Dear Everyone
It’s blog time again, and what better opportunity for me to bang on needily about all the things I would like you to watch/buy/appreciate/care about in 2010? Well, it was a rhetorical question. There is no better opportunity. And so here we go.
TOUR: Firstly, then, as regular visitors to the site will be all too painfully aware, this year I am doing a big bloody tour. It will begin in October and whisk me around the country until just shy of Christmas, and then start once more in February 2011. Even then, I will venture back to Australia and New Zealand again. So you have every chance of seeing me live, if you want to, in the next year. I’ll put my tuppence-worth in: I, personally, would love you to. It’s going to be a new show – starting at Edinburgh, but we’ll come to that in the next blog – and, as usual, will be a mixture of jokes, confessions, rambling, chatting to members of the audience and being distracted. I’m reasonably confident it will be my best show so far: I’ve worked hard on it and I like to think I’m getting slightly better at my job as time goes by. So do book tickets if you like the sound of all this. The dates are still some way off, but I guarantee you they will come round quicker than you think – unless you deliberately think they’re going to be very very soon, just to defy me.
The dates can easily be found elsewhere on this site.
BOOK: Now, then, this new novel of mine. Again, if you’re following me on Twitter, you’ll have heard a bit about this: mostly, whingeing that my old publishers dropped me and I feared I wasn’t going to get a new one. After a lot of time, discouragement, and work I have now written yet another book, and this time, it is being published. In September. By my new heroes Simon and Schuster.
The book’s called Eleven and it’s about a late-night radio DJ who has a few adventures. I’ll be putting extracts and teasers up here as the release gets closer. I would love this book to be a success, partly because I think it’s quite good and I stayed up very late writing it; partly because writing books is probably my biggest passion; and partly of course to stick it to the people who turned it down (I’d like to be a bigger person than that, but I’m not, quite). There will be an Amazon link before too long and I will lean on you all heavily to pre-order it. You don’t have to. But it would be really really nice.
DVD: And, at last, I’m releasing my first stand-up DVD this year: in November. Again, you’ll be able to order it before too long and I will put the relevant details here. I’ll be recording (parts of) it in August at the Edinburgh Fringe, if you fancy seeing all the bits that go slightly wrong and don’t get into the shops. It’s a bit much asking you to buy a book and a DVD and come and watch me live, but – well, if you don’t ask, you don’t get.
TV: Don’t forget ‘We Need Answers’ is still on BBC4 on Tuesday nights, and it’s normally repeated on Wednesdays too. Our ratings have risen steadily and last week, we doubled our previous record, which is lovely. I nearly made a self-effacing remark there about the previous record being 14 and now it’s 28, but I don’t want to undermine my point here, do I? It’s a fun, silly but interesting show which was this week criticised by a Conservative think-tank. You can’t ask for a lot more, can you?
ONLINE: I’m going to try and update this blog much more regularly from now on, and if you’re a football fan, there is also the (light-hearted, indeed libellous) blog about the beautiful game which I do with my brother. It has now been relocated to this very site – you’ll find it under that blue bit on the front page that says ‘Back Of The Net’. Have a read, go on. And… yep, Twitter. Well worth it. I’m @watsoncomedian and you can basically see every thought that ever occurs to me. I wish I wasn’t quite this addicted to Twitter. But I am, and there it is.
Right, that should be enough harping on about my career for anyone. Thank you for reading and I hope some of this is of interest. If you don’t like DVDs, theatre shows, books or television, I’ll start working on some sculpture. Thank you.
Mark x
Posted by Harwo on February 18, 2010
Good to hear about the book – I’ve read ‘Murder and ‘CATE’ and loved them both, also glad to have the non-footie version of the blog to read otherwise I’d have had to put effort in to learning about football….I don’t have that kind of commitment.
Posted by Simon French on February 15, 2010
Dear Mark,
For valentines day, my girlfriend brought me a ticket for your gig in Plymouth on Feb 2011.
