Tag: Humour

1976 Much Hotter Than 2025, Claim Several Villagers Somewhat Unreliably

Posted on by CalvertonNotts in calvoblog, Comedy, Nottingham, Nottinghamshire, Satire, Village Life
  • I live in a village called Calverton in Nottinghamshire. Occasionally, I write completely made-up things about it.

WITH TEMPERATURES HITTING thirty-five degrees in the nation today, some Calverton residents have obviously started banging on about the British summer of 1976 being much hotter than this one.

‘You think the summer of 2025 is hot?’ said local man Norris Thetford, wilting in his allotment today in his ninth change of clothes since 9 am.

‘Stop complaining. You weren’t there in the summer of 1976. It was so hot all the grass turned to sand and we had to ride around on camels. All the bicycles had melted, the petrol in the cars had turned to porridge and several buses had exploded.

‘It was so hot there was no water, only dust to drink. All dogs had to be shaved to prevent heatstroke and whenever they went out to the garden to do their business it immediately turned to brick as it popped out. It was that solid we could build walls with it, as many of us did when existing brick walls turned to powder, from the heat.

‘It was so hot that anyone with fair skin was immediately mummified, even in the shade, and all the cats died because we’d forgotten to shave them like the dogs.

‘It was so hot that 63% of the population wasn’t able to sleep until 1977, forcing them to miss the Queen’s Silver Jubilee, the birth of punk rock and the death of Elvis.

‘It was so hot that many people may have hallucinated the summer of 1976.’

‘I love my grandad,’ said Caitlin Thetford, 13, of Paddock Close, Calverton.

‘But with this summer of 1976 thing he’s finally lost it. I’ve heard of selective hearing in very senior people, but this appears to be selective intelligence, which worries me. If I didn’t know any better, I’d say he’s made all of this up and every word is a total lie.

‘Look, he’s collapsed by the runner beans.’

In Comes Robin. It’s About Time.

Posted on by CalvertonNotts in Drama, Performance, Village Life

IS THERE a mummers mafia? Surely there can’t be a mummers mafia.

I’ve written a brand new Robin Hood mummers play for the Calverton Real Ale and Plough Play Preservation Society (that’s CRAPPPS to you) to perform at Sherwood Forest in Nottinghamshire next week. But am I in trouble?

Before my script came along, and I really had no idea about this when I wrote it, and I’m not sure my script even counts as ‘official,’ the last traceable Nottinghamshire Robin Hood mummers script appears to have been recorded by a chap called Dean S. Reynolds Hole in 1901. And Mr Hole’s just recording it, in a book called Then And Now, which suggests the script was probably written before 1901.

The script is here if you want to have a butcher’s. I must admit, my script includes a lot more winky jokes.

So have I really, and entirely inadvertently, written the first Nottinghamshire Robin Hood mummers script in at least 122 years? Surely I can’t claim this. Surely there must have been another one, maybe written in 1972, scribbled in a notebook by some fella called Brian or Big Ken, performed only once at Bobbers Mill, or Long Clawson, or on the bus, by the Papplewick Obby Orse Players (POOPS) to an audience of nine men and three ducks.

Surely someone remembers something Robin Hoody and mummery taking place between 1901 and 2023 in Nottinghamshire. Not just at Long Clawson. Is there a Short Clawson? Must remember to check. Surely this can’t be a massive piece of history we’re creating in Sherwood next week.

And … if I claim that my script is the first official Nottinghamshire mummers play about Robin Hood to be a) written and b) performed in this county in more than a century, will I be in trouble with the mummers mafia?

Is there a mummers mafia? Surely there can’t be a mummers mafia. Will they come out to arrest me for making lofty claims? Will I ever be seen again if they do?

Anyway. We’re on next week (Sunday 15 October) performing the Calverton Robin Hood Play. Free performances take place at 1.00 pm and 3.00 pm.

All of us here at CRAPPPS shall make no lofty claims about our script unless we are (far too easily) persuaded to drink too much and let such lofty claims blurt out, at which point the law enforcement wing of the mummers mafia will surely come out to decry us and demand we cease and desist. I imagine this law enforcement wing will be called The Cidermen.

