I've rsvp'd maybe cos you don't want to seem rude

Last night The Socks did their very first pre-pre-preview night trying out all new material and it didn't go badly at all, there's lots of work still to do, and the one thing that would have helped judge how well it's going would be if there'd been more than 10 people in the audience. Yes we arranged this at short notice, at the brilliant Thunderbolt in Bristol, and most people couldn't make it. Those that did were lovely, so thanks all.

Which makes my Facebook-rejecting this morning all the more galling. I wish I could support everyone who's doing an Edinburgh preview, or running any other events of any sort. But, with the greatest and humblest apologies, these are the Facebook invites that today I had to rsvp Maybe or No to (actually I said Yes to one which I'm actually going to be at). Sadly the rest, from London to Edinburgh, Bristol to New York, take place when I'm doing something else or am in the wrong city, or country, or washing my hair. I wish every event well, though, especially those of you doing Edinburgh Previews.

Today I spurned, as I would spurn a burning zombie, the following:

You may be attending Brand new show - Kevin Dewsbury In...Sane.
You may be attending Ariadne the WAG's Comedy BAG is BACK!!
You may be attending "NEXT!" Edinburgh Previews.
You may be attending Laughing Lasses May Comedy Night.
You may be attending Phil Cornwell Preview Show.
You may be attending Highly Strung feat: Lauren Pritchard (Island Records).
You may be attending GORDON SOUTHERN headlines Good Ship with funny funny friends. Awesome.
You may be attending UKEAOKE 10!
You may be attending COMICS AND COMICS.
You may be attending Underground Festival - A New Music Festival for Gloucester.
You may be attending The Blue Cat Cafe Comedy Night.
You may be attending Signs and Portents: Chris Lynch vs. The Sidekick Cast.
You may be attending The Communicators @ The Tunnels Bristol.
You will not be attending Video Blog.
You will be attending National Not Voting Conservative Day.
You may be be attending gary colman is... very rarely rong.
You may be attending "NEXT!"
You may be attending Heat 4.
You may be attending Tiff and Roisin do a preview.
You may be attending Chris Corcoran Edinburgh Preview Shows - May.
You may be attending Songs From The Shed Presents Evening Chorus & Support.
You may be attending The Honeys at the Sitcom Mission.
You may be attending Gladiators @ Semi Finals of The Sitcom Mission.
You may be attending Hairy Mary@The Brighton Fringe Festival.
You may be attending The Great Big Comedy Picnic.
You may be attending Hairy Mary@The Old Police Station.
You may be attending 13. International Istanbul Puppet Festival.
You may be attending Creased Comedy Election Day Special @ The Trent House TOMORROW.
You may be attending BRIAN GITTINS star of Ricky Gervais' CEMETARY JUNCTION.
You may be attending Tiernan Douieb - Solo Show At The Brighton Fringe.
You may be attending MEGA MOUTH PROMOTIONS PRESENTS.
You will be attending Comic Book Outsiders - BICSPE Panel.
You may be attending MAT HORNE presents SESSION14 feat THE BIG PINK+PAUL EPWORTH.
You may be attending Rob Rouse - My Family... and the dog that scared Jesus.
You may be attending If When Why What. Pop quiz, numero 22.
You may be attending Little Dark - Sketch Comedy, 2nd Week BT.
You may be attending Springtime Follies.
You may be attending Nick Harper returns to Edinburgh with special guest Darren Poyzer!
You may be attending 10th May - Last LAASoc with Terry Saunders and special guest MC...
You may be attending CABARET GOLD.
You may be attending SESSION with Mat Horne.
You may be attending CLEARING THE FOG.
You may be attending VOTE FOR SPIEL! Vikki Stone + Renata Muss + Andrew Bailey + Dave Russell.
You may be attending NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD: REANIMATED @ Hudson Horror Show.
You may be attending Sam Avery - The Art of the Scouse Insult.
You may be attending Knock2bag Comedy Night - Notting Hill.
You may be attending No Offence But...
You may be attending East Coast Black Age of Comics Convention.
You may be attending Pop-Up Variety - A Special Night of Spectacular Cabaret.
You may be attending Stiffed!
You may be attending Dan Clowes & Chris Ware Signing at Gosh! Comics.
You may be attending Mat Horne & Nine53 presents The Session @ Cuba Lancaster.
You may be attending Gonzo Moose Present Is That A Bolt In Your Neck?
You may be attending TONY'S 40th BIRTHDAY BASH!
You may be attending JunkMales Live! The Midlife Crisis.
You may be attending Bonobo (Live).

