London Calling

I happily purchased a bolognese pastry thing from Franny P the other day, took it out of its box, and found it in a cardboard sleeve thing (for microwaving) labelled Qwik Crisp. In the great pantheon of bad franglicisms, this comes fairly high, although its purely spelling-based badness means it can't quite compete with le relooking (a grammatically incorrect compound of what is already the wrong word) and the unforgiveably awful le pin's (greengrocer's apostrophe creating a bad plural which is then casually used as the singular with not the slightest regard for anything).

Then again, there was a processed poultry product in the next-door freezer compartment labelled "Chick Balls".

This is nearly as bad as the impro show we did last week, at a 19th-century château in the Picardie countryside. It was the single worst show of any sort ever. We were hired out to entertain 300 corporate guests. Slight issue: they were eating dinner at the time, and weren't remotely interested in any comedy impro that might have been going on. Especially as half of them didn't speak English.

Château les Fontaines - scene of stage death on a grand and repeated scale

Also didn't help that they were all middle-aged engineer types with the charisma and outgoing nature of an office carpet. So we did an hour or so of bollocks that no-one really watched, abused the audience thoroughly in the final scene, and left several hundred euros richer, our artistic souls well and truly flogged. In many senses of the word. Come to think of it, the château did look just like the Star Ac one.

Anyhow, this week has been more positive. The big news, in case you haven't heard, is that there will be a late August Timbervisit to, of all places, the UK. Timber will be appearing in Stoke on 22nd, Brum on 23rd, and London on 24th and 25th. Due to unprecedented public demand, we advise you to book early to avoid disappointment. Unless you don't want to see me, in which case don't.