For the achives...

Here is one of the first routines that I ever wrote. It’s about the Richard Timney scandal. If you’ve forgotten, it largely proves my point that I missed my chance to say it. I was happy with it but wrote while still too timid to get up on stage. It was six months ago, so can’t really count as satire - treat it like watching Have I Got News For You on Dave; you might laugh a bit but you won’t be able to escape the feeling you’re moving slowly closer to death.

It’s also probably over five minutes. It’s really not worth the effort of seeing what works and what doesn’t on stage with more time elapsing and thus becoming less and less relevant. So instead I have posted on the Internet, where genius is lost in its infinity.

Sit back and imagine my hilarious delivery and beautiful face…

There’s always been this strange attitude to wanking in this country – stranger than our relationship with, you know, like normal sex and stuff.

In the Victoria era they believed that masturbating would lead to moral impurity and vanity, and possible case the collapse of the British Empire as it had the Roman Empire, so they invented rugby and football and made all the public schoolboys play to think as a collective, and make them good leaders of tomorrow.

You were actually expelled from public school if caught wanking. They had prefects looking for younger boys wanking. Strangely, they were just as concerned with homosexuality. But times change, it’s all light-hearted buggery and wanking competitions now.

The world’s moved on.

Not so long ago, when I was young, I remember first becoming aware of sex like most people with the saucy seaside postcard. The one with a pair of woman’s breasts pressed together holding an ice cream. I was on football tour and all the boys were kind of staring at the postcard not saying a word, all of us, in that moment, losing our innocence. They’re better than ice cream. We knew it was rude, really rude and it would be our only glimpse for months. Apart from the Spanish boy, who was stocking up on cock-shaped like pencils and hardcore porn.

It’s different now, the Internet, the great democracy it is, means anyone of any age can watch the nastiest shit imaginable, but in Britain we’re still the same.

The Richard Timney affair, the Home Secretary’s husband, proved how strangely obsessed we still are with wanking. Jacqui Smith has since admitted that she left the third highest position in the country because of her husband wanking. The fall-out was too much to bear.

The MP expenses scandal was brilliant for the increasing irrelevant newspapers in this country, because there is 24-hour news, so they just rely on stories that can be serialised like Jade Goody, Maddy McCann, and MP Expenses, and they played their trump card with the wanking.

I know what you’re thinking; I do remember it was six months ago. Too short a time-span to become a clever cultural reference and too long to be actual satire.

I know what you’re thinking –

The thing every man thought is why didn’t you use the fucking Internet?

But this was where Richard was almost very clever because Jacqui Smith as Home Secretary oversaw the UK adult industry, so he could kind of say; “I’d guessed you thought it was alright. You can’t see any penetration or anything. I’m not a pervert.”

What the fuck does it matter anyway? He had a wank, so what? Ahh but it was with our money. So… It was £10.

What does it prove? Apart from the fact a middle-aged man can’t come in under 10 minutes.

Well eight minutes with adverts.