If I opened my heart there'd be no room for air.

I sat up all night on Sunday watching the Oscars, I studied film and old habits die hard.  Most Stand-up comics wanted to rock stars, I didn't, I wanted to be a director.

After I left university I took an idea that I'd had and extended it into a feature film and spent 2 years trying to write it and get it made, I got training, I got the Prince's Trust to agree to fund me if I could get the rest of the funding in place, I wrote a business plan that made the bank agree to part fund me and then...  Well then I gave up, because to be frank the film I'd written was shit.  It was awful, it was wish fulfilment bollocks, my way of dealing with the bullying I'd faced at school, the alcoholic paranoia that I was going through and a way to focus my rage.

It was a few months after that when I was working a shitty data entry job in my home town of Chorley and thinking "Is this it?  Is this what I do now for 48 weeks a year for the next 50 years until I retire and then have a few years to myself before I die?  Fuck.  That."  and I started looking for a new outlet, and comedy, the one thing I really wanted but I thought I couldn't ever do became the last thing on my list of creative outlets and I gave it a go.

These days I make my living making people laugh and I'm really good at it, and that's why I can stay up all night on a Sunday without having to worry about getting up for work the next day.

Winter stripped the blossoms bare, a different tree now lines the streets, shaking it's fists in the air

To everyone posting links to The Express's story that it's going to be the coldest winter for 66 years, a few things to consider:

Firstly, it's the Express. I'm not saying you should take *Everything* they say with a pinch of salt, but they haven't had a front page in 16 years that isn't about a conspiracy behind Princess Diana's death, "New" information on the Madeline McCann case, items that either cause or cure cancer, or Weather. 

Secondly, what would a newspaper who regularly prints stories claiming climate change is a hoax gain by claiming that it's the coldest winter on record? (Odd that people who claim a cold snap, or even one cold winter means climate change is a hoax, using that particular pseudo-scientific technique you could easily say that a hot day in the summer proves it.)

Thirdly, this is the long range forcast that they've interpreted as "Worst winter for 66 years with 100 days of snow!!!!": "December 2013

December looks like being an unsettled month with no one particular pattern dominating the whole of the proceedings. During more settled phases of weather, frost and ice can be expected, perhaps severe with regards to frost. There will be a risk of sleet and snow, generally across northern and north eastern areas, with perhaps some southerly incursions, although anything sustained here is unlikely. Milder weather will be in evidence with wet and windy episodes, although around the festive period to the north and north east, perhaps conditions cold enough for a scattering of snow showers, making for a White Christmas. Drier than average for the month across northern areas, on the average to the south. Temperatures for December will reflect on or around the average.

January 2014

January generally looks a wetter and potentially colder month, possibly significantly colder, so combining the two looks likely to produce some snow events of note throughout the first month of 2014, but whilst the mix may favour chillier weather, milder and wetter weather will be in evidence at times. The emphasis on the snow will not just be across northern regions but fairly widespread at times, giving much of the UK a taste of winter's past, bringing the season more into line with how the weather should be for the time of year. Perhaps a few surprises during January. With regards to rainfall, a wetter than average month, with temperatures on or below the average."

Essentially , they've headlined their report "A taste of winter past?" and The Express has interpreted that, rather than the content of the report, which, it has to be said follows Betteridge's Law of Headlines "Any headline that ends in a question mark can be answered with the word "no""


What we have, is a paper with an agenda of denying climate change, claiming experts are saying one thing when they're not, and writing it in such an alarmist way that it seeps into the national consciousness "It's going to be the worst winter on record" then when it isn't, who's to blame? Is it the newspaper who made things up based, not on evidence, but the headline to a piece? No, blame the bloody weathermen, they always get it wrong don't they? Eh? Well, no actually, they get it right over 90% of the time. This particular piece of bullshit from the Express is a win/win for them. Wrong? Not their fault. Right? Climate change is a hoax!

Further reading on this can be found here:

http://www.vantageweatherservices.co.uk/3.html

http://www.theguardian.com/environment/georgemonbiot/2012/jun/15/daily-express-weather-forecast-jonathan-powell

http://www.northdevonjournal.co.uk/Met-Office-blasts-weather-reports-8220-worst/story-19934266-detail/story.html

http://www.newstatesman.com/blogs/media/2012/08/dont-trust-daily-expresss-weather-reports

Don't touch me I'm a real live wire.

1,200 MURDERED IN THE LAST 10 YEARS BY MENTAL PATIENTS!

Shit the bed!  That's fucking terrifying.  Really? Wow.  how the fuck are we not walking down the street being randomly attacked as we walk?  "Well I just popped out for a paper and some nutter murdered me. Pow, just like that, shot through the heart (and you're to blame, you give mental health policy a bad name).  5th time this week you know?  I just keep on going out there and getting murdered."  Surely that should be a thing we're hearing from our friends on a daily basis?

But we're not, because when you wait a few minutes and have a look at that figure and go "Okay, there's 62 million people in the UK, even if that's the majority of the murder rate that's still a very very rare occurrence.

There were an estimated 6,800 Murders in the UK in the last 10 years.  One in four people, including myself suffers with a mental health condition.  So realistically, homicides by "mental patients" should be around 1,700, but they're not, whereas the 75% of you who aren't loonies are responsible for 82% of the murders.

