You Don't Count

I shall attempt to post something festively cheerful later today, but first this needs a little attention:

"Infamous prosecutor Ken Starr has filed a legal brief -- on behalf of the "Yes on 8" campaign -- to nullify the 18,000 same-sex marriages performed in California between May and November of 2008."

YOU ASSHOLE. You nasty, weasly little piece of pond scum. I'm quite happy to fuck up your lives because you're not really people. You don't count.

It really, really pisses me off. These people go on and on about the breakdown of scoiety and how horrible the divorce rate is and why can't couples just stay together and work things out for the children, but they'll quite happily force it on eighteen thousand couples who don't want it. Look through that slideshow. Tell me those people aren't really married. Tell me their love doesn't matter. Tell me they're screwing up our society by doing something that makes no difference whatsoever to you. Tell me any of those things, and I will kill you.

ANTM Blogging: Team Isis Edition

So, as previously predicted, I am now going to reverse my opinions on most of the girls (including, surprisingly, Samantha, who proved entirely unoffensive). I still love Isis and McKey. I now hate Clark and ShaRaun.

Warning: here be spoilers.

So, I wasn't expecting ANTM to treat their first transgender contestant with any sort of nuanced sensitivity, but nor was I really expecting (and this is my privilege showing, I guess) that so many of the other girls would be so gratuitously nasty. Isis is a woman. Isis has always been a woman. She wasn't legally born a woman, but she was a woman nevertheless. I'm not sure if I'd prefer to believe that the state of education in America (and probably here, too) is so dire that most people don't realise that, or that ANTM purposely brought in some very horrible girls. Over the course of Wednesday's two episodes, I heard "Isn't this supposed to be a competition for girls?" "Isis has no place in this competition", "that man", "drag queen" and "he/she". Actually, that last one comes from an infinitely more frightening sentence, which I am paraphrasing: "I come from a small town, and if a he/she walked down the street in my town, she'd get shot." And this, believe it or not, was said in defence of the bigotry shown towards Isis. I also heard a particularly odd comment about Isis needing to shave and sweat burning off body hair that I really didn't understand, so I'm assuming that ShaRaun is just an idiot. Thank fuck she's gone.

ANTM is my fluff show, my meaningless source of amusement. Tyra Banks always goes on about "controversial" photoshoots and "making the viewer uncomfortable", but this is the first time she's ever actually achieved it. I sincerely hope she has good intentions, though I worry. I know from experience and the Television Without Pity forums that some people will sympathise with Clark and ShaRaun and their bigotry. People are asking prurient questions about what Isis does with her penis (she's pre-op) and saying that of course it's reasonable to take the piss out of her for being trans! Like, hello, free speech! You know what would be a funny nickname? Guysis! Or S/He! Hahaha, aren't I clever? No, you're not. Shut the fuck up.

I am very firmly on Team Isis. Aside from the fact that it takes a lot of guts to come on a reality show and deal with horribly unpleasant people like these, she's also brilliant. She knows her stuff, and her picture was my favourite. She was about the only one who actually got the theme of her shoot, as opposed to standing in front of the appropriate background and prancing. Although, on that topic, "voting is sexy"? Really, Tyra? And what was up with the random "register to vote today" chorus from the judging panel? That might be one of the most ridiculous things I've ever seen on this show, which is saying quite a lot.

I'm interested to see how the girls, the judges, and the editors handle this in upcoming episodes. I have to say, I'm not optimistic. Clark is already my least favourite contestant of all time - I am absolutely convinced that she's not just ignorant, knows exactly what she's doing and thinks it will help her in the competition to be a horrible bigoted asshole. It better bloody not, is all I can say.

At Last, An Excuse!

The viewing public in general has been informed that one of the contestants on the upcoming season of America's Next Top Model is transgender. Here she is. Fierce, no? I'm very pleased for many reasons, not least of which is that I now get to blog about ANTM without looking frivolous (not that I'm not frivolous, but everyone else is doing Serious Blogging and I feel compelled to keep up). So, you, my dear imaginary readers, are going to be subjected to weekly posts about ANTM. Don't worry, I'll warn you in the titles.

Isis, the transwoman, is my current favourite to win. I picked her out of the promo shot (the first picture in the link) along with a couple of others as Girls I Will Stick Up For No Matter How Bitchy They Get, and coupled with the fact that she's likely to get an awful lot of crap from the media in general and Tyra Banks in particular, I am now enthusiastically rooting for Isis to be ANTM. I mean, I doubt she's got a hope in hell, but I really, really want her to get it. My other favourites, as if you cared, are Elina the Ukranian girl and possibly Clark and McKey, if I can get over the fact that they're called Clark and McKey.