The Bash Street Election

How does the comic-lover in me see the election? Obviously, working most memorably for the Beano, I'm in the arena of the pre-political. I certainly had no understanding of politics aged 9 and I dread the idea of any kid who has. Even aged 20 I was pretty clueless and spent most of the last 3 decades calling the result of every election wrong.

It is interesting to think how the characters in the Beano might vote once they grew up. And obviously it would make a difference when they grew up. If Leo Baxendale's Bash Street Kids had carried on growing from their inception in Britain's industrial north in the 1950s, then by the time they'd been first eligible to vote they would have all voted Labour, with the exception of Cuthbert Cringeworthy, Conservative, and they'd have ushered in Harold Wilson with a landsllide in 1964. (Thinks: voting age may have been 21 in 1964, so that may be slightly optimistic. Whatever, thru the 60s they'd have been solid Labour).


(above, part of the election sequence from Invasion of the Beano Snatchers by Kev F, click to see strip archive)

By the 80s, if the Bash Street Kids aged like humans, they'd be in their late thirties and they'd have seen many of their jobs lost to Thatcherism. The more self-interested, like Spotty and Roger The Dodger, might have turned Tory and be running small businesses to employ the rest of the gang. Cuthbert would be standing as the SDP/Liberal Alliance candidate and still losing to the Labour candidate, Toots.

So to today. The Bash Street Kids are all 65 years old and mostly still vote Labour as they've always done. Councillor Spotty and Roger The Mayor spend most of their time in Spain and don't bother to vote, and Cuthbert's political career never recovered from the rent boy scandal 15 years ago. Toots is standing down as Labour MP at this election. So it's the Bash Street Grandkids who'll be swinging this result. Spotty Junior went from boarding school to Oxford to the City & Roger's kids are facing a House Committee for fraud after their involvement in Goldman Sachs, so they're no longer local. From the success of Plug junior's chain of beauty parlours to Wilf junior's success as a pundit on local TV, to the Toots family's dominance of local politics and Danny junior's garage staying occasionally out of the red, the next generation are mostly aspirational and doing okay. Which leaves them torn between Labour and the resurgent LibDems. (Teacher, by the way, is still clinging on in his twilight home and has already filed a postal vote. His vote has remained, as always, a secret).

My call for the Bash Street constituency on Thursday? A slim Labour win. As we all know, the rest of the country very rarely resembles Bash Street.

Kev F out of The Beano

Brighton Rock - Socks at Brighton Fringe

Big thanks to the great people of Brighton. The Socks just enjoyed two nights at Komedia, performing ...Goes To Hollywood, our touring show based on last year's Edinburgh show, but with a couple of new bits of material squeezed in (thanks for bearing with those, Brighton). The second night was a sellout, the first was nearly there too, so a fine way to spend a bank holiday.

Among the new material was Brighton Rock, specially written for our Brighton visit and still taking shape. Here's its world premiere (or the first few minutes before it started crying out for a rewrite):



Star spotting while in town: saw David Walliams Saturday and on Sunday a presenter off kids TV whose name I can't place. So not as starry as star spotting gets, to be honest. And we can heartily recommend the artwork 77 Million Paintings by Brian Eno which is showing at Fabrika in Brighton. I watched it for a good 20 minutes and it is riveting. Go see. And enjoy the rest of the Fringe everyone, it's only just begun.

Socks t shirts - get em now before Brighton have em all

Hi Socks fans,

There are 2010 Socks t-shirts still available (we had some extras printed). They'll be on sale in Brighton tomorrow at the gig. If you want to bag one now (ie we won't take it to Brighton) the sizes left are Small (1 left only), M, L, XL, XXXL, Ladyfit S, Ladyfit M and Ladyfit L (1 only).

Payapl £18 / $28 to sockpuppets@sitcomtrials.co.uk by tonight (Friday) and remember to say which size you want.



If you know anyone in Brighton who's not booked the show yet, we're on Saturday and Sunday at 6pm Details here - spread the word.

Love The Socks xxxxxx

Predicting the Election

I look forward to calling this election wrong, again. The three weeks of the campaign have been fun, a bit like a World Cup or Olympics for those of us who hate sport, and now we're in the final week and it's time to decide who you're going to vote for and try and predict the result.

Because I live in what has been a Tory safe set since the early Middle Ages (our MP is Liam Fox), my traditional Labour vote has always been as good as wasted. In past years I have tactically voted Lib Dem and it's still left them a good 10% behind Fox. This year, with the Clegg Factor of recent weeks, it has looked like my LibDem tactical vote could actually work. This is, after all, a LibDem target seat. Number 38 on their list, so.. who are we fooling. Three weeks in there is a feeling that the dust has settled and voters may just be reverting to type, except maybe Labour voters who have had the roughest campaign and are finding it really hard to defend their basket case of a party.

