Nunhead and The Cosby Show

Monkeys piss me off. They don't but I liked the idea of starting this blog with that sentence. Happy now? The real blog starts now;

My girlfriend and I are currently looking to buy a house. I say house, I mean flat. We're not millionaires. In London house buying is only for high court judges, world class surgeons and actors who can fuck their way into those Direct Line adverts. The fact is that it's my girlfriend who's really buying the flat anyway. Without her I'd probably be living a lie just to get myself a cheap bedsit at a lesbian and gay housing association.

We've lived in Stoke Newington for the last six or so years and would quite like to stay. That seems unlikely though. Our budget can only stretch to flats in Stoke Newington with a kitchen OR a bathroom when we're rather keen on having both. This has led us to look around. A week or so ago we had a look around Nunhead. Nunhead is a place I'd heard of but had no idea it was in London. I thought it was somewhere in the home counties. 'I, the Right Honourable Member for Nunhead should like to speak now'. It is in fact in Zone 2 and only half an hour from Oxford Circus. It is also a shit hole.

We'd bumped into some friends who'd told us they now live there and 'it was really quite nice, actually'. So, off we went to see an in budget flat and have a look around. We got off the train and walked out onto the high street which consisted of three fried chicken shops and a laundrette. What?! No Wholefoods!! Then we arrived at the street we might live on. The first thing I saw was two stray dogs clambering through the massive windows of someone's living room. I peeked inside to see who our future neighbours might be. There stood two men with their tops off drinking Special Brew at 11 in the morning. 'Hello!'. Next we saw another man standing in the street, in sandals, smoking crack and having some cider. One of the worries of moving to the suburbs and settling down is that you'll feel old but it was nice to know that Nunhead is a bit of a party town. After viewing the not too bad flat we had a look around the neighbourhood and my girlfriend asked what it was that made the area seem so shitty. I pointed out that 50% of the people we had seen were junkies.

This is where we've got to. Professionals in their 30s with fairly good incomes (once you average the two of us out) trying to convince themselves that the ghetto really might not be that bad a place to buy a flat. Are Americans saying that 'some parts of Compton are really quite nice actually'?

If you do live in Nunhead and are offended I apologise. The chances are though, seeing as it's 4 in the afternoon, you've probably had a little too much to drink and it might be time for you to have a bit of a lie down. I'm sure there are nice lots of nice people in Nunhead and I'm sure there's lots of fun to be had, provided you stay in your house at all times and lock the doors. I just want to live in the house that the Huxtables* lived in and I don't see why I can't have it. Sure, the live studio audience would get annoying at times but can I have it? Please?

*Younger readers or bellends who never watched telly might not know who the Huxtables were. They were the family that The Cosby Show was based around. If my memory serves me right, they consisted of;

Cliff - the father. He loved jazz and wore silk pyjamas. He was a vagina and baby doctor.
Claire - the mother. She was a lawyer who was quite strict but attractive and caring. She wouldn't let her daughters wear make up.
Sandra - The eldest daughter. Kind of winey. Married a winey man.
Denise - The next daughter. Very sexy. Bit of a rebel. Married a naval officer.
Theo - The son. Enthusiastic but not academic. Loved pussy.
Vanessa - Second youngest. A little gawky and horse like. Drank bourbon at a friends party once.
Rudy - The youngest. Very cute until she reached the age of eleven or so. They solved this problem by introducing the even cuter Olivia (played by Raven Simone) who ultimately erased the memory of Rudy's early cuteness. I imagine that Keshia Knight-Pullam who played Rudy grew to despise Raven Simone.

I have done this all without the aid of the internet. You may now applaud.

Fanny partings.

A week or two ago I did a gig at Wrexham University. When I walked on staged one of the students said 'Urgh! Side parting!'. I wasn't aware that what I have is an official 'side parting' but was more shocked by her reaction to it. I felt like I was back at school. As regular readers will know and no doubt obsess about I lived in Newcastle until I was 13. There it was centre partings that got the abuse. In 1992 Geordie school kids called centre partings 'fanny partings'. The word fanny in this instance referred to a vagina and not as it does in the U.S a bottom or 'toosh'. So having a centre parting was the ultimate fashion faux pas and was considered equivalent to walking around with a vagina on your head.

When I moved to Essex in 1993 everyone had vaginas on their heads. There it was the holders of side partings who suffered abuse. There was a quick realignment of both where I parted my hair and how I thought. Frustratingly, no matter how hard I tried, my parting would always insist on gradually moving to the side. My head did not want to look like a fanny. Sometimes it would whisper to me 'I ain't looking like no goddamn minge!'.

In school life, fashion is very much based around small things like footwear, partings and how you tie your tie. This is because the uniform restricts where fashion can have it's evil way. At University it should be different. At Wrexham it wasn't because at least some of the students at Wrexham were thick. Sorry Wrexham. Your football team may have achieved an unlikely FA Cup victory against Arsenal in the 90s but your University is shit. In another moment the act before me mentioned a Welsh town. An audience member shouted 'Urgh! Gay!'. Apparently part of that town's name translates as the word 'gay'. I learnt this when the student said 'it mutates as gay!'. Not 'translates'. Mutates. Even if English is her second language (possible) she's still proper thick. Proper thick and at University.

Doing gigs at some of the country's less reputable universities has had a direct effect on my political opinions. From my, admittedly anecdotal, experiences it would seem that there are far too many people going to University. There appear to be lots of people with sub 90 IQs clogging up overgrown institutions. I appreciate this is a very snobby opinion to have. Especially coming from someone who merely has a degree in fucking Theatre Arts from a University with the word Metropolitan in it's name. Perhaps conventional intelligence shouldn't be a barrier to higher education. The thing is though, a lot of the students appear to have no interest in learning.

This blog post I should stress is not a policy report that I feel the government should take serious note of. It is perhaps unsurprising that the students at my gigs aren't studying whilst I'm onstage. They are after all witnessing the best comic since Freddie Starr and the closest this country has got to Richard Pryor. I do, however, get a very strong impression that some of these places are kind of unnecessary. There are 80,000 students currently studying for a BS in Professional Paragliding in the UK. Do we really need 80,000 more paragliders every couple of years? I just made that fact up but I think it makes a very good point.

In conclusion, I'll part my hair any fucking way I like thank you.