Either way, it’s been really good knowing you, and you haven’t seen me. Right?

Robin Hood Mummers Play (By Order of the Sheriff!)

My Time in Stand-Up: Some Brazen Name Dropping with a Tinge of Regret

Posted on by CalvertonNotts in Anthony Nolan, Comedy, Fundraising, Performance

I WAS A STAND-UP COMIC in the 1990s. I started out in Manchester, where I was a drama degree student for three years (1993-1996), and then moved to London where I avoided starving for four years (1997-2000) by temping in offices for not much money in the daytime and telling jokes for even less money at night-time.

There were highlights and lowlights. In Manchester, after months of doing open spots, I did a great show at the Frog and Bucket with Johnny Vegas compering. On the back of that show, Johnny got the management to book me as a billed support act in my own right. This meant some proper cash and (gasp!) my name on the poster, which made me think I’d arrived.

I became a regular at the now demolished Hardy’s Well pub in Fallowfield / Rusholme, which was Manchester’s main student area. At the time it was a regular haunt of Caroline Aherne and Dave Gorman, both already established comedy names, and a then virtually unknown Lucy Porter, who I gigged with many times. Some of the best gigs of my life took place there, which made me think I’d arrived.

Down in London, my first open spot at The Comedy Store in Leicester Square went splendidly, as did my first open spot at Jongleurs in Battersea. This was back in the days before those godawful gong show style gigs became the entry level offering at the big clubs for newcomer comics like me. I did some of those gong shows. They were hideous.

But I did get the odd decent booking. I got to be on a bill with Jo Brand and Harry Hill (somewhere in Clapham, if memory serves) and a before-he-was-famous Jimmy Carr at a club in Aldgate which was called the Arts Café when I was resident compere there, and Fur Coat No Knickers when I wasn’t resident compere there anymore.

I also ran a club with my pal Steve Keyworth at Kentish Town’s Lion and Unicorn pub, which attracted headliners like Al Murray, Ross Noble and Noel Fielding, with Steve and I sharing the compering.

But London, I have to say, was mostly hell on toast for me as a comic, and the bad gigs outnumbered the good ones. I often received abuse at some awful Firkin pub in God knows where (I forget the name of the pub and which bit of the city, but let’s just call it the Frick Off and Firkin in London’s Arse End) for the dubious prospect of £30 cash in hand a week to compere. They made us do the comedy in the main pub, interrupting people who were eating. We had to shout at people all night because the radio mic never worked properly. This was very bad, and because I was the compere, I had to keep coming on to introduce other acts who’d run away and leave me to suffer alone when they’d done their time. There was very little solidarity among comics at Firkin gigs back then.

I did the Edinburgh Fringe twice. The first time was 1996, when I reached the live heats of Channel 4’s So You Think You’re Funny stand-up competition at The Gilded Balloon, having previously won the Manchester qualifier at a club run by a fella called Cuddly Dudley (true story).

Edinburgh’s Gilded Balloon clearly didn’t think I was funny after I bounded onto the stage during my heat, yanked the mic out of its stand and watched it fall apart in my hands. It was awful. I couldn’t recover from this mishap and stumbled through my act, just wanting to go home because I knew I’d blown my big chance. I had to stay in the city for two more weeks to do other shows. People would point at me (other acts mainly, which was cruel) and ask: ‘Isn’t that Broken Mic Guy?’

By 1998, when I appeared at the Edinburgh Fringe for the second time, my confidence had been shot from bombing in front of London audiences. By then, I’d discovered I was much better at writing plays and scripts for radio, so it was starting to dawn on me how much easier it would be for me to do those things instead.

The swansong gig might have been at Club Fandango in Plymouth. There’s no point asking me. Most of that period in my life I’ve deleted from my brain. But I remember that the fire alarm went off in the hotel next door to the club while I was sat in the bath, and they made me troop out into the street naked save for a towel. I had to stay in Plymouth one more night to do my show. People would point at me (other acts mainly, which was cruel) and ask: ‘Isn’t that Soggy Towel Guy?’

