Forsyth. For some reason, men in Glasgow seem to really relate to the adventures of doomed commercial pilots roped into a mercenary gun-drop by old army buddies. On the off-chance that you are reading this and an old army buddy has recently proposed something like this to you, he has money/woman problems and is planning a double-cross.
There were loads of books of old Scottish memoirs that I’d never have read if there was anything else, and I absolutely loved them. Molly Weir, who played Hazel the McWitch in Rentaghost , wrote some really interesting books about her life. Of course by the last one she seems to have gone mad in show business and spends the first chapter talking about buying a really big house and having it re-carpeted. Cliff Hanley I liked too. Those books really brought it home that for all the dullness of my life, it lacked what until then had been the defining characteristic of life for every other generation in that city: poverty.
It was around this time that I really got into the work of Noam Chomsky. He’s good at explaining where we are at and warning us about where we’re going. I always remember a thing in one of his books where he says that capitalism can’t have everything its own way because it will ‘create a hell that no rational person would want to live in’. Noam has never been on ScotRail, so doesn’t know that we are already there.
I got into Chomsky because I heard Bill Hicks talk about him in an interview. Bill Hicks is my favourite comedian and really was sort of a political thinker in his own way. It always amuses me to hear comedians say he’s an influence on them, because you never see any evidence of it. The people who say that are always the sort of guys who would shit balloon animals through a burning hoop if it got them doing a reaction show to I’m a Celebrity on ITV 9.
Another writer I follow is George Monbiot. He writes about climate change, the general political landscape of Britain and,eh, growing fruit. I think all his stuff is on www.monbiot.com and I’d recommend it. I’d even recommend the stuff about recondite fruit-growing knowledge. His work will lead to either a highly politicised fruit-growing lobby or revolutionaries who are really, really fussy about apples.
There was a really attractive assistant working at our library. She wore very short skirts and was really bad tempered, something which I’ve always liked. She was the first person I really masturbated about. There was one straight, married guy who worked in that library and it looked like her presence wore him down considerably. He drifted around with a grim look in his eye, sweating like he had malaria. Once I had a huge argument with her about an overdue book. When I got home I found that, during the course of the argument, I had ejaculated.
There was a big comedy-record collection there that I took out and taped everything. It was amazing to find that comedy didn’t have to be shit. Going from watching Jimmy Tarbuck doing old Irish gags on Live from Her Majesty’s to hearing classic Goon Show s or Peter Cook and Dudley Moore or a Billy album was a real shock. I suppose we all have this naÏve idea that the best stuff will find its way onto TV. That’s pretty much the opposite of the truth.
That was the start of wanting to be a comedy writer. I used to sit and write, imagining that one day I could get one of those jobs where everybody sat in a room drinking coffee and writing lines. I read Billy Liar and the stuff where he wanted to be a joke writer didn’t read like foolish daydreaming; it seemed a totallyrational aspiration to me. We got taught that book at school and everybody took his desire to get out of his home town and do something creative as naÏve idiocy. I thought that said quite a lot about Glasgow.
Most of the people I knew stayed on to do sixth form but Aiden and I went to Langside College for a year. It’s a place in Battlefield that I would heartily recommend if you
There were loads of books of old Scottish memoirs that I’d never have read if there was anything else, and I absolutely loved them. Molly Weir, who played Hazel the McWitch in Rentaghost , wrote some really interesting books about her life. Of course by the last one she seems to have gone mad in show business and spends the first chapter talking about buying a really big house and having it re-carpeted. Cliff Hanley I liked too. Those books really brought it home that for all the dullness of my life, it lacked what until then had been the defining characteristic of life for every other generation in that city: poverty.
It was around this time that I really got into the work of Noam Chomsky. He’s good at explaining where we are at and warning us about where we’re going. I always remember a thing in one of his books where he says that capitalism can’t have everything its own way because it will ‘create a hell that no rational person would want to live in’. Noam has never been on ScotRail, so doesn’t know that we are already there.
I got into Chomsky because I heard Bill Hicks talk about him in an interview. Bill Hicks is my favourite comedian and really was sort of a political thinker in his own way. It always amuses me to hear comedians say he’s an influence on them, because you never see any evidence of it. The people who say that are always the sort of guys who would shit balloon animals through a burning hoop if it got them doing a reaction show to I’m a Celebrity on ITV 9.
Another writer I follow is George Monbiot. He writes about climate change, the general political landscape of Britain and,eh, growing fruit. I think all his stuff is on www.monbiot.com and I’d recommend it. I’d even recommend the stuff about recondite fruit-growing knowledge. His work will lead to either a highly politicised fruit-growing lobby or revolutionaries who are really, really fussy about apples.
There was a really attractive assistant working at our library. She wore very short skirts and was really bad tempered, something which I’ve always liked. She was the first person I really masturbated about. There was one straight, married guy who worked in that library and it looked like her presence wore him down considerably. He drifted around with a grim look in his eye, sweating like he had malaria. Once I had a huge argument with her about an overdue book. When I got home I found that, during the course of the argument, I had ejaculated.
There was a big comedy-record collection there that I took out and taped everything. It was amazing to find that comedy didn’t have to be shit. Going from watching Jimmy Tarbuck doing old Irish gags on Live from Her Majesty’s to hearing classic Goon Show s or Peter Cook and Dudley Moore or a Billy album was a real shock. I suppose we all have this naÏve idea that the best stuff will find its way onto TV. That’s pretty much the opposite of the truth.
That was the start of wanting to be a comedy writer. I used to sit and write, imagining that one day I could get one of those jobs where everybody sat in a room drinking coffee and writing lines. I read Billy Liar and the stuff where he wanted to be a joke writer didn’t read like foolish daydreaming; it seemed a totallyrational aspiration to me. We got taught that book at school and everybody took his desire to get out of his home town and do something creative as naÏve idiocy. I thought that said quite a lot about Glasgow.
Most of the people I knew stayed on to do sixth form but Aiden and I went to Langside College for a year. It’s a place in Battlefield that I would heartily recommend if you
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