This is before we even consider the fact that 95% of all murders are committed by men.

I know, I know, you're freaking out now going "Sanctions need to be put in place to save us!  Why aren't we locking up all the men?"  and to that I say we don't need to.  Just 95% of them at the very most.

She maybe the face I can't forget A trace of pleasure or regret

As if being a trans woman wasn't dangerous enough, coming out is difficult as it is but doing it the day after you've been given a 35 year prison sentence is hard as fucking nails.

But that's exactly what Chelsea Manning has done and for that I respect her greatly.  When someone whose name is so public comes out whether they're a musician such as Laura Jane Grace of Against Me, or in this case Chelsea Manning of Wikileaks fame, the idea that trans people's lives belong to the media is thrown into sharp relief.

If you're like me and hate injustice, but are a bit emotionally fragile news like this is met with relief and dread.  Relief that as more and more people know about more and more high profile transitioning trans people the world will get slightly better for the rest of us, and dread because it means when I see that trending topic on twitter I don't want to click on to it because I know it's like the bit in Scrooged where Bill Murray looks under The Ghost of Christmas Future's robes and sees the lost souls screaming in eternal torment.

I don't read the bottom half of the internet, the bit where the general public get their say on things,  I remember someone once saying that reading the comments section on the internet is like examining a 15 year old boy's bedsheets with a magnifying glass, you know what you're going to find and it's best not to look.

I also apply this rule looking at the top half of The Daily Mail, whose commenter's this week lurched beyond parody when one of them asked where one of the two British girls arrested for drug smuggling in Peru had got her jacket from.

I used to be full of piss and vinegar and would search out every injustice, eke every bit of outrage out of anything that I could (and if you'll remember what happened a few weeks ago between Caitlin Moran and I you'll realise I still can)  but I eventually realised that it's best for my mental health if I don't go digging.  I know it's a bit of a cowards way out, but I know that as a recovering addict and alcoholic that if I go picking at these things then the likelihood is that I'll get all angry, then I'll get upset, then this will spiral and if I'm not careful my mind is back to the same places it was when I was drinking and using drugs.  So all in all it's best to be avoided.

I was reminded of this yesterday when I was doing a phone interview for a Radio One show due out in October about trans issues and was being interviewed by Paris Lees, someone who I have had run ins with and arguments with in the past but whom I respect immensely.  3/4 of the way through the interview she asked me which trans people I look up to.  And I thought about it for a second and realised that she was one of them, so I told her.

The reason for that is that when I can't bear to look through the newspaper reports that either misgender trans people or paint us out as monsters, or as freaks or as deceivers, she has made her career from looking at these things and fighting that fight.  I respect that a lot.  It makes my job of going out there, or even staying here and shouting about equality that much easier if all I have to do when people are shits is tell them to fuck off, or block them.

So today when the news broke of Chelsea Manning beginning her transition, which had to come on a day when it looked like I might be getting made homeless (in the end it didn't, but it was touch and go.)  I thought "Fair play internet, you win this round, I will avoid you."

As it happens This time the Mail used the right pronouns all the way through, the BBC in their coverage didn't.  This doesn't really surprise me, often right wingers really like me and are more accepting of me being female (even if it is for the wrong reasons) than the supposedly open minded left are.  Stuff like this hasn't surprised me since I was doing some work on a piece with a very successful writer, who'd written some fabulous lesbian characters who asked me "how can you be lesbian and trans?  Don't all lesbians just want to be men anyway?"

But I understand that people get confused.  It's confusing to deal with something outside of your comfort zone.  People will fuck up, people will use the wrong pronouns, just like my family did,  just like my dad still does sometimes by accident when he's nervous and he's around a new partner of mine.  Every time.  He gets really upset by it but I know that it comes from nerves rather than malice so I find it really endearing.

There will be people out there who do get it wrong, and that's okay because there is a difference between making a mistake because you're used to one thing and deliberately disregarding someone's autonomy and preference.


My partner who has English as a second language put it best when we were talking about how people perceive trans people  "there is a worldwide misconception that transsexuals become the opposite sex.  That little Johnny was happily playing with guns and soldiers and suddenly decided in later life to become a woman.  That's how I had it explained to me 'he decided to become a woman' when that's just not the case."

And she's right.  If the papers and the media just said "Manning is actually a woman." rather than "Manning is becoming a woman"  Over night it would slightly shift the perception of people to a more understanding viewpoint.

Often, exclusionary radical feminism events such as the Michigan Womyn's Music Festival which has an entrance policy of "Womyn born womyn only!" fails in the realisation that trans women were born women.  It's just that they weren't treated as women from day one, and had to tell the rest of the world that they were when they got older.  Or as I try to explain it, when I was born my parents were convinced I was going to be a boy, for about 20 years.

I didn't transition to become a woman, I transitioned away from living as a man. And as scary as it was it was without a doubt the best thing I have ever done in my life, without it I wouldn't have a life.

I hope this also makes it easier for people who are struggling with being trans to see that whatever their personal circumstances and obstacles to their coming out and transitioning that at least they've not just been sentenced to 35 years in a federal prison after spending 3 and a half years in Guantanamo.