So, it may have been in the car home from Plymouth that I quit stand-up comedy, with no evidence to record my having been entirely inconsistent at it, with social media and YouTube not invented at the time for me to check back on now. A lucky reprieve, I think.

So that was the 1990s. In the current millennium, I have come out of retirement only once for a gig at a big club (Comedy Store in Leeds – counselling has since helped) and a few compere slots locally in Nottingham to support my mate Ash who organises comedy and cabaret events. I’ve never fully explained to Ash why I’ve tried to avoid doing actual stand-up at his comedy nights, and why I get twitchy around microphones. If he reads this he’ll finally understand, and not put me in charge of any more technical rehearsals.

I’ve never fully committed any of the above genuine traumas to writing, until now.

And I’ve pretty much avoided stand-up ever since.

Until now.

I guess there’s always been a part of me that’s wanted to lay some personal demons to rest. I’m proud of what I’ve achieved as a writer and performer since the bad old days as an occasionally adequate stand-up comic. I’ve written and performed in some critically acclaimed stuff, picked up an award or two, and had one of my plays (PHYS ED) go down a storm at Edinburgh. Queuing up to watch my actor mate Nick Osmond perform this show to a sell-out crowd at the Assembly Rooms was one especially proud moment.

But I can’t help myself. I’ve always fancied another pop at stand-up, on my terms, for old time’s sake.

So you should know that I’ve been given the chance to do an Ultra Comedy stand-up event in Nottingham in a few months’ time.

There’s eight weeks of training with a professional stand-up comic, which is sweet. Boot camp with other L-plate comedians (*1) starts mid-September, with a proper gig at the end of it at Nottingham’s Pryzm venue on Sunday 12 November.

This gig will be around a week after my 50th birthday and something like 28 years since my first ever gig as the spotty student comedian in Manchester you see pictured above. I’ve just remembered my first gig was at a pub called The Thirsty Scholar. I’ve googled the pub, and it doesn’t look like it’s been demolished yet.

I’m doing it all for Anthony Nolan, the charity which saved the love of my life, and you can sponsor me via my JustGiving page.

Despite some of the quite painful recollections I’ve mentioned above … I’m really looking forward to it.

I’ll post some updates on here as I go.

(*1) – and at least one grizzled veteran.

copyright (c) carterbloke, 2023

The Parish Council Minutes #10

Posted on by CalvertonNotts in British, Comedy, Fiction, Politics, Satire
  • More utterly riveting dispatches from Shufflehampton Parish Council, England. ‘Good lord, these people are clearly morons.’ MADE UP QUOTE
MEETING DATE: FRIDAY 20 MARCH 2020

THE ACTING CHAIR convened the meeting at 7.30 pm.

Item 1

‘I’d leave it a few months if I were you’

Cyril Keenly, the Clerk of the Parish Council, dialled into the meeting because he was self-isolating. Councillor Watterson asked if anyone else was self-isolating because there was just him and the Acting Chair in the Council Room.

The Clerk confirmed everyone else was self-isolating though Councillor Pritchard didn’t really count because he was still in a coma after someone had attacked him with a pick-axe, Councillors Dean and Tomkins didn’t count because they were on trial for murder after the dismembered bodies of their ex-spouses were found at the Cow and Banjo and the Chairman didn’t count because he’d been photographed doing something ‘right dodgy’ and quite possibly illegal, forcing him to resign in disgrace.

The Clerk said Councillor Martin wasn’t able to attend the meeting because of a prior engagement with the Russian Mafia.

Item 2

Councillor Boothby, Acting Chair, asked Councillor Andrews if he could switch off his webcam. While Skype enabled Councillors to run meetings during the current pandemic with public gatherings restricted, this didn’t mean it was appropriate for Councillor Andrews to attend meetings sat on the porcelain. Councillor Andrews apologised and switched off his video feed. He also muted the audio, but not before everyone heard a tiny plop.

Councillor Boothby said the Parish Council needed to show real leadership during the public health crisis and should encourage social distancing.

Councillor Lathers said she’d practiced social distancing for years, mainly from her ex-husband, estate agents and people who read The Daily Mail. Councillor Watterson said that with supermarket shelves now cleared of loo roll because of panic buying, he’d found The Daily Mail to be soft, strong and very, very long. Councillor Andrews, switching his audio back on, said he’d heard rumours that The Sun was actually softer if you were a folder and not a scruncher. He’d also heard The Daily Telegraph was more absorbent, with a quilted edition on Sundays. He muted his audio again, but not before everyone heard a soft groan and splash.

Councillor Lathers said she’d touched a copy of The News of the World once and had to self-isolate for fourteen days.

Item 3

Councillor Gooding said this whole thing with the pandemic was just scaremongering and that Britain had survived the Blitz. Councillor Boothby said she was no expert, but understood you couldn’t generally catch the Blitz by somebody coughing next to you on a bus. You also couldn’t catch the Blitz by walking round in large crowds in deliberate ignorance of advice from qualified health experts that people should stay at home as an entirely sensible precaution to minimise the risk of infecting the elderly and those already in poor health.

Councillor Watterson added that he was no expert either, but understood that comparing the pandemic to something that happened in World War II was at best naïve jingoism and at worst the intellectual reasoning of reckless simpletons.

Councillor Gooding said that British people were made of stronger stuff and even though he’d caught the virus at a darts match in the pub last Wednesday and had since gone to three concerts, nine supermarkets, two schools and a hospital, it would all turn out for the best if everyone just thought more positively, and believed harder, and Got Virus Done. At this point he coughed loudly and his line went dead.

Item 4

Councillor Boothby said it would be a truly beautiful thing for the people of Shufflehampton to set aside their longstanding and ultimately meaningless differences during this crisis to do all they could to work together for the sake of the most desperate and disadvantaged. Already Councillor Boothby had seen many inspiring examples of selflessness and love in the community which, in their compassionate simplicity, had done much to restore her ailing faith in the precious, innate beauty of humanity. In desperate times, she mused, it was astounding how distance could bring people together when proximity so often tore them apart. It was the ultimate paradox.

Councillor Watterson said they’d run out of Ultimate Paradox in the chemists but he’d got twenty boxes of Lemsip and what was left of the hand sanitizer.

Councillor Boothby hoofed Councillor Watterson in the cobblers.

Item 5

The Acting Chair asked if there was any other business. Councillor Andrews, switching his audio back on, said he didn’t know but he’d keep at it for a bit.

He muted his audio again, but not before everyone heard his wife come in.

The meeting ended at 8.01 pm, with absolutely no pasta anywhere.

copyright (c) carterbloke 2020

Minutes of previous meetings

Photo credits

The Implausible Escapades of Captain Custard #1

Posted on by CalvertonNotts in British, Cartoon, Children, Comedy, English, Fantasy, Fiction, Superhero
  • By Edith Carter (aged 10) and Simon Carter (aged 46) – as serialised in The Village Gazette, Calverton, Nottingham, UK. In this episode! The village’s newest (and to be honest, only) costumed superhero makes his first crime-fighting appearance in Calvo’s mean streets.

JIMMY SPINKS couldn’t believe his eyes. He’d had a plan, and to this point the plan had been perfect. He’d followed old Mrs Mallow from the cashpoint outside the Co-Op, where she stopped every Friday night to fetch her bingo money before walking down to the Geordie Club, and then stealthily nipped ahead to lie in wait for her in the shadows of the twitchel off Collyer Road. Then, as Mrs Mallow shuffled past, he’d leapt out from cover to snatch her handbag.

Jimmy Spinks hadn’t reckoned on old Mrs Mallow putting up a struggle. She was a sprightly eighty-two for sure, but certainly no match for Jimmy’s lumbering teenage burliness. This would all be over very quickly. Pounce from behind, steal the bag, scurry back into the darkness before Mrs Mallow had a chance to realise what was happening.

Jimmy hadn’t reckoned on any witnesses being around. At this time of night in this part of the village you’d get the odd dog walker, but that was about it, and dog walkers usually avoided the twitchel because the twitchel was dark and potentially occupied by unsavoury types. Unsavoury types like Jimmy Spinks.

And Jimmy certainly hadn’t reckoned on his attempted mugging of old Mrs Mallow being interrupted by a superhero.

