eviltechie.co.uk Life and times of a sit-down comedian

Monsters

I went to see Monsters at the Arcola Theatre tonight.  It’s a theatre production looking at the James Boulger (not Jamie - no-one called him that except the press) case.

It’d be a stretch to say that I enjoyed it, but it was certainly moving and raised far more questions that it answered.  I’ve read some of the transcripts of the case, because I read a book by that dickhead Paul Britton (he was responsible for Colin Stagg being charged with Rachel Nickell’s murder) and he was involved in advising the police before the interrogations (Paul Britton, not Colin Stagg.  BUT IT WOULD HAVE BEEN FUNNY IF HE HAD BEEN - I’m trying that out as a catchphrase).   I found myself on the verge of tears at one point, where the policeman gets John Venables to admit what he did to James (not Jamie) Boulger.

I was wondering why that was, I’m normally much more stoic and not given to showing any kind of emotion - but it reminded me of what someone said to me recently.  Basically, having started doing standup, I think in order to write this stuff you have to bare your soul and actually connect with your emotions somewhat.  The difficulty is, of course, is that emotions aren’t a tap that you can turn on or off at will.  Or, of course, you could just do some hillarious observational stuff about how men leave the toilet seat up and this annoys women, and that’s the funniest thing that there has ever been, ever.