Why Nobody Should Vote For Cameron

I just feel the need to make a couple of points in regard to this, which I wrote just after the votes on the abortion limit and access to IVF were cast (both, surprisingly, to my satisfaction). I want to clarify a couple of things, and it also gives me an opportunity to have another go at Cameron.

It is frankly ridiculous that in this day and age our MPs are still obsessed with heteronormative parenting - "Father, father, father!" says Duncan Smith, but I did that last time - and still convinced that abortion is really a bit icky. We're not America, so we don't even attempt (at this stage, anyway) to outright ban it, but enough MPs are willing to go on record whining and crying about the poor little dead babies. That sentence makes me wish I weren't allergic to LOLcat speak, but I just cannot write "teh p00r ded baybeeez" as though it's a reasonable journalistic or literary device. Even after the Bill was defeated, they just can't let it lie and have to get up and hurl themselves at it again. The original Bill offered MPs the option to vote for: no change, limit lowered to 22 weeks, limit lowered to 20 weeks, or limit lowered to 12 weeks. The Times helpfully printed a guide as to which members of the Cabinet and Shadow Cabinet voted for which (and I will try and find it), and the three Labour MPs who voted for 12 weeks were all Catholic. Even most of the Tories shied away from voting for 12 weeks. I just want to make clear that there is a HUGE religious motivation behind this. David Cameron, the Tory leader, voted to lower it to 22 weeks. He also voted for the stupid "father figure" bill.

Now, there is no real reason to vote for this. It is not a medical issue. It is not something our doctors have a problem with, unless they're religious doctors. Since a vote for a lower limit would also be counted as a vote for the 22 weeks, we can rule out Cameron as a religious man hedging his bets. I suspect, too, that Cameron has a smiliar position to Blair on religious PMs (i.e. that we the British public will cease to trust you because you're a nutter, which is true). There is only one message that a vote for a 22-week limit from an aspiring Prime Minister sends out: I Am Willing To Be Persuaded. He won't vote for the very low limits because that will turn off the young women, but it also says to the nutters with their overblown rhetoric and emotional blackmail, as we can see here, that he might be talked into seeing things their way. Reason 20, by the way, is a picture of a foetus-face. I will make a couple of comments on these "reasons": several involve extremely isolated cases of one or two, and one involves surgery in the womb, which must be fucking awful for the woman (yes, there's a woman. The foetus is inside her). Babies can survive at 24 weeks in TOP NEONATAL UNITS such as fucking MINNEAPOLIS. Oh, that's a good idea. Let's just send every pregnant woman to Minneapolis! Fucking hell, this is about British law. Don't bring in bloody Minneapolis. Several reasons are "oh, but it's a baby!" crap, and one of them is that David Cameron supports a cut. Let me explain why.

David Cameron has absolutely no opinions on anything, because opinions are not politically expedient. He certainly has no opinions when it comes to this sort of equal-rights stuff, because some people don't like that and he doesn't want to alienate them. Mmmm... precious votes. My opposition to Barack Obama becoming US President is precisely because he reminds me so much of Cameron, with his vague language and refusal to vote on anything contentious. I once saw a post in support of him comparing his position to that of John McCain, and the first two pro-Obama points were "he has stated no position on this". Classic Cameron. He wants us to believe that he cares about the imaginary babies, but also about the women, which is a fucking lie. Back when he first became leader, he did an interview with Cosmopolitan, in which his reply to all the journalist's questions about women's issues was basically, "I sympathise, but I'm not going to do anything about it." He informed us that he supported the reduction of the abortion limit to 22 or 20 weeks, and that he wasn't planning to do squat about rape crisis centres (my city doesn't even have one) because "we don't have the budget." Look, asshole, if Boris fucking Johnson can find the budget for THREE new ones in London, you can do something about cities without any, OK? Since then, Cameron has not made abortion or equal rights any part of his agenda, waiting instead to jump on the bandwagon of someone like Nadine Dorries. This way, he's not pushing for women to give up control of their bodies, but it slyly shows folks like Cardinal Arsehole that Cameron and the new Caring Conservatives could well be brought around to his point of view.

Ever since Brown took over from Blair, I've been wondering what the hell I'm going to do when an election comes round, because I really don't like Brown. He actually creeps me out, and I don't really trust him. Lies and war and all, it was a reasonably easy decision for me to cast my first ever General Election vote for Blair. Brown? Not so easy. I feel like he thinks of us as being in his way. However, Cameron has made up my mind for me now. I will vote Brown because HE DOESN'T CAST BIGOTED VOTES. He doesn't vote for bizarre throwback amendments demanding that some sort of man be around to help out. He doesn't put himself in this sort of company. He doesn't vote to demand that women give up control of their bodies. Cameron, on the other hand, seems willing to be persuaded that the ownership of a woman's body should transfer over to a foetus until said foetus is done with it. I will not vote for that. It's not even his conviction that that's the right thing to do; he's just happy to allow someone else's convictions to govern his decisions if he thinks it'll get him through that big black door.

Cameron, listen up: I will never, ever vote for a bigot. I will tell everyone I know what a bigot you are, and they won't vote for you either. Your votes have been homophobic and misogynistic, and I cannot and will not support that. If you want any hope in hell of getting my vote, and the vote of young women like me, understand this: It's not a baby, it's a foetus. Until it is no longer living inside the mother, it isn't and should not be considered a baby, from either a legal or political standpoint. Sure, emotionally, it can be a baby, but you are not here to deal in emotional reactions. You are not here to legislate personal ethics. You are here to represent and protect the best interests of the people in your country, INCLUDING WOMEN and not including bloody foetuses (foeti?). My uterus is not a pawn for you to risk in the political chess game. My uterus is not a small sacrifice you may make in order to win more seats. YOU WILL NOT DO THIS. I WILL NOT LET YOU. Last time I wrote about this, I offered the assumption that you were just a nice guy who loves his kids and couldn't imagine not wanting them. I'm still willing to believe that - I'm sure you're basically a nice guy. But you cannot make political decisions based on that sort of fluff. You cannot assume, as I said before, that every man is like you and every woman is like your wife. You cannot think in the sentimental terms of "oh, but it's a baby! Aren't babies lovely!" You may be swayed by technological advancements which can keep premature babies alive, but you're then assuming that any woman who doesn't want said baby can just pop it out at 24 weeks and carry on. No, she can't. She has MONTHS left to carry that thing around. It's painful, it's uncomfortable, it's emotionally devastating for someone who doesn't want a child, and she's stuck with it. Don't chirpily tell her she can just have it adopted. Don't tell her just to hold on when what she really wants to do is scrape it out with a coat hanger. You think she won't? Have you ever known desperation?

When it comes to your vote on the "Father figure" bill, you are out of touch at best and seriously homophobic at worst. A child needs loving parents, but why on earth do they need one of each gender? From what I know of this bill, it comes in part from straight-up gay-bashing and genuine, irrational fear of Child Seeing Gays (stand up, Sir Patrick Cormack), and in part from this strange idea that men are this and women are that. A child needs a woman to give it cuddles and a man to play sports with it, or something. I know it would make things easier for the government, but even if you stretch to name all qualities either masculine or feminine, you will find that in a sample of men and women, none will have all of these qualities and most will have a significant proportion of the other gender's qualities. People don't divide into boxes like that. If you're pro-cute babies, why not allow a couple that really wants one to conceive, instead of forcing a child on a woman who doesn't want one? I assume that as an intelligent man who hopes to run Great Britain would never dare tell a woman that she should have been more careful and must now deal with the consequences. Why can't two women have a kid and raise it together, if they're fully committed to parenthood and the wellbeing of their child? Why not? Why do they have to prove there's a man around somewhere? What is the logic? Seriously, tell me. Then come to your damn senses, you whacking great bigot.

Wow, that was longer than I planned. Next entry will not revolve around my uterus, honest.

Brits for Hillary!

I just want to link this to remind myself that it's not just me who doesn't want to see President Obama. He's the American David Cameron, just catering to a slightly different crowd. And Obama's supporters frighten me. Thank Christ Cameron doesn't have supporters (well, I'm sure he does, but we support our politicians by telling them they're crap, which is much less scary).

Despite every news source telling me that Obama has this wrapped up, I'm still pro-Clinton. I don't have eight hundred policy reasons for this, because I'm British and don't really have to. Quite aside from the fact that Clinton has been portrayed as the kind of uppity bitch I expressed my sympathy for here, Obama worries me. He put me off with his "marriage is between a man and a woman, unless I've been blinded by society's prejudices" thing. He then proceeded to piss me off by saying that the mistake pro-choicers make is to overlook the anti-choicers' 'moral' arguments and that a woman's pastor should be involved in the decision-making process. As you know, religion + politics = Angry Jen. He further went on to shock me by interviewing, quite astoundingly, that he once knew a gay guy but liked him because he "wasn't proselytising all the time". What the fuck, man? He sounds afraid that he might catch The Gay. Oh, and after Bush, I would appreciate a candidate with a basic knