Hal Cruttenden - Stand Up, Writer, Actor

On Sunday night a drunk driver smashed into mine and Dawn’s parked cars outside our house. Dawn’s car is a write off and they’ve yet to check out whether mine is salvageable. Whenever these things happen I realise that despite being liberal on many criminal justice issues, when I’m personally affected by crime I becoming a reactionary old fart. Dawn always says that she believes drunk drivers should be imprisoned just for being over the limit. I used to disagree and believed that drink driving is not a crime of malice but of thoughtlessness. Now our cars have been affected I want the bastard decapitated and his head stuck on a pike in the high street. That would liven up suburban Enfield. Having said that, we don’t know who the guy is because it wasn’t his car. He was driving home an even more drunk woman in the passenger seat, who owned the car. I feel really sorry for her because her insurance is having to pay out and she’d only met him that night and can’t get hold of him.

Dawn says at least was no one was hurt. People always do that don’t they? An annoying thing happens and they try and make everyone feel better by imagining how bad it could have been. I just imagine how nice it would have been if the annoying thing hadn’t happened at all! Actually Dawn’s very selective about how she applies this rule of ‘imagine how bad it could have been’. I was being lazy and crap one day and she was having a go at me. I said, ‘Imagine how bad I could have been. You could have married a serial killer. Be thankful your just having to deal with a lazy husband and aren’t buried under the patio.’ This was not a good tactic. The spare room’s very comfy though.

As ever, I’ve been busy so my blog is getting more and more infrequent. At the moment, I’m consumed by writing my stand up show for Edinburgh, writing sketches for Omid’s show, gigging all over the country, sorting out my CD and doing preliminary work on a play I’m going to be doing in Edinburgh. It looks like I’m going to be doing a monologue adapted from George Orwell’s book, ‘Coming Up For Air’ at 11 am and then peforming my stand up show at 8pm every evening. At least they’re both at the Assembly Rooms I’ll also be trying to fit in as many extra gigs for publicity purposes. I’ll be exhausted. If I die at least I’ll have gone down in the great tradition of showbiz people, ie. desperately trying to further my career.

The Montreal line up’s been semi announced. Matt Kirshen’s going which is great and Danny Bhoy. Omid’s doing his solo show over there and Russell Brand’s appearing. I’ve only met him once before but he seemed very nice then. All in all it should be a good trip in July.

I’m just recovering from diving into our swimming pool here in Cyprus. It’s like a British summer at the moment, ie.not that warm and our villa’s pool is not heated. It was like diving into ice! I’m freezing and even after a hot shower feel chilled. No wonder those poor sods lasted such a short time on the Titanic (there I go again, comparing my minor worries to far more serious situations).

The trip out here has been lovely. If you’ve read my previous blog you’ll know that I’m out in Cyprus doing decompression gigs for the armed forces, as they make their way home from Afghanistan and Iraq. It’s a chance for them to chill out for 36 hours before they get home and have to deal with stupid questions from civilians. They are prepared for this by me asking them stupid questions and being rude to them. At the last gig I took the piss out of a guy for being a driver - insinuating he wasn’t very brave and just drove about Afghanistan saying stuff like, ‘I’m not going south of river into Helmand at this time of night.’ Someone told me drivers actually see a lot of action as they have to deal with lots of IEDs (Improvised Explosive Devices- not sure if that’s right - there’s lots of army lingo I just don’t get). They’re a nice lot the armed forces. I know I could never have been a soldier. When they talk about being in action, they’re just seem so matter of fact and practical about it. They see a problem and just work out how to deal with it. I’m often reduced to a screaming red-faced angry Terry Scott type figure just trying to get my packing done.

Home in two days and tonight’s our last gig. I’m actually getting a fair bit of work done. Still need to find big finish for Edinburgh show but I’ve written a couple of sketches to go in it and have also got some great ideas for Omid’s next series. Hope he likes them. I still waste too much time checking out facebook. At the moment I’m looking up lots of ex-drama school mates - it’s fascinating. No one seems to have aged except me. I don’t think comedy is a very healthy profession.

I’ve just had three nights off in a row which has been lovely. The one thing I really dislike about this job is the fact that it makes you lead a topsy turvy life. While most people work through the day and kick back and relax in the evening, I spend the day building up to working in the evening and then kick back and relax about midnight and get to bed at about 2am. It would be fine to live like this if I was young and single but the fact I have to be up at 8am to help get the kids to school leaves me walking about like a zombie. Oh well, maybe if I write enough of Omid’s new TV series I can take a month off!

Having these few nights off I’ve watched a lot of TV and realized that the very fact we have so much choice has turned me into a moron. As soon as one show gets at all boring, or goes to ad break, I flick to another. Often I end up trying to watch two shows at the same time. I’m sure this is why I wouldn’t do well at an orgy. Trying to have sex with lots of people at the same time is, in the end, much less satisfying than spending all your time concentrating on one - also, I know at an orgy all the good looking girls would gather round a couple of fine looking men and the rest of us would spend the evening trying to avoid eye contact with fellow unattractive people who should have kept their clothes on. Or maybe watching TV is just a reflection of our lives - there’s so much choice that we can’t help feeling that whatever we’ve chosen to do, somebody else, somewhere, is having a better time. I ended up spending far too much time watching ‘Ross Kemp on Gangs‘ rather than interesting looking programmes like ‘The Poles are coming!’ or ‘Ten days to War’. ‘Ross Kemp on Gangs’ really is rubbish! He swaggers around being tough and meeting tough guys - it’s a bit like the little mockney bloke (Danny Dyer?) who travels the world meeting football hooligans - you can’t help feeling that rather than ridiculing the sad men who end up in gangs and killing people at football matches, these programmes idolise them. Ross Kemp is always making clear his bravery in meeting these very dangerous people but he’s never criticising them, he’s just sucking up to them. He’s in absolutely no danger at all. I’d like to see Ross Kemp take on the things that really scare the majority of British men. How about ‘Ross Kemp on Feelings’, ‘Ross Kemp on Responsibility’, ‘Ross Kemp on Gays’! I’m sure TV producers will soon be beating my door down for these ideas.

Talking about tough guys, I’m off to Cyprus tomorrow to play some army gigs. Me, Brian Higgins and Ricky Grover will be spending a week out there entertaining troops who’ve just spent 6 months unable to drink and regularly coming under fire in Afghanistan. Amazingly, these guys are usually a great audience. After 6 months of war, most of them are in need of a really good laugh! The thing I love about an army audience is that, if the material doesn’t work, you can just take the piss out of them. Soldiers never seem to take abuse personally. Maybe, after you’ve been shot at, a comic talking about the fact you look 12 and have big ears doesn’t really hurt that much!