us one of his speciality spaghetti Bologneses. After the show, my friend and I scoured late night shops for a doughnut, a cream bun and a sliceable cake to share with him. Eventually, we got a cake and doughnuts filled with custard. Close enough.
He should be in the Celebrity Big Brother house. He can cook, he can hit annoying twats with his plank of wood and he could nurture ducks in the jacuzzi.
By the time I got home to Borehamwood, it was almost 4.00 am – just enough time to sleep, get up and listen to Janey Godley on Al Murray’s BBC Radio 5 Live show 7 Day Sunday where he introduced her as a “stand-up comedy actress and Groucho Club barfly”. Hardly a barfly, as she does not drink. They talked, among other things, about who should be the new England football manager.
Not mentioned on the programme was that, back in November 2009, when Scotland was looking for a manager and the press were semi-seriously touting Sean Connery for the post, Janey phoned up the Scottish Football Association and applied for the job
According to her blog at the time, she told them that she scored over Sean Connery “because I actually live in Scotland”. But her main qualifications, she argued to Scottish FA boss Gordon Smith, were that “I can order men about, I can actually play football and I am great at strategy – What’s not to like?”
“Do you have a valid coaching licence?” Gordon Smith asked her.
“No, but I do know ’Hologram’ Tam and he is the world’s best forger and he can get me one,” she told him.
The much-admired ‘Hologram’ Tam (I have a T-shirt) used to produce Janey’s Edinburgh Fringe posters before he was caught red-handed in his small Glasgow printshop which reportedly “had the ability to churn out £1 billion a year in fake cash”
Sadly, Janey’s football managing ambitions were dashed to much the same extent as ‘Hologram’ Tam’s hopes of grabbing as much money as the UK’s top bankers.
Ironically, Tam got a six year prison sentence for making money; but top bankers now get bonuses for losing money; and, with ‘quantitive easing’, the Bank of England is now in the business of printing funny money.
The Scottish FA accepted Janey’s application but foolishly never called her for interview.
I feel it was their loss.
SO IT GOES - John Fleming's blog 