Pointless Anger: Righteous Ire

Michael Legge

I went on holidays today. It was less than a day, but surely any time anyone goes to Brighton it's a proper holiday? I haven't been to Brighton in years and realised my geography wasn't as good as it was. I went for a quick booze at The Bulldog; a pub I used to go to quite frequently in about 1988, but it took me ages to find it, and when I did realised it was much smaller than I remember it.

Robin Ince

I met with Neal at the Caroline Of Brunswick (or The Kaz, as someone told me when asking directions). We had a rather disappointing but enormous Sunday roast, and moved upstairs to the L-shaped venue. We got front row seats. No one ever likes to sit there, but Neal and I are total attention seekers and grabbed them. We were soon joined by Vicky and her friend.

It was an odd start to the show. Traditionally the audience face an empty stage and the act is introduced, before bounding on and basking in the applause. Not so today. Robin and Michael were on "stage" just chatting as the audience filed in. Eventually the show began and the two boys moved off stage. We thought that was so they could come on again to applause, but all they did was pull the curtain closed on the other side of the L-shape, leaving almost half the audience behind it.

Pissed dog

They ranted for a while about nothing in particular, and although this is what we come for, they have a section in the show where they ask the audience what has made them angry and the audience vote to see if it is pointless anger, or righteous ire. My hand went up first and I regaled them with a story about being at Gay Pride yesterday and being threatened with being hit quite hard simply because I told a man he was a "fucking cunt" for buying his dog a beer,. Thats right, he didnt just give his dog the remnants of his own pint or give it water and pretend to us it was beer. He actually went to the bar and bought a beer and poured it into a bowl for the dog. The dog was hot. He was panting and would have drank anything. I'm getting angry again just typing this Anyway, let's look at the dog cos he is nice and it will make me calm down -->

Other topics included a man who was angry about a "try it before you buy it" religion course, (resulting in controversial comments from Michael, leading Robin into an awkward silence) and someone being furious about the price of booze at a festival (duh!) Michael finished the gig by reading one of his blogs - in fact this one here - which was much funnier being read out than reading it of the page.

The evening ended with a lovely song from Michael, like all good shows should. We had a beer or 2 afterwards outside, and headed home. I shared a train with Michael and Robin which was lovely if disappointingly devoid of arguments. I did, however, learn lots of comedy gossip as well as the fun that can be had with Wikipedia - I'm also amazed the blog I wrote about that journey has managed to get more words of comment than there are of blog already, and had a lovely chat about the atheism in comedy with Robin on the tube on the way back to Angel.

This is a show that will never have a script or even a plan. Basically, the show will change every time you see it, depending on Michael and Robin's particular moods, or what they have seen recently. I imagine in Edinburgh they will be much much angrier ! Anyway, if you are going to Edinbugh go and see it !