So to Chelsea Manning who is starting this process now in the most trying of circumstances I wish the best of luck and can say I can add another person to the list of trans people I admire and hope for the best for her,

Yes I did yes I did, won't someone please tell them who the eff I is.

I'm sat here with writer's block, I turn to my partner, Sanna, who says to me "You talk about things all the time, just write about that."  Which is helpful, and one of the reasons I love her so much, than and that over the weekend when we were bored in a hotel we drew beards and moustaches on Sanna said "I look like a fat paedophile!"  I giggled and she said "Are you calling me fat?"  Because obviously that's the more offensive thing to be called.

It's difficult to think of things to write, simply because even when I try to talk about things that are serious I try to keep it light, try to keep it funny.  In a week it'll be 9 years since I Started doing stand up comedy.  A lot has changed in that time, some things have stayed the same, my heart still dies a little inside when someone comes up to me after a gig (as happens about 3 times a week now) and goes "I don't normally find women funny but you were great."  9 times out of 10 it's a woman who says that and I know it's supposed to be a compliment, but it really isn't, I've never asked any of my black or asian comedian friends if they get the same, I think that we've moved on enough with racism in this country that people know not to go up to people like Daliso Chaponda who I was gigging with at the weekend in Nottingham and go "You know, I don't normally find black people funny, but you were great!"  Maybe it's not racism, maybe there isn't that cultural stereotype that black people aren't funny.  Does Tiger Woods get it?  "I don't normally think that black people are any good at golf but you've got quite a swing on you."  Of course they don't it's patronising as fuck.

You can't silence the voice of the voiceless.

Interesting times people, that 20th century American faux-Chinese curse "May you live in interesting times" continues.  Maybe it's because I'm a massive twat who doesn't know when to keep their trap shut, or maybe stuff just seems to happen when I'm around.  I don't know.

I am writing this on my partner's weird Swedish keyboard, so if there's an occasional "ö", "ä" or "å"  that is the reason.

In recent weeks there's been a lot of talk about trolls and internet abuse.  People sending rape threats and threats of violence to women who dare to speak out.  Before we go any further I will categorically state a very contentious opinion here, I think it's a bad thing to do.  You should never threaten anyone.  When you are threatened you should go to the police.  Mostly when I've been threatened this is what I have done.

I've had a number of rape threats online.  But this isn't just an online problem, I've had rape threats in the street and on stage, one lovely human being on a Chris Morris forum when I spoke about having been threatened with being raped on stage suggested [misgendering is the writer's own] "I wish s/he would get raped then maybe that would shut s/him up about it"

Clearly they don't know me very well as I'd not shut up about it, I'd probably end up doing an ill advised Edinburgh fringe show which I'd get 2 stars from The List and be told that I was being "Mawkish to the point of absurdity"  But this is how these things go.

It's part of a culture where women are seen as objects, if like me you're a lesbian, mostly heterosexual society defines you in relationship to them, that you're "a waste"  or, as I've heard over and over and over again from men who seem to labour under the delusion that if I were to meet the right man I would change my mind.  Maybe I will meet the right man, preferably one with a vagina though, really not all that fond of penises in general.  Being trans my body is seen as other people's property too, I'm asked regularly very personal questions that most people would never dream of asking a cisgendered (That is, not trans) person.

Sometimes these things threaten the worldview of people so much they feel the need to have a word with me, like the people who come up to me after a gig sometimes when 90% of the audience loved it to tell me that I'm really not funny and should quit stand-up comedy.

I'm a member of a minority, within a minority within the most oppressed majority in the world.  I am aware that being white, and British really does help, but you know being a trans, lesbian recovering addict who's in a relationship with an unemployed immigrant relying on the NHS does put me high on the list of "Most evil things likely to destroy Britain" according to the Daily Mail.  But being trans in 2013 is like being gay in 1970 (which is better than when I first came out when it was more like being gay in the 40's.)

As a result the standard media narrative is that I am a stereotype, I am a bloke in a dress and a wig and that I've made a decision to become a woman in order to trick normal good honest people into sleeping with me and making them secretly gay.  Everything in my life is read in relation to this one aspect of who I am, and I am expected to have been shunned by my family and society and live a twilight existence where I should be massively grateful that someone, anyone could love me at all (and if they do it's most likely because they're a fetishist who's turned on by my state)

We don't get to be represented as we are in the media unless we fit into these narrow boundaries.

Over the last 13 years things have got better and better and in the last 5 years since I've been on twitter they have improved massively because it has finally given us a voice.  It has allowed us to talk to each other and get involved and to overcome some of the societally induced shame that we have had to experience up until now.

We too get abuse, sometimes from right wingers and fundamentallists who think that we're sick individuals pretending to be something that we're not, and sometimes from left wingers and fundamentalist feminists who think that we're sick individuals pretending to be something that we're not.  And most of the rest of it comes from people who think that it's funny when they think they look bad to say "I look like a tranny!"

Like all the groups of women who stand up and put our heads above the parapet we get shot at.

