comedy – Page 49 – Robert Garnham

A progress report on In the Glare of the Neon Yak and how it’s going.

Or, ‘On being a submarine commander.’

Not long ago I watched a TV documentary about the making of the sitcom Seinfeld, during which Jerry Seinfeld, who was writing, producing and starring in the show, said that a season of it was like being a ‘submarine commander’, in that everything else became excluded from his life and he just concentrated on the show for months on end. It was an interesting description, and I’m starting to see what he means with my new one hour show, In the Glare of the Neon Yak.

I started writing it a few days after returning from the Edinburgh fringe last year. I came up with the title first, and then I bought a circus ringmaster costume, and I tried to think of a way of combining the two. In October I had a week off from work and I sat down and wrote the whole show in five days. This surprised even me, but I was really happy with the outcome and eager to get started on rehearsing it. However, at the time I was still working on Juicy, as it had a couple of dates left.

At the end of the year I did something either brave, or stupid. I reduced the number of hours I do in my day job, in retail management. This meant there was less money coming in, of course, but it also meant I had more time to spend on Yak, and making a career out of spoken word. Little did I know that the show was about to take over my life.

Now, it must be admitted that I have always had trouble learning anything from memory. Previous to the end of the year, I couldn’t even memorise a simple three minute poem. I was asked to appear at a theatre event in Hackney and they stipulated that I had to perform a five minute poem from memory. I set about learning it and, I must say, did a damn fine job doing so. This gave me the confidence to learn something slightly longer. So what did I do? I decided to learn the whole hour show from memory!

So since the end of January, when I did my last performance of Juicy, I have been solidly lining the script for Yak. I do it every day. I do it before work, and after work. I do it on my day off, I do it at the gym while on the exercise bike, and in the sauna. I do it whenever I’m on the bus, the train, or just walking. The whole show has been completely taking up my mind all the time except for when I’m at work. And when I’m not memorising the play, I’m designing the poster, dealing with photographers for the poster, speaking to venues, filling in fringe application forms, writing blurbs, buying props and costumes, rewriting sections, working on the backing music, it really is neverending. When it snowed and I got snowed in while visiting my parents, I rehearsed while looking out the window at the snow falling. When my work colleagues left and I was alone, I rehearsed in the store room of the shop. Every spare moment has been spent on the show.

Has my normal spoken word work suffered? Possibly. I have still been writing, but not rehearsing new material with quite the same zest. I’m still promoting two spoken word nights. I’m doing feature sets around the country.

Soon I’ll be working with a director for the next couple of months. It’s an exciting chance to get someone else involved and I’m looking forward to hearing what she thinks. She’s very enthusiastic about the project.

So now I know exactly what Jerry Seinfeld meant. Today, for example, I rehearsed for an hour, got the train to work while running over lines in my head, then again at lunch time, then on the train home. This evening I’ve been working on publicity material for the show, and prewriting some Tweets for a venue.

I’m having an amazing time, and I can’t wait for people to see what I’ve been up to. It’s a departure from my normal style. According to my diary, however, my first free week off from Yak will be in early September. And that’s when the submarine will be docking for the next time!

The lad on the bus watching porn on his phone. A true story.

Poem

The lad on the bus watched porn on his phone.
He thought he was alone.
He was probably going home.
Sitting at the front upstairs on a midnight bus
Between sleepy Devon villages, he’s
Not realised I’m sitting there,
Four rows back, trying not to look.

His phone screen lights his little corner,
The attended windows reflecting on two sides
Lots of limbs and flesh and to be honest
I really can’t tell what’s happening and I’m
Trying to distract myself by memorising a
Pam Ayres poem.

He’s wearing a hoodie with the hood up and a
Baseball cap and a thick coat and trackie bottoms
And the poor lad must be hot under all those layers,
Unlike the man and the woman on his phone who
Aren’t really wearing much at all, though even I
Can tell that she’s faking it,
And the man for some reason is wearing a
Deliveroo cyclists uniform and one of those big boxes.
Straight people are weird.

