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.