As a comic when I started off my set was littered with really offensive, and not very funny jokes about rape, aids, and homophobic stuff that I wince to think about now.  I have an mp3 of my first gig in a comedy club that I am horrified to listen back to.  For about 3 years I worked under the misapprehention that I should be as offensive as possible and if the audience didn't get it that was their fault.  Then something changed and I totally did a 180.  I decided that I should stop it, it wasn't clever, it wasn't edgy it was childish and boring and it didn't make me happy.  I needed to make sure that there were no targets in my set unless they were deserving.  No sexism, no ablist or classist language, that the only people who could take offence at my stuff should be bigots or prudes.

I try to stick by this rule to this day in all my affairs.  One of my favourite moments in comedy was seeing a very good comic who is a really good friend using the word "spastic" on stage in the pejorative, after the gig a woman with cerebal palsy found him and spoke to him about what that word ment, how it made her feel and why he should maybe think hard about whether he should use it.  It was wonderful to see that, and to see that comic's reaction to that and his heartfelt apology.

It's one of the great things about twitter that it gives a voice to the voiceless, through it I've made some great friends all over the world from Singapore to Mexico, people with severe disabilities, people with none, rich, poor, from all ethnic and religious backgrounds (Though mainly left wing) and so many of them, like me take great comfort in being able to communicate using it and not feeling alone.

People, committing crimes and threatening people ruin it.  They do, there's no way round it they really do.  And they need to be dealt with, the police need to take it seriously and twitter needs to hand over the ip addresses of offenders to the police (Obviously this will make people start using tor and other VPNs if they wish to give out threats of this kind)  This, to my mind is much better than adding an abuse button, which will in itself be abused.  What happens when a woman says something that the guys who orchestrated the recent threats disagree with?  She'll get blocked.  Or what happens the next time I say somthing that fundamentalist feminists disagree with?  will I get blocked?

No, I believe it's better to petition the police in large enough numbers to get them to take this seriously.

They didn't about 5 years ago when I'd upset a London based promoter, who said on an online forum "The next time I see you I'm going to beat you up and knock you out safe in the knowledge that you're really a man."  There was a definite chance I'd bump into this guy and I was afraid for my personal safety, but the police looked at it and said it sounded a bit like banter and they didn't want to get involved.

So yesterday Twitter Silence was held.  Spearheaded by Caitlin Moran.  The idea was to boycott twitter for 24 hours, something that she'd said in a times article was to show them what it would be like if it were left to the trolls.  Having seen a number of friends have run ins with her before after she'd said something offensive and then called her on it she'd blocked them I initially found the whole thing to seem to be some sort of ego boost for her.

Also the fact that doing the twitter silence was basically giving the abusers the outcome they wanted, at least for a day, made it seem to me, as I commented in the early hours of Sunday morning "Like having a pie eating contest for diabetes"  or "Showing the IRA the UK's not to be trifled with by giving them Northern Ireland back to The Republic of Ireland."

It seemed silly, considering that from what I'd been told she'd said about it being "leaviing twitter to the trolls" it appeared she'd condemned everyone who wasn't joining in.  It felt a lot like going "Well I think this and if you don't agree you're obviously a paedophile."  Suddenly the onus is on you to prove you're not no matter how silly the charge levelled against you is.

So I found the whole idea of being silent for 24 hours to show "them" daft, and ill thought through, from people who have a constant platform to share their views.  It was around then that I saw someone had done an audit of her offensive tweets.  I remembered a couple of friends calling her on her use of the word "tranny" and her not apologising and blocking them,  that was the point that I blocked her from my timeline.  But these tweets were showing up, and being the sort of person who gets angry when people are being bigoted I quickly collected them into a storify and tweeted them.  Suddenly it went viral.  I genuinely never expected that to happen.  Within a couple of hours I had a few hundred new twitter followers.

It all still felt stupid, I'd made a few jokes at her expense about her final tweet being the last noise she'd make before disappearing up her own arse for 24 hours,  I was angry about what I'd read, and as far as I was aware she'd never apologised for her language, and use of terms like spazz, mong, tranny and using lesbian in the pejorative.

I found that for her to have spearheaded this particular campaign in light of what she'd said just confirmed my strongly held prejudice that this was all a backslapping exercise by a group of trendy London columnists.

Then there was the backlash, a Times writer went all "Leave Brittney alone!" about her telling me there are worse people to have a go at.  I tried to explain how I have a go at them on other occasions and that I was highlighing the hypocrisy of what she'd done in promoting herself as "one of the nice people"  I got told I was gibbering and then got blocked.  My anxiety levels rose and I got a nose bleed, later some people came in with "is that the best you've got?" spoiling for a fight that I was going to have no part in.

By the time Doctor Who Live was on I had moved on from what had been a weird and fun distraction.  It seemed that the majority of people who were online yesterday felt the same as I did and there was a mellower atmosphere.  After midnight the few who I follow who'd done the silence started coming back on and it was business as usual.

The thing was, obviously it wasn't over.  With the people who were most likely to be offended by yesterday's goings on only just back online today was going to be a different story.

It was lunch time when the comedian Ellis James tweeted me a link to what Caitlin Moran had written about my storify page.  I read it hurriedly anxious and expecting to take offense, which I did, obviously.  Massive twat remember.  Then I gave it five minutes and read it again.  And again.  And a third time when I was calmed down.