At first, Jimmy didn’t think the mysterious intruder was a superhero. He thought he was a lunatic. The ridiculous-looking individual who’d suddenly appeared in front of him, as if from nowhere, didn’t cut an especially imposing or dynamic figure. He looked completely unfit to be fair, like he could use more trips to the gym and fewer trips to Fresh and Tasty.

And that costume. For surely that’s what it was, a costume. Nobody in their right mind would walk around looking like that unless they were on their way to a fancy-dress party.

‘Fear not, Mrs M,’ said the man in the bright yellow lycra suit, tight yellow underpants and billowing yellow cape, taking a precautionary puff on his bright yellow inhaler.

His voice was muffled because of the mask, but Jimmy could sense unease and nervousness in the tone.

‘Ay up, mi duk,’ responded Mrs Mallow, by instinct more than anything. Her eyesight was rubbish and she couldn’t really make out who the speaker was in the murk, later describing him to police officers as ‘a very kind and well-spoken six-foot banana.’

‘I shall save you, Mrs M,’ continued the man in the yellow suit, raising both his hands towards Jimmy.

‘Don’t think so, buddy,’ said Jimmy, advancing towards him with menace. A moonbeam glinted off the blade of the knife he’d just pulled out of his jacket.

‘Mrs Mallow? Duck,’ demanded the man in the yellow suit.

The old woman did her best to get out of the way as the unseen thug behind her violently flung himself at the giant banana.

A powerful jet of something yellow, gooey and warm took hapless Jimmy Spinks full in the face, temporarily blinding him. Whatever it was, it tasted just like something his nana used to make, which Jimmy thought was strange, as was this new sensation of suddenly hurtling backwards at great speed. Was Jimmy Spinks flying?

The would-be petty larcenist crashed into a tree as the sloppy yellow jets kept on coming, and coming. Jimmy was saturated now. The gunk had soaked into his clothes, his trainers. Every time he tried to stand he spectacularly slipped and fell over, unable to get any purchase in the sweet-smelling liquid slurry. He couldn’t see a thing because it was all over his face, in his eyes. And now, as the slurry began to harden, he couldn’t move.

Couldn’t … move!

Realising at last that Jimmy had been trying to pinch her bingo money, old Mrs Mallow raised one arthritic knee upwards into her assailant’s soft parts, just to help the giant banana out and teach this lad not to mess with her again. Jimmy groaned, mainly in agony but with a generous sprinkle of utter humiliation, then passed out.

Mrs Mallow, grinning triumphantly, turned to thank her hero because it was only polite. But the man was already airborne, already up, up and away. There was a mighty streak of yellow in the night sky over St Wilfrid’s Square.

+++

‘Never seen anything like it,’ said Detective Sergeant Mick Quimby, shaking his head.

It was morning. Jimmy was fully conscious now but they were still trying to free him from what forensics had called ‘that weird giant chrysalis.’

As Quimby scribbled in his notebook, and uniformed officers attempted to extricate Jimmy with hammers and chisels from the bizarre thing which had stuck him fast to the tree trunk, Detective Inspector Geena Dobbs thanked Mrs Mallow for her statement.

‘I think our Jimmy may learn a lesson or two from this, Mrs Mallow,’ said Dobbs, smiling. ‘I don’t think Calverton needs to live in fear of this particular criminal mastermind anymore.’

Jimmy was bang to rights. But what of the ‘giant banana’ of which Mrs Mallow had spoken? Who, or what, was he? Why had he come to Calverton? And how had he managed to disable this numpty with … she reached down and dipped a finger into one of the several puddles of thick, congealing yellow liquid spattered all over the crime scene.

She sniffed suspiciously at the lump of it on her finger. Then, grimacing, she took a taste, just to be sure.

It couldn’t be.

Just like her nana used to make.

Custard.

Quimby yelped, skittering in a puddle and falling down, hard, on his bottom.

  • Next month! Safely back at HQ, Captain Custard checks in with his brave young sidekick and plans his next crime-fighting move. Meanwhile, an old enemy resurfaces, intent on chaos. DAN-DAN-DAAAAAN!