Ah writing stuff with no reward, isn't it great! In this job as all comedians know, you probably do your best work when people assume you're doing nowt. I'm writing sitcoms, treatments for sitcoms, sketches, stand up routines, comedy songs and other little bits and pieces but because I'm not fiddle faddling around on the telly, people presume that you've semi retired.

I watched a few minutes of Mock The Week last night, I can only stomach a few minutes like, and it's amazing how many of them start their sentences with 'I think what's happened is'. It's also amazing how things age. I looked at a couple of old sitcoms, the one I wrote about 18 months ago was still making me almost laugh yet the one I wrote about four to five years ago was a tiny bit shit truth be told. It goes to show how the Fawlty Towers' and I'm Alan Partridge's of this world are genuinely good.

Maybe stand up is like that? I can still pull old-ish routines out of the bag. I'll be brutally honest, my BBC world service routine is actually from 1998! Not last decade but the one before that. Maybe I'll drop it when it gets to 20 years, that's if I'm still a comic by then. My pandas routine is from about 2004 maybe 2005 and even the swearing one that people quote a bit is about three years old 2009. In my slightly swell head opinion, they still seem reasonably fresh and they certainly get laughs, whereas I have other routines that look a bit shabby now, they look like the work of a tired old hack. To be fair I don't think they were at the time, it just seemed like it then.

I had a big routine about Pedophiles back in about 2000, it got me attention and a fair bit of praise but years later with the emergence of Frankie Boyle and Jim Jefferies, it would just look like a middle aged man hanging on the coat tails of the latest shock trend and so I dropped it.

The annoying thing about sitcoms is that it's on bloody tape forever whether it's good, Gavin and Stacey or indifferent. Anyway I've got to play football now, Imre Varadi's goals still look exciting regardless when you see them. Speak tomorrow.

TODAY'S BLOG IS SPONSORED BY THE BIN MEN, GAWD BLESS THEM.

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