She came across as contrite, she apologised for what she'd said and for any offence caused (I initially read that as transfering responsibility onto the offended parties rather than an acual apology).  I appreciated her candour and above all I think I agreed with her.  I was greatful to her for posting it and I tweeted my thanks to her for it.

I felt a bit of a 'nana. I also know that people who had retweeted me or who had latched on to the things I'd posted had probably gone too far.  It's that deindividuation that comes with the realisation of power.  Anyway  I still thought the twitter silence was a bad idea.  I don't think it achieved anything positive, I think all that energy could have been focussed better (and that includes all the energy that went into hating on Caitlin Moran).

One thing I diagreed with her about in the end, I wasn't suggesting that unless you were perfect that you shouldn't be allowed to protest, but that if you were protesting certain actions then you should be held accountable for anything you said which contradicted said protest.

Of course, later on, being told by Mr Bad Science Ben Goldacre a personal hero of mine that being involved in this made me one of "the worst people in the world"  an acolade that he's previously given to others including Andrew Wakefield of the dodgy MMR Autism made up link was the pinnacle of this strange 48 hours.  By this point I didn't feel angry, or upset or anything other than complete bemusement at this.

I mean I know I called an 8 year-old a "fucking cunt" last week in a supermarket, but I'm hardly Robert Mugabe am I?

I did ask if I could see his evidence or at least get this peer reviewed, so far though he has declined to comment.


The worst thing about this whole episode is that we're all on the same side.  We think that people being dickish and threatening is a bad thing, we think that equality is a good thing.  I think that we all come from different perspectives and backgrounds so some of us have had to deal with more erasure of our opinions than others, and that's the thing that's been lost in all this.

I was angry because twitter is the main outlet for my voice in a way that I didn't have before, I wasn't going to be silent for a single day in order to prove a point so in my anger I fixed on to the easiest thing, and then once I built up a head of steam I kept going.

What she said in those tweets was awful, but she apologised and was sincere in her apology.  I may not see eye to eye with her on some things, but I totally respect that.  Also as a comedian I have a responsibility to make fun of those with a position of power who I see doing things that I think are silly or dumb or stupid and in the main that's what this started out as, it just got a little out of hand, and so for anywhere that I overstepped the mark I would like to offer a complete and sincere apology.

And to Ben Goldacre, if we can find some way of scientifically finding out where in the world I rank as worst person (hopefully below David Cameron and Stuart Hall (the disgraced TV presenter, not the lovely sociologist)) I would be very grateful, as it may even help me write a show about all this for the next Edinburgh Fringe.

Maybe not though, I know most comedians go to Edinburgh to be discovered, I'm under no illusions now in my career that the only way I'm likely to be discovered is in a shallow grave in the woods by someone out walking their dog.

They call it climbing and we call it visibility

It's been a while, and I've been trying to think about starting to blog again.  I enjoy it and I find it really helpful, but every time I mean to something gets in the way.  Life has a funny way of doing that.  But today something happened that shocked me into writing  again.  The news of the death of Lucy Meadows.

Lucy was a Teacher from Accrington, just 13 miles away from where I grew up.  She was also a similar age to me, and like me Lucy was trans.

It's been 13 years since I came out as trans and started the journey to becoming who I now am, I was 20 at the time and the internet was nowhere near as common as it is now, access to other trans people was very limited, I grew up in a cultural vacuum.   I also grew up in a small village just off the Pennine Moors, it was all a bit Jeanette Winterson.  Thinking back to the world then it all seems so different.  I hoped that things would get better, I knew that they would, because they always do, eventually.  I had a very supportive friends and family network and as I grew in confidence about what I was doing and who I was my life got better and better.

As this was the early 2000s and being gay had only just become culturally acceptable, even fashionable and Canal St in Manchester's Gay Village was full on weekends of stag and hen nights looking for somewhere that bit cooler to hang out, but being trans then was like being gay was in the 1950s.

When I came out to my mother I'll never forget her response, she said "But we've just had a conservatory built!" at the time I didn't understand what she meant, and I talked about it in my comedy set years later, it was only then that she fully explained to me.  "When you told me you were trans, the only think I knew about transsexuals was what I'd seen in the media, that you'd be sad and lonely, and that people would want to attack you for being weird and different.  I'm you're mother, and I love you and I wanted to protect you and even though we'd just spent a massive amount of money on the house I was prepared to move away and start somewhere new with you as long as you were protected."

Even typing that now brings a lump to my throat.  For the first few years of my transition I tried to be what they call "Stealth"  Which at the time was considered the best option for you if you "passed" as female, which I did.  Let's face it I'd always been female, people just didn't realise until I was 20 and I told them, and when I did they all went "ooh, yeah, that makes sense."  But at the time there was such a stigma surrounding being trans that you didn't tell anyone.  Being out meant being a target for ridicule, abuse and getting fired.  The law had only recently changed so that if I had been arrested and tried for a crime I'd have been sent to a male prison, I couldn't get my birth certificate amended to female and if I'd died my death would have been listed under my legal gender and original name "Ben Horsley".  You could get fired without problems for having "Lied at the interview" about your gender.  It was best, I was told, if you didn't have to be visible, not to be visible.