The bus seat head eats form a valley of
Stagecoach orange plastic at the end of which
His quivering mobile held in landscape mode
Acts like a cinema screen at a drive-in.
I ask myself, what would Pam Ayres do?
She’d wonder what kind of plan he was on.
Some of these videos use up a lot of mobile data.
Apparently.

I try not to make a sound.
The 5p carrier bag from Poundstretcher is going
To get me in all sorts of trouble.
I kind of shift down in my seat a little bit.
Part of me is jealous, not only for the impetuosity of youth,
The readily available content and
His healthy spirit of sexual experimentation,
But also because he managed to grab
The seat right at the very front.

Hoodie boy lowers his hood.
He’s got a tattoo behind his ear in Chinese script
Which I momentarily mistake for the Lidls corporate logo.
The bus slows for a stop in a nowhere town,
He puts down his phone and cups his hands against the window,
Sighs deeply, as if suddenly conscious of
All the pain in the world, ennui, inconsequentialities,
The finite nature of human existence, environmental disaster,
The meaningless of life itself, and all the wrongs
Of society.
Seeing my reflection, he jumps, then says,
I hope this bus gets home quickly,
There’s . . . Something I need to do.

There are too many poets called Tom.

And here’s a poem about one, or possibly all of them!

Poem (Tom)

Chisel-chinned trendy wordsmith
All teeth and tan and hair
That looks like it could be easily quiffable
So young and clean he’s probably easily sniffable
Thou hipster Ginsberg with a
Conscience so hot it can
Warm the coldest day with the
Fires of righteousness,
Whose words ooze sensibility,
How pained his outlook, this
Zeitgeist-bending Twitter-trending
Hot young thing, this
New kid on the writer’s block, this
Prototype Byron with exuberant facial expressions
This slam-winning rhyme-spinning nonchalant
Thin thin slip of a lad with a gob that spews
Perfect indignation in just the right amounts
With controlled anger
And lots of dramatic

Pauses.

Oh god, I wish he was me.

I wish I could be him, I wish me and him
We’re mutually interchangeable,
He’s so brilliant, like the brightest object
In the known galaxy, a supernova,
A thousand fires of phosphorus force
Brilliant at what he does,
Brilliant at capturing souls
Brilliant at poetry
I bet he’s brilliant at everything
I bet he’s never lost a game of Buckaroo.

He’s brilliant and sexy and worthy and oh so right
And sexy and coolly infused into the very now
And sexy and young with the most perfect skin
That he should merely stand at the mic and open
His mouth and utter two syllables for me to become as blustered
As a Victorian gentleman whose just
Caught his first glimpse of ankle.

And I want to speak to him, I want to commune with him,
I want to tell him: good stuff, man,
You’ve opened my mind to new possibilities
And then trampled on it with your youthfulness,
In your trendy converse all stars with no socks,
As you lift the night completely to the very pinnacle
Of absolute truth
And by turns reminded me that my own youthfulness
Is now as relevant and erroneous
As turning up at an otter convention
With a stoat.

Oh, this slippy hippy snake-like lad,
All very subtle and very emotey
If you didn’t know any better
You’d think him a bit scrotey,
So slight and wild in the night,
Afire with the rhythms of poets past,
I want to speak to him
Whisper so subtly into his ear,
Blow me,
Blow me away with your words.
I love your body
I love your body
I love you body
Of work.

And at the break, people are talking,
Eulogising, rhapsodising
And it’s all about him, oh,
For he’s so intense and righteous and theatrical
And oh,
He’s so vibrant and ravishing and clever
And oh,
He’s so visionary and brash and emotional
And oh,
Not only that but he’s got the kind of forearms
That could easily operate a butter churn with
Hardly any trouble at all,
(This gig being in an arts centre in Dorset,
Where butter churns are obviously still a thing).

