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.