I was never very good at that, and over time more and more people knew, and I discovered something quite shocking.  VIRTUALLY NO ONE CARED!   Simple, people take as they find.  And aside from a few radical feminists who'd read a bit too much Janice Raymond, no one gave me any shit for it.

I remember talking to people about deciding to come out, not just to friends but on stage.  A lot told me not to, that why should I unless I had to, I remember thinking that after coming out and living as the woman that I was and not trying to pretend any more to be male it was so freeing.  For the first time since I was about 3 years old I was happy.  I enjoyed things.  I didn't come out of one closet to go into another.

I talked about being trans on stage, and still, no one cared.  About 80% took me as they found me, 15% liked me even more because of it, and 5% hated me.  As time went on I resolved myself to be more out there, to live my life as openly and publicly as I could, because if I didn't who would?

I didn't see anyone like me anywhere when I was growing up, it was isolating, so since then I've seen it as a duty to be out there making the path easier for anyone who has to follow.  Still people say "why do you do it, why are you so open about it, it's no one else's business?"  Because people still don't know enough about this subject, there's still a level of prurience, a level of prejudice and a lot of ignorance.

I'd hoped in the 13 years since I came out that things had got better, that I'd helped in some small way, and in a lot of ways it has, just not enough.

Lucy was about to begin her transition, she was going to do what the doctors call "the real life test" which is to live in your new gender role for a period of time, usually no shorter than a year more often two years, before you'll be referred for surgery.  She'd told the school she worked at, and with the support of the staff, the governors and the parents she'd kept her job, so far so good.  Until the Daily Mail's Richard Littlejohn decided to write a hate piece about her.

A lot of trans women have had their lives pawed over by the media when they transition, their privacy invaded at a time which is massively stressful anyway.  I remember the first time I went out dressed in female clothes.  The fear that I had was almost unbearable, I was convinced that every person I saw would know, and would hurl abuse at me or attack me.  It was terrifying, and it continued to be terrifying for years afterwards, even though there were very few occasions where I was read as male.

I can only imagine what it's like for that fear to become a reality, to be hounded in the press for just being yourself at a time when you're having to deal with incredible mental and emotional pressures.  The 5% of people who seem to still have such a problem with trans people that they'd give them abuse being given this information, where you live, where you work and having their prejudices backed up by a national newspaper.  It's just unbearable to think of.

I'm surprised something like this hasn't happened before now.  Lucy's body was found at her home on Tuesday afternoon.  Some are saying it's suicide, there's no suspicious circumstances.

I'd hoped that 13 years on and 13 miles away life would be better for someone who had the same realisation to come to that I did.  Unfortunately it wasn't, and it won't be until people are educated enough to not think of being trans as something so unbelievably weird that it deserves national press coverage.

The tone of the Littlejohn piece was "won't someone think of the children?"  My brother's children were primary school age when I came out, they saw every step of what I went through, and you know what?  They're kids.  EVERYTHING'S NEW AND WEIRD TO THEM.  They dealt with it.  They dealt with it better than they dealt with finding out there's no Santa Claus.

Like with all bigotry, when people can't justify saying "I hate you because I don't understand why you're the way you are and aren't how I want you to be!"  They say "I'm alright with it, but I worry about the kids".

Bigots always try to dress their bigotry up in concern, to deflect away from their fundamental fascism that everyone should be more like them and then the world would be alright.  It's not and it never will be, and as long as there's people out their like Littlejohn and his fellows, as long as there's people who are scared to death to come out as trans, as long as newspapers think it's news to invade the privacy of trans people, to poke around and go "oooh! look at the freaks!"  I will be out.  I will be proud and I will fight to my very last breath.

This terrible waste of life, this terrible awful thing that has happened should never be allowed to happen again. Visibility is the key, people find it very difficult to be ignorant and scared of something they know about.

Do you want to be in my gang...

As a comedian you become used to certain things, that Liverpool will be a tough town to play, that a 5 hour drive to do a gig in front of a handful of people who couldn't care less if you live or die will become such a regular occurrence that it barely seems worth it to mention, and that someone more successful than you will come up with a joke that's almost identical to one of yours and a wider audience will see it and assume that it's theirs.


It happens, it's convergent thinking.  Jokes live out there in the ether like fruit hanging from a vine waiting for the right moment, the right time and place and for the right person's brain to see something that everyone else has missed and twist a joke is born.  Sometimes more than one person will see that thing in that way and then two people have the same joke.

I've been on both ends of this, and it's never fun.

Once I unwittingly did a joke that was word for word the same as another comedian's, and yesterday another comedian did a joke that was similar enough to one of mine for me not to be able to use it again.


On both occasions I've been the lesser known comedian, though only one of those occasions has it done any damage to my career...

Every Junkie's like a Setting Sun.

The Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs has suggested that the UK Government should tighten up the existing drugs laws so that designer drugs are automatically banned, rather than the current system where individual drugs have to be banned one at a time, the process takes so long that usually by the time that it's illegal to buy a designer drug, a new and slightly different chemical that produces very similar effects is out on the market.

So far so sensible right?

