Wickerblog - Part 2

I awoke on Saturday morning in a stiflingly hot tent and went outside to sit and recover from the previous night. None of the other guys were up yet so I spent about an hour propped in my chair feeling sorry for myself and my internal organs.

After a while the rest of the guys got up and were all equally as rough as I was. This was when Obie produced the only useful thing he had brought to the festival (with the exception of the lantern) – wet wipes.

He gave himself a good scrub down before offering them around the group so we could all give our hands and faces a good clean.

Mark, Obie and Martin then disappeared to get some food and Chris and I moved all the chairs inside as it had started to rain. As I was lifting Obie’s chair I noticed the packet of wipes lying on it and was slightly intruiged as to why there was a giant picture of a toilet on the front. After more inspection, I saw they were titled: “TOILET WIPES” and on the back gave instructions upon how to use them to clean a toilet. That’s right folks, Obie had unintentionally given us all toilet cleaning equipment to wash our hands and faces. This was made even more hilarious by the giant warning on the back that proclaimed: “WASH HANDS AFTER USE”.

If he’s using toilet cleaner to wash himself, I wonder what he uses to cook with or what he puts in his dishwasher…

We sat that afternoon drinking in the tent and gibbering inane nonsense, when I mentioned a Charlie Brooker article I’d read about the fact he is so ignorant about the world he didn’t actually know what rice was. Obie found this hilarious, repeating the words “What is rice” over and over while collapsing in fits of laughter. This led to many occasions in the evening when Obie would say in the company of strangers “Andy, do the rice joke.” And all I could reply with was “What is rice?” suffice to say this didn’t have the hilarious effects it had had earlier. In fact, fellow comedian Andy Sir just looked at us and said “It’s a grain” – totally ruining the moment. Damn him and his knowledge.

We went round to see the Proclaimers before doing our show and Chris & Mark spent most of the time standing amongst the crowd yelling “Do that song about Walking” –as we all know the Proclaimers have 3 songs and this is probably the one that most people know.

The gigs that night went really well, each of us doing a 30 minute stint with Mark up first, then myself then Obie (it was nice to have Mark supporting me for a change…the way I have always known that it should be).

The crowd was a weird mix of hippies, drunkards, families and abandoned children. It was a top night, where I used my favourite response to a heckle ever. Some guy wandered into the tent and shouted some garbled nonsense at me before I turned round and proclaimed:
“Can’t you see that heckling me won’t bring back your apples?!”

About half the audience pissed themselves and the other half looked at me as if I was a mentalist. I must remember that line in case I ever do another gig at a venue related to the Wickerman movie.

Top line of the night in my opinion was Obie talking to a group of kids about masturbating, before getting the youngster to stand up and saying:
“A big hand for the wee wanker.”
Was hilarious and I’m certain the only time that I will ever see a situation like it.

He then finished off his set, but the crowd were enjoying it so much he got out his notebook to test-drive some new jokes. He read through a couple of ideas before saying:
“New Mortgages – 0870590674…that’s not funny, I just need a new mortgage so I wrote the number in my notebook”
Again – this is classic Obie – pure genius.

We then went to the backstage area where the guys were given cheese and biscuits when I used one of the clean “artists toilets” – just as well, as I had left the toilet wipes at the campsite.

It was then off to the burning of the Wickerman and another night of mayhem followed that involved drinking, dancing, dodgems, waltzers and various other random activities. We left the following day feeling suitably worn out.

A cracking weekend.