Looking at why I vote Labour, I do so because I believe in the principles of socialism and I want to see them applied in a caring capitalist society. I know sod all about economics, and a few percentage points in tax either way mean little to me. It's the principles that count. So which principles matter to me, and which party really intends doing something I'd like?

Education. I work in schools and know, like any teacher must, that the best thing you can do to start improving education is to reduce class sizes. Then you need to alleviate child poverty and redress the gap between rich and poor. No biggie, and no party is able to do a thing about it cos it costs money and they have none. So Labour & LibDem are level pegging there, Tory well out of it for not knowing what they're talking about (all went to posh school and talking twaddle about parents setting up their own schools. Idiots).

Nuclear arms. LibDems win there. I went on CND marches 25 years ago and still believe in unilateral nuclear disarmament. I believe the possession by my country of nuclear weaponry of any kind is morally indefensible and logically nonsensical, so scrapping Trident is a good start for winning my vote.

And LibDems opposed the Iraq war, as did I. So, all other things being similar, I guess the LibDems have won my vote on Trident & Iraq.

In that case, with my vote sorted out, who's going to win the General Election? I know I can only predict this wrong. I know that because I always predict it wrong and have done since I've been able to vote.

My first election was 1983. The Tories were in power and were the embodiment of purest evil. They'd sent 100s to their deaths in the Falklands, they'd sunk the Belgrano while it was sailing away, they'd decimated Britain's manufacturing base, Top Of The Pops was full of acts voicing the nation's hatred for them from Stand Down Margaret to Ghost Town, and I personally had never met anyone who was going to vote Tory, they were clearly going to be slaughtered by Michael Foot's Labour party. Imagine my surprise...

In 1987 it had to be a hung parliament. The Tories had gone from bad to worse, but I realised they were inexplicably popular among the Loadsamoney generation of spivs and chancers who were on the rise and taking over the media (protest pop had disappeared from the charts to be replaced by Stock, Aitken & Waterman, ooh it was an awful time). The SDP Liberal Alliance were as popular in the polls then as the LibDems have been for the last fortnight, and a three way tie was confidently predicted. I went with that idea too. I was wrong again.

By 1992 surely it had to be a Labour victory. Everyone agreed the Tories had been in for long enough. Thatcher had gone and been replaced by Major who everyone knew was just a temporary caretaker PM, and Kinnock was so clearly the man. He did a rally in Sheffield which was positively triumphant, so off we went to the polls assured of a landslide. Oh come on, how did that not happen?

In 1997 everything was going Labour's way, and I was the only sensible voice of caution in the room. I'd learned the lessons of the past. I knew that, no matter what the polls said, the electorate would always end up voting Tory, it's just what they did. Oh there might be a swing to Labour, but never enough for an overall majority. Why I very nearly put money on the Tories scraping back in. Not doing so was the only thing I got right there.

2001 I don't think anyone noticed there'd actually been an election, and I don't remember predicting the result correctly or not, and likewise 2005. Maybe I'd stopped caring.

So, who will win next week? Secure in the knowledge that whatever I say will be wrong, here is my prediction. Labour will come third in the overall percentage of the vote, getting less than 30 per cent. Lib Dems will come 2nd and Tories will get the most, but they will both be around the 30% mark. The minority parties will get their highest votes ever, with the BNP polling very highly and the Greens just behind them.

How this will translate into seats is, obviously, the real question. My feeling is that the LibDems will indeed take seats that they wouldn't have done without the TV debates and the Clegg factor, and that they will take them equally from Labour & Tories. I think Labour will also lose some to the Tories in other marginals, and I predict the BNP to take votes from Labour in certain seats with a high proportion of... well let's call them bigots for want of a better word.

Which will give us a Tory victory, but a slim one. It may give the LibDems a hold on the balance of power, but my feeling is it won't. I think the Tories will edge just that bit ahead, leaving them with a majority and no need to do a deal with the LibDems.

It's not the outcome I'd choose, but that's my prediction. We have 7 days to find out just how wrong I'll be.

Doctor Who v Daleks new comic 2010

New Doctor Who, featuring Matt Smith featuring really different Daleks. Comic strip by me, Kev F, to be continued...

Comic strips by me, aged 10

I started this comic strip drawing lark at a very early age, as this comic I recently found in my parents house shows. At a guess I was 10 years old...



The strips show that I was a big Doctor Who fan already (though I was either inventing my own Doctor or I couldn't do likenesses) and that I was reading Valiant and Lion (or maybe Thunder) comic, featuring Adam Eterno.




And about that time, I probably looked like this:



More of my nonsense at comicfestival.co.uk