Well it would be if prohibition worked.  Which it doesn't, and never has done, and in fact often makes the problems associated much much worse.

At no point when I was using drugs did the fact that they were illegal deter me, if anything they added to the thrill, the sense of community I got with other users and addicts, that we were in this together, that we were outlaws, ploughing our own furrow living our own life outside of society.

Laughing and pointing at the people who got up on a Monday morning and went to work all week who at the weekend did the shopping, took the kids to the park and on a Sunday washed the car.  They were mugs!  They didn't know the pleasure of getting off your tits on a Friday and partying through until Sunday tea time.  Working as a means to an end, as my friends and I explored exactly how far we could take the party.

What do you think I'd see, if I could walk away from me.

Yesterday I placed 96th in the Independent on Sunday's Pink list of the top 100 most influential LGBT people in the UK.  As I understand it this means I now get to tell anyone who identifies as LGB or T who is further down the list, or not on the list at all what to do.  I think this makes me some sort of Colonel for the Gays, and definitely a General in the Trans Army, this along with my title of Political Correctness Brigadier makes me one of the most highly decorated sexual minorities in the pigeon hole (not a euphemism).

The truth is of course I'm probably not even the most influential LGBT person in my own head.  That honour goes to Ian McKellen who voices my internal monologue.  But of course that's just one of the perks of being on the list, he'll do that for you.  I hear Mary Portas has Frances Faye doing hers, and George Michael has Stephen Fry.

It gets better, but not quite in the right aspect ratio

Here's an it gets better video.  I'm a idiot and got the camera on my phone wrong so this is a very squished up video, but I didn't want to go back and redo it.   Also the freeze frame it's got kind of makes me look weird.

Don't put your daughter on the stage Mrs Worthington...

"Comedy is thus the very opposite of shame: shame endeavors to maintain the veil, while comedy relies on the gesture of unveiling." Zizek

Forgive me Blogspot for I have sinned, It's been 5 months since my last blog post.  A lot's happened I moved out of my lovely little flat and moved in to a room in a shared house with a garden and a trampoline.  I've started cycling and getting treatment for my anxiety and depression and I'm actively taking part in my recovery from my various addictions, accepting life on life's terms etc.

Basically, I'm happy.  BOOO HISSS! And this has had a negative impact on my comedy writing.  It's hard to be funny when you love everything.  Well unless you're Pat Monahan and I suspect he's hiding a dark secret, no one can be that happy all the time.

But the reason I've decided to start back with this blog in particular is because I keep getting dragged in to an argument on twitter, an argument with people who ostensibly are attempting to fight my corner, but in reality do not understand the industry I work in at all and are making up "facts" to fit their views, not looking at what actually happens and trying to alter it at that level.

I now know how corporate finance executives trying to explain credit default swaps to non industry people must feel like.

Basically Mock the Week has come under fire for being sexist, not in it's content, but in the number of panel members who are female, where their guests are roughly 18% female.

Sex and drugs and sausage rolls.

Getting my life back on track seems to be going well, I'm back working hard gigging hard and playing hard.

On Saturday night I was in Leeds in a place where they really know how to market well, Tiger Tiger, which is right next door to an all night Greggs the bakers.  When I was there a few months ago I was informed by one of the bouncers there that he'd seen that evening a couple turn up, take it in turns to go inside and get pissed whilst the other stood outside smoking and minding the pushchair replete with baby and sausage roll sticking out the front of it's chubby face.

I do believe that one of the bouncers also works as a bouncer for that Greggs, at least he's not supposed to but he does it for free pies.

A friend of mine today told me that he and his partner are having a baby and I've been grinning from ear to ear about it ever since.  It's only the second time that a good friend has started a family, the other one I knew that they were trying for a while before she got pregnant so that robbed the moment of being told of some of it's majesty.

What do I do now?

It's been a strange old week, last week I was in London for most of it and enjoying myself stopping over with my friend Tat.  She's got a lovely place in Hackney and I got to stop there for a few days, wander round London Fields and discover that it's true what they say, in London you're never more than 6 feet away from a twat.

Saturday evening I headed back up north, my last minute search for gigs had been unfruitful and I was going to be spending a Saturday night off So I headed to my sister's house where I'm currently in residence on her couch.

The next day She went off to Chester for the day and was stopping over so I was on my own in the house.  I don't deal with prolonged periods of being on my own very well.  I have got a lot better, it's part of the addict in me that I don't trust myself on my own, when I'm on my own it has always appeared, I'm in bad company.

no offence

Offence is easy to cause, often we do it without even thinking about it.  Sometimes we can brush it off without thinking too much about it.  "What someone I don't know thinks that something I did without realising was offensive?  Fuck 'em!"  Other times it's more difficult.

Today I managed to cause offence to someone I really liked via the medium of the internet and she blocked me before I had a chance to explain.  The internet makes us all autistic, it removes context and nuance from our words, often I've found myself getting really angry at something that someone's said to me on an internet forum and told a third party what they've said and the third party has responded "That's only horrible with the intonation you've given that.  Read it in a silly or daft voice or as if they're being sycophantic and then think about it?"

To which I always fly into a rage and tell them they don't know what it's like and then flounce out, before realising that I'm being unreasonable and then flouncing back in to apologise.