I follow him,
Through this crowd of admirers and acolytes
Tiptoeing on the periphery
Of a youthful mini mob
Suddenly aware that I’m the only one there
Who remembers the millennium
Or tamagotchis
Or the 1984 Olympics,

He makes a break for the bogs,
And now we’re at neighbouring urinals,
The Fluorescent tubes of this magical wazza
Gently caressing the soft hairs of his delicate chin,
His eyes scanning the blank tiled wall,
His sensitive nostrils
Taking in the pungent earthy aromas
In a venue where the Patrons are mostly
Vegetarian and as such
Relish the most intriguing bowel movements.
(As for myself, I’ve never
Had much of a sense of hummus).

His eyes almost feral and yet
With deep intelligence
As he concentrates in the matter at hand
With the same kind of intensity
He demonstrates at the Mic,
His pee stream strong,
And healthy, and forceful,
It sounds like the Trevi Fountain
And certainly just as aesthetically pleasing.
He doesn’t even fart.
Is there anything
He’s not good at?

And I want to tell him
That I loved his poems.
All of his poems.
His poem about oxygen
Was such a breath of fresh air,
His poem about raspberries
Was surprisingly bitter,
His poem about the Mona Lisa
Was a masterpiece,
His poem about the perfect serve in tennis,
I couldn’t fault it,
His poem about being woken by the smoke alarm,
Such an eye opener,
And I want to tell him
That I got the joke he put in
About de ja vue,
Even though I’d heard it before

And I want to tell him
That he’s changed the way I look at the world.
And I want to tell him
That he speaks with a clarity of conscience so concise
He makes the Dalai Lama look like a mardy
Self-centred premiership footballer,
And I want to tell him
That his voice is so silky smooth,
Listening to him is just like
Nuzzling a mallard
And I want to tell him
That I’d pay him thirty quid and a packet of Frazzles
For just a very brief snog
And I want to tell him
That his skinny jeans really
Leave nothing to the imagination.

And I want to tell him
That his work evokes such feelings within,
Destiny and timelessness,
The sheer manic dance of life,
Magic in the mundane,
A pounding euphoric oneness
That weaves us all into that
Inescapable yet brilliant tapestry of life,
This is what I want to tell him,
But instead I stare at his nob.

We wash our hands at the sink
And as I wait for the hand dryer
Which has all the power of
A gnats fart,
I say

Hey, good set,
And he says,
Cheers

On headlining at Bath Spa University pride poetry night.

As an LGBT comedy spoken word artist, every now and then I get asked to perform at LGBT events, which I’m always proud to do, especially, excuse the pun, when they are Pride events. I’ve always felt this to be a happy Duty and I’m always very pleased to be asked, as if in so doing, I am affirming my place in the world, to be philosophical. My whole oeuvre, normally, I guess, is that I am a safe, unthreatening LGBT performer for straight audiences, not that I can think of any threatening LGBT performer.

Last night I headlined at the Bath Spa University pride spoken word night, and it was an absolute pleasure. For a start, it brought my adverse audience demographic down by a couple of decades. Honestly, I was the oldest person in a room of around a hundred or so students. Secondly, they are all so open, and comfortable with who they are, and questioning, and unafraid to tell the world whatever it is that stands in the way of who they are. I felt immediately comfortable among a group of individuals for whom binary definitions are definitely a thing of the past. There were no expectations. Everyone was a real, living breathing person and performer.

Everyone brought their lives to the mic, from poems about coming out, being LGBT, being straight, battles with personal demons and addictions. The night was funny, serious, angry, and wholly life affirming. Performers from other universities were welcomed warmly and local spoken word nights were publicised. The audience was high energy and enthusiastic, and I thought, they can’t surely keep this up till the end. But they did.

My set went well. In fact, it went very well. I did the usual comedic stuff and I think the audience didn’t know what to make of me for the first minute or so, but then they submitted to the inevitable and were incredibly receptive. I usually end my set with some silly comedy based around orgasms and poke fun at whoever the hosts might be, but tonight needed something celebratory to remind everyone why they were there, so I ended with my Doors poem, which looks at LGBT and human rights issues around the world and in places where people are not so fortunate in being who they are.