Although I am very pleased with the present, I would like to warn you that I have a bad history of long term gig plans and have tried to avoid booking anything further than a month in advance.
The reason for this, is that I still have the ticket for a 1994 Nirvana gig in Cardiff, that was never performed. This gig was cancelled as Kurt Cobain shot himself in the head.
I am concerned that this was partly due to my early booking of the tickets and felt I should warn you in advance.
Cheers,
Simon French
Posted by Nick Woolgar on February 14, 2010
Hi Mark,
After seeing two blog posts with 0 comments, I felt it my duty to leave something here as a bit of a morale boost for you and encourgement to keep the blogging up. Then I realised you’re a big alt.comedy celebrity with cider adverts and all sorts on the CV, and realised how completely irrelevant and unnecessary my sentiments were. Joking aside, We Need Answers is fantastic stuff, as is No More Women. You and the two other men that help out are a great comedy-combo (shortenable to, er… ComBo), and the mentioning of Andy Dibble and Les Sealey the other week was lovely.
And it was nice of you to bring Stewart Lee’s name into a recent match of No More Women too – no hard feelings lingering over the 15-minute finale to his recent tour which centres around your pear cider advert I trust? To be fair, his grievance is with the company and its marketeers, and not your good self.
Best wishes,
Nick
Posted by Playhouse Fan on February 8, 2010
Disappointed that there are no Norwich Playhouse dates on your tour, we love watching you in Norwich.
Posted by Samantha on February 2, 2010
Hello Mark, I’ve been watching We Need Answers and I think it great. Yes, it’s silly, but nevertheless, I love it. I got my husband to watch it too. He said I only like it because you look like Richard Hughes, the drummer from the band Keane. You do, happily, look a lot like him but I think you may be marginally funnier. Anyway, he approved of your show and likes the WNA plate. I pointed him in the direction of No More Women too, which is very gentle yet mind-boggling at the same time. Well done. Lots of love.
Posted by Matthew on January 28, 2010
Mark!
Can’t wait to see your show at Edinburgh!!! My fiance and I are coming on honeymoon – it’s not quite as bad as it sounds – 1st week somewhere hot, 2nd week at the rainy fringe…
What happened to the DVD you recorded in London in 2008? Has it been canned? Any chance you could release it limited edition as a download? Even if it’s just the audio.
Still loving the work, I’ll pick up the new novel too.
Good luck with all your current ventures
Matt
Posted by knox on January 19, 2010
i don’t come one – only faithless do that. on is what i meant. past midnight – all manner of punctuation and grammar have gone right out the window.
Posted by knox on January 19, 2010
how random – i haven’t been on here in ages, i come one today, et voila – a lovely long blog! well, i was in a rubbish mood, but reading about possible sightings of yourself via the medium of show, book and blog has cheered me up (not no end, but definitely some).
looking forward to ‘eleven’, and will basically keep requesting it at everylibrary i go in, and then telling them all their existing copies are out, so they have to keep buying more. it’s possible there are flaws in this plan, but i’ve not worked them out yet. :0)
Posted by Phill Sacre on January 18, 2010
You should blog more, you’re good at it. Plus if it gets popular it will help publicise your writing… you can use it to shamelessly promote stuff. Mainly your own. Oh wait…
I will come and see you later on this year, even though your tour doesn’t condescend to coming to Colchester this year (you came here last year, I guess two years in a row might be pushing the boat out a bit).
Oh, and your book sounds good. Maybe you could combine your tour with a book-signing, sit behind a little table signing books and telling jokes? You never know.
Posted by Lili on January 18, 2010
Nice bloggage, Mark. Glad to see your admission re Twitter addiction – us addicts need to stick together.
Keep on blogging/tweeting. Feed those addictions!
Also – I’m the first person to post a comment which has never happened to me before. Thanks for allowing me to have this unique experience
Posted by Anna on January 18, 2010
I wholeheartedly support you in all of the above. Football doesn’t excite me, but the rest of it all sounds wonderful, so I’ll be watching out for you!
x