T'was ever thus.

Privacy on parade

It's an interesting time for me at the moment, I'm newly single and not too happy about it, but time moves on and I'm sure I'll feel better soon enough and be ready to move on with my life.

To be honest I'm quite excited about all the opportunities that this brings, the end of a relationship is a time to reinvent, to reassess who you are and what you're about.  See if any of those opinions you held so strongly have changed or if you were holding on to them because you thought you should cling to some unchangeable truths.

I'm fairly sure that I've done some of that, I'm stil trying to overcome the fact that I can be massively co-dependent, and trying to balance that with being a good partner who's helpful and kind without being too helpful and kind and making myself indesposable would be a good thing.

One thing has changed this time though and I think it's a testament to my mental health getting so much better, my opinion has changed on being dumped.

I use to say to partners, "if you ever leave me, please leave me for someone else."  People always thought this was weird, that it's far worse to be dumped for someone else than just dumped because there's the extra level of betrayal.

I never understood that, but that's partly because I always though that there's nothing worse than being on your own, so at least if you get dumped for someone else there's a reason;  they want to be with someone else.

Whereas, if you get dumped and they're not leaving you for someone else it means that they'd rather be alone than go out with you.   And that's much much worse.

Glass houses

Nadine Dorries.   It's hard to know where to begin.  She's got a safe Tory seat, and more and more she seems to be trying to position herself as the UK's Sarah Palin.

She does a bullshit blog in which she makes up 75% she says (though this may be an elaborate ruse to get people to think that her massively delusional bollocks is just her messing around and not the sulphurous brain farts of a clueless idiot.)

And she's passed a 10 minute bill on teaching sexual abstinence to girls by a majority of 67 to 61.  Though I suspect it's because the 67 mistook the 10 minute bit of the title to infer that's how long you should abstain from sex before saying "Oh, go on then."

To events management companies offering an exciting opportunity

At this time of year there's lots of Events Management companies starting up, and lots of Students on Events Management courses who have been given an end of year project of organising an event and it seems like 50% of them think "ooh what would be great is if we get some comedians like that Michael McIntyre's comedy roadshow!"  and they don't know the comedy circuit, they don't know that there are a lot of professional comedians who are earning a lot of money from comedy without ever going anywhere near a television screen.

As a result they think that a stand-up comic is like a band or a DJ or someone else who works during the week and does their entertainment as a hobby.  They don't realise that to get basically proficient at the job that they want you to do takes so much effort that by the time you're ready to do the gig you're getting paid a substantial whack for your work.

Unnatural disasters

One of the signs that I may have a circle of friends that possibly wasn't the best for me came when I flat shared with a couple of pals of mine who weren't the cleanest and tidiest of people. On a scale of "Ikea show home" to "Sitting on the back of the sofa using an air rifle to shoot the rats that scurry around eating days old take aways from plastic bags", they were definitely towards the filth end of the scale.  


But one Saturday night we were having a party, so we cleaned and tidied, got rid of the beer cans and over flowing ashtrays that covered the table so that they could be replaced by fresh beer cans and overflowing ashtrays. We even got the Mr Sheen out to clean it down, such was the mental state of our flatmates that when we finished no one thought to tidy away the cleaning products.  So sat in the middle of the coffee table stood that  bottle of furniture polish.


This, however, was not the thing that let me know that my circle of friends was possibly not the best for me, no, the thing that clinched it, was that as each of the guests arrived they walked in to the lounge saw the Mr Sheen out and said "Are we having crack tonight?"  That being crack the cocaine derivative, not that I had a bunch of Irish friends going "are we having craic tonight or what"  No, a group of friends who walked in to a party saw some furniture polish out and knew that one of the easiest ways to freebase cocaine and make crack was to heat cocaine in a solvent like Mr Sheen until it makes a popping noise, that that was their first thought when they saw furniture polish at a party should have set alarm bells ringing.


From that night on we referred to Crack as "Charlie Sheen"  I don't know if The Charlie Sheen has ever partied with any of my friends but it would make his statement:  “I am on a drug. It’s called Charlie Sheen. It’s not available because if you try it once, you will die. Your face will melt off and your children will weep over your exploded body,”  make a lot more sense.

What I think about when I think about Heckling

What's the worst heckle you've ever had?  That is amongst the most popular questions asked by journalists, people at parties, civil servants, the Police, whoever; When you tell them you're a stand-up comedian that's the question they want to know.  Partly it's down to the fear that people have of doing stand-up themselves, their biggest fear is that they'll get up on stage and no one will find what they say funny.  As Oscar Wilde might have quipped, the only thing worse than being laughed at, is not being laughed at.

The embarrassment that the average person thinks they'd feel is enough to deter most of them from trying out the business that I work in, as they convince themselves that when you go on stage it's a battle between you and the audience who are only ever a few short seconds away from shouting something horrific at you that you'll never be able to deal with.  That you deal with hecklers at every gig.  For some people they think the whole point of going to a comedy night is to heckle.  In fact I know for a fact that some people get nervous all day before going to a gig that evening because they think heckling's expected of them and they're already trying to think through what they're going to say.

I know that for a fact because before I did stand-up that was me.