And to be honest, I think it helped me, too. It helped me keep in touch with who I am, and my own culture. And it helped me keep in touch with a younger audience!

It was a wonderful night and I’m still buzzing now. My set in its entirety can be heard here:https://soundcloud.com/robertdgarnham/robert-garnham-at-bath-spa

On being a poetry fake.

I am a poetry fake.

Sure, they call me a poet. Oh, him, he’s a poet. He’s Robert Garnham, the poet. But whenever they use the word ‘poet’, they always put those little things around it. You know the ones. “”

Of all the wonderful and amazing things that a poet can do with literature and language to make them sing and dance on the page, I cannot do any of them.

My sonnets are too long.
My haiku have too many syllables.
Any internal rhyme scheme is purely accidental.
I’ve never worried, overtly, about enjambement.

I once wrote an ode to a rhododendron and a nun threw up.

I am a poetry fake.

My poetry is so bad that even the rhyming couplets have split up.

My poetry is so bad that nobody has stuck around long enough to tell me what the rhyme scheme is.

My poetry is so bad that even my found poems were hidden for a reason.

I look like a poet.
I wear the coat of a poet.
I smell like a poet – mothballs and polo mints, Parker ink and dandruff.

But a Venn diagram of my interests and those of the average poet would probably resemble the number eight.

But I’m ok with this. Poetry has been the perfect career for me, for two reasons.

One.
I have an irrational fear of success and of being a high achiever.

Two
The average poetry audience is the only demographic where I feel I’m not going to get my lights punched out.

For these reasons, and these only, I am proud to be a poetry fake.

And to prove it, here’s a ‘poem’ for you.

Poem

The bus seat head rests form a valley of
Stagecoach orange plastic at the end of which
His quivering mobile held in landscape mode
Acts like a cinema screen at a drive-in.
I ask myself, what would Pam Ayres do?
She’d wonder what kind of plan he was on.
Some of these videos use up a lot of mobile data.
Apparently.

The Unbearable Lightness of Robert Garnham

I’ve been busy writing a lot during the last twelve months and the upshot of this is that I have a lot of material which doesn’t fit in with the any of the projects I’ve been working on. The idea came after a conversation with film maker John Tomkins to make a short mini web series.

The hardest part was coming up with a title, and after exhausting Plop, Whimsy, or just Series, and every other one word idea, I came up with the Unbearable Lightness of Brian. Humorous as this was, the main problem was that my name is not Brian. So I settled on the rather less colourful, but rather more meaningful, The Unbearable Lightness of Robert Garnham.

It was a joy to make the series and we’ve optimistically called it Season One.

And here’s the first one! There’ll be one a week now for the next seven weeks.

https://youtu.be/b4fTPDC4vwU

Englefield Green Blues

Between 1994 and 1996 I worked at a small village shop in the village of Englefield Green in Surrey. I was twenty years old and it felt like the best job in the world, because I got to know all the local characters. The drunks, the ne’erdowells, the good people, the bad people. A local author who was published to great acclaim came in every day after the school run. A member of the House of Lords.the local vicar and the local priest, who would buy the Holy Water and take it away to be blessed. Oh, such good times.

While I was there I wrote a comedy novel called Englefield Green Blues, about a trainee guardian angel who was not very good at his job. The novel was a turning point for me because it was the first time that I employed, throughout the narrative, funny poetry. The other day I sat down and looked at the poems again. They may not be classics, but they take me right back to 1995.

1.
Englefield Green Blues
(A song for the ukulele)

Plang plang plang plang pla-la-lang plang plang
Plang plang plang plang pla-la-lang plang plang

I told my wife
I says to her
What you looking
At me for?
And she says back
To me that is
This cola’s lost its fizz

Plang plang plang plang pla-la-lang plang plang
Plang plang plang plang pla-la-lang plang plang

I took it back
To the corner shop
He says to me
What’s this for?
I says to him
You know what it is
This cola’s lost its fizz

Plang plang plang plang pla-la-lang plang plang
Plang plang plang plang pla-la-lang plang plang

You take a gulp
It’s stale and flat
I says to him
Well fancy that
Just get me a refund
No need for a tizz
This cola’s lost its fizz

Plang plang plang plang pla-la-lang plang plang
Change of key
Plang plang plang plang pla-la-lang plang plang
First key again
Plang plang plang plang pla-la-lang plang plang

This cola’s lost its fizz
This cola’s lost its fizz
Oh yeah this cola’s lost its fizz
No its hasn’t
Yes it has
No it hasn’t
Yes it has
This cola’s lost its fizz

2. Fairground

It’s a fairground, it’s a fairground
Adults full price children free
Merry go round, merry go round,
Will you take a ride with me?

Tunnel of love, dodge the dogems,
Life is but a chamber of horrors
When it’s midnight at the funfair
You don’t care about tomorrow.

Roll up
Roll down
Fall down
Roll over
Tell me when
This feelings over.
Fairground
Fairground
Fairground people
We’re all just visitors
We’re all just sampling
life.

Funfair funfair
Why the hell should you care?
You know where you’re going
You know you can’t get there
Merry go round, miserable go round
Candy floss yes please
Eat it quick, kiss me quick,
I’m begging on my knees!

Roll up
Roll down
Fall down
Roll over
Tell me when
This feelings over.
Fairground
Fairground
Fairground people
We’re all just visitors
We’re all just sampling
life.

Win a goldfish, win a horse
You can take it home, of course.
Life’s so happy, life’s so fab
I’m going to explode with mirth.
Throw your balls at aunt Sally,
She won’t throw them back.
Ha ha ha
Ha ha ha
Ha ha ha ha ha ha haaaa.

Roll up
Roll down
Fall down
Roll over
Tell me when
This feelings over.
Fairground
Fairground
Fairground people
We’re all just visitors
We’re all just sampling
life.

3. Flute

I played my flute
Till the cows came home.
Tum de tum de tum de de
Tum de tum de tum de de
I played my flute like a woman possessed
Toodle toodle toodle all day.

I played my flute
I played my flute
And then I stopped
For the cows had come home.

4. I Am A Genius

There is a fine line
Between genius and prat.
Like:
This poem is either brilliant
Or
Rubbish.
Ooga ooga ooga ooga ooga
As the sun sets over
Englefield Green
And the vampires walk the aisles
I ponder
I ponder life through poetry.
Ooga.

5. Silly hat.

Do not wear
A silly hat.
People will say
‘What is that?’
You will have
To take it off
We will then
Suppress a cough
That is really
A raucous laugh
Cos its sensible
By half
To wear a hat
That suits your head
Wear that hat?
I’d rather be dead!

6. Strong wind pot tragedy.

Flower pot
On the wall
In the gale
Defying all.

Flower pot.
On the ground.
Potting compost
All around.

7. Untitled (Although Now It’s Called That It Has a Title,
Therefore No Longer Untitled)

The cosmos is so big
And I am so small
You should never get the two confused.
Lord knows, I don’t!
It would be embarrassing
To book into an hotel
Under the name ‘Existence’
Or look up at the night sky
And say
‘Doesn’t George look lovely tonight?’

On having a larf.

For goodness sake, anything makes me laugh these days. I don’t know what it is but if it’s funny, then I’m in to it. Over the last week I’ve listened to Steve Martin, watched a Judd Apatow Netflix special, several episodes of the Larry Saunders show, I’ve listened to Gecko’s wonderful album, Ivor Cutler, watched an Arnold Brown DVD, Flight of the Conchords, and, believe if or not, Hinge and Brackett. Oh, and I’ve just started rereading Hunter S Thompson.

Why this sudden need to immerse myself in comedy? And also the sort of comedy that I don’t normally watch or listen to or read?

For some reason I’m remarkably receptive at the moment to anything which makes people laugh. I start each day with web comedy shows of snippets, such as Portlandia, to which I’ve become addicted, or Comedians In Cars Getting Coffee. I’ve also watched hundreds of hours of random sketches and web broadcasts from comedians and Youtubers, some of which is particularly cringe worthy or not really funny. And that’s now I spend my breakfast, a bowl of coco pops and squinting at my iPad.

Life by its very nature is serious, and because it’s so serious, it’s also inherently funny. We go to work and we work and we come home from work. To my mind the funniest places in the world are the city of New York and the whole of Britain. These are places where life is taken seriously yet, at the same time, not that seriously. Where humour exists to alleviate awkwardness or to get a point across, where sarcasm dances with parody to create something truly special.

Watching all these funny people, I noticed something funny, and that’s the Funny Muscle. Being funny and spontaneous is a skill which can be developed. I’m using mine right now as I write this sentence and I’m wondering where the next time during this sentence will be where I might be funny. Ok, so it didn’t happen during that sentence, and it’s probably not happening during this sentence either.

The weird thing is, immersing myself in such a way has helped me to see the world differently. I have a day job, which is filled with the usual petty annoyances and temporary hardships, but I look at it now more as a sitcom. Admittedly, not a very interesting sitcoms, but the situations which arise certainly have comedy in retrospect. I get home and I laugh, honestly, I do. Likewise, if you’re afraid of a person, or have a certain aversion to a person because of the way that they make you feel, then look at them as a character in a sitcom. They begin to conform to their own stereotypes and this makes them funny, even if they’re not funny people.

Perhaps that’s why I’m watching so much comedy, and so much diverse comedy. The warbling and innuendo of Hinge and Brackett are a long way from the stand up of, say, Trevor Noah, but they are a diversion from my every day life which I feel that I need right now, to take my mind off the normal crushing loneliness of existence. And in not restricting myself to a certain genre or type of comedy, I’m hoping to give my comedy muscle a huge work out. Though obviously, not enough to end this blog with a joke.

Zebra

My new book Zebra is out now! I’m hugely proud of it. I believe that it contains some of my best writing, and I can’t wait for other people to read it and let me know what they think.

Zebra is a book several years in the making. Not only does it contain more of my comedy poems including some old classics as well as newer pieces, but it also contains my more serious work as well as material from my two Edinburgh shows, Static and Juicy. It’s a layered, textured book, which really gets a grip on life and what it means to be alive. There are one or two deeply autobiographical pieces, dealing with growing up in the suburbs of Surrey, first love, school, as well as a poem written five minutes after learning of the death of David Bowie. There’s also plenty of merrymaking and whimsy, of course, playfulness and poetry.

So why is it called Zebra? There are several reasons, not least that it’s named after a poem of mine which I used to perform while sharing stage with a cardboard Zebra. At the Barnstaple Fringe a few years ago the cardboard Zebra started getting a bit ragged so a friend and and I went round the art and craft shops of Barnstaple to find some gaffer tape to fix it. On the way home from Barnstaple my friend’s car had its sump guard fall off, and the zebra gaffer tape saved the day! He used it to stick the sump guard back on. The other reason is that it’s a nod to one of my favourite groups, Yello, who had an album called Zebra. Everything I used to write at the time was done to that cd. I must have been about nineteen.

I’m enormously proud of Zebra!

You can purchase your copy wherever you see me, or here http://robertgarnham.bigcartel.com/product/zebra

Static : The Script

Hello,

Here’s the script of my first solo show, Static. It hasn’t got the poems in it, but I thought people might like to read the in between material.

It was performed on several occasions throughout 2016 and on one occasion in 2017 in Torquay, Exeter, Bristol, Edinburgh, Guldford and Totnes.

It was all a bit wobbly but I had great fun with it, and it was the mist autobiographical thing I’ve written.

STATIC
Robert Garnham

Robert is in the performance space with a small battery radio tuned loudly to static.

Poem : ‘Static / Wind’

I tell you what, it gives you the willies.

Thinks about things for a while. Opens performance book.

Poem: ‘The Increasing Physical Dexterity of Justin Bieber’

2009.
Feeling so damn unique. There’s nobody like me in the world! That sensation of circumstance, geography and time being in just the right alignment to create me, and me alone. And there’s poetry in my chest, it’s beating away, pounding out strange rhythms with the absolute promise of being such an individual, that I might one say change society and make a real difference to the world!

Putting pen to paper. Oh, you brave poet! Your words will echo like an aftershock, an earthquake as time itself bends in on you with your uniqueness, like Lord Byron with a megaphone, Wordsworth with an attitude, Ted Huges on the ten o clock news shaking his fists at convention.

2016
Seven years of writing poetry and discovering that there’s nothing really unique about me after all.

Seven years of writing poetry about minor trips out to the dentist, mild personal discomfort and vacuum cleaners. Seven years of looking in the mirror every morning and saying, Yeah, that’ll do. Seven years of my work being compared to that of John Betjeman, usually by people who say things like, ‘His work is not as good as that of John Betjeman’.

Seven years static. A life spent going nowhere.

(Sit)

I want this show to be one of those worthy shoes, you know, where you learn all about me as a person and all of my shortcomings. I suppose my first shortcoming is that I was born in Surrey, a county so bland and so irrelevant that absolutely nothing newsworthy or interesting has ever happened there. And that’s a fact. Look it up in the history books, if you like. Nothing interesting has ever happened in Surrey. My birth there in 1974 coincided with the resurfacing of the Guildford bypass, whereas here in the same year you of course had the Olympics. Oh, and later that year my aunt saw a badger.

I was brought up with this sense of low expectations and the absolute blandness of existence. Even my name is boring. Robert Garnham. I sound like an estate agent. I like to think that I was named after my dad’s favourite singer, Bob Dylan, who is of course, Robert Zimmerman, and this at least makes me a little bit excited about being called Robert. But at the time I was born my aunt worked in the factory making Robert’s Radios in Molesey. I can imagine the decision-making process that led to my parents choosing such a boring name.

(Improvised family conversation involving Robert’s Radios).

Robert sits in the chair as his own mother while feeding a baby, presumably Robert. He stands to indicate when his father is speaking.

I suppose I got off lightly. My Uncle worked for a fork lift truck company called Lansing Bagnall.

Robert builds a theremin on the table out of a corn flakes packet, two Wellington boots, a tape machine. He plays the theremin.

Let’s try and . . .

The tape machine interrupts him. Improvised silliness with the tape machine.

School was hell.

Poem : ‘2 Abbey 1’

(Stand)

I grew up in a house on a hill. Three generations, six of us in a two-up, two-down cottage surrounded by woods in the hills of Surrey. From the back bedroom window at night I could see the whole of West London. In the evenings I’d tune my radio through the static to the jazz stations, sit there for hours in the heat and the humidity of the sticky forest Surrey summer, and gaze at the neon and the road signs and the motorway lights.

Poem: ‘The Prince of Belgium’

Apart from being gay, that was.

(Sit).

And oh, mamma! I was very gay. I was probably the gayest thirteen year old that Surrey had ever seen. Yet my whole suburban mindset dictated that I should stay in the closet and not tell anyone because this was Surrey and people didn’t really want to know about such things, they were too busy buying bowler hats and going to wife swapping parties and voting for weird Conservatives and because of that I thought there was something wrong, a strange error in the system which just affected me. I knew that everything had to change but the time was never right.

It took a few years, and I came out to my friends first. They were surprisingly supportive, but at the same time they were incredibly surprised. Even though I’d been the gayest thirteen year old that Surrey had ever seen. You see, by the time I was twenty, I was a completely different person.

In fact, it still comes as a complete surprise when people discover that I’m one of those gay people that you hear about. I think, personally, it’s because I’m so macho, and manly, and tough, and masculine, and something of a hard nut. I think, basically, it’s because I’m a stud.

(Stand).

Though to be honest, I’ve always felt like a gay man trapped in the body of a bus driver.

I always wonder what my friends thought about that whole gay thing.

Poem : ‘Not Flamboyant’

I was set up on a blind date suggested by mutual friends and we hit it off immediately. At the time I was a part time shop assistant, and he was a trampoline salesman. Looking back now I see that he was incredibly patient with me. In fact he even said that it was what inside that counts, and that to him looks weren’t . . .

Hmmm.
Come to think of it, he charged me twenty quid.

Poem : ‘The First Time’

So I came out. And I had oodles of sex. And I masturbated a hell of a lot. It’s hard to believe looking at me now but when I was 18 to 20 I was a very attractive young slip of a thing with a trendy haircut and a face lit up with the evident joys of life. I always wondered what my first partner would be like and I would daydream about the usual ones, bearing in mind that this was the early 1990s. Peter Davison from Doctor Who, or Chesney Hawkes, or for some weird reason, foreign secretary Douglas Hurd. My first proper partner was a young man called Jamie, a slightly taller, thinner version of Lance from Neighbours. He invited me back to his place ostensibly to show me his collection of Star Trek memorabilia. I knew it was about to get really interesting when he took me up to his bedroom to let me see his collection of phasers.

Poem : ‘Jamie’.

Oh, when I look back on it now it’s like I was doing it all the time. But as I’ve got older, I’ve shown less and less interest in these matters. Things have slowed down. I’ve slowed down. I’ve become static.

I feel like there’s this sense that my life is going nowhere. I’m now officially middle aged and there’s a huge list of things that I’ve never done.

(The list is written on cards. Robert dances and improvises as he unveils them).

I’ve never bought a house.
Learned to drive.
Fallen in love.
Had a promotion.
Earned the respect of my contemporaries.
Had a jacket dry cleaned.
Hosted a barbecue.
Owned a sofa.
Walked a dog.
Got married and had kids.
Bought a round in a pub.
Used a power drill.
Been arrested.
Paid a bribe to council bin men.
Used an axe.
Slapped a yak.

When I look at my life I’m tempted to think that I haven’t done much with it. I don’t have a fancy job or a nice big house or a big throbbing monster of a car. In fact all of the things that seem to drive successful people seem to have passed me by.

And I’m ok with this.

It lets me concentrate on the important aspects of living, like sleeping and biscuits and buying hair gel.

Here’s a diagram to illustrate my thinking on this.

(Improvised diagram and flip chart section).

I’m about as camp as an oak tree. I’m about as flamboyant as Ryvita.

(Look left and right as if imparting a secret).

Yet I see wonder and amazement everywhere. I watched a documentary once in which it was pointed out that the echoes and shockwaves from the Big Bang which created existence itself can still be heard as static on a radio receiver. The idea of this has always interested me immensely. I may be just a poet, but I’ve always wanted to probe the origins of life and existence and make my own little mark on the world. The work of the large hadron collider, I believe, will ultimately shed new light on the mysteries of the universe, and I try to muck in and help where I can.

So for you, ladies and gentlemen, and for science in general, and for deeper understanding, I’m going to construct a large hadron collider right now, right here, on stage.

Robert takes a length of garden hose, a camera, a biscuit on a plate, and attempts to create a black hole by smashing atoms together in the garden hose. He finishes by holding up photos on his ipad of the resulting smashed atoms.

Of course, I would need a proper scientist to tell me what this all means.

It’s all connected. Everything is connected. Time and memory, light and shade, and all those atoms spinning around, radio signals from the original Big Bang, and me, me as a young man with all that wonder and amazement, I’m still that person only I’ve channelled it all elsewhere, the parts of it that haven’t been ground down by the finer detail of living, every now.

Yet I’m also aware that the world I live in is freer and more open and accepting than other parts of the world, and that’s what this next poem is about.

Poem: ‘The Doors’
Poem: ‘Badger in the Garden’

Robert performs the performance piece ‘Static’ which starts with the radio being switched on again.

The whole piece is delivered with the radio on. At the end of the piece, Robert packs away all of the paraphernalia and sits on the chair with the radio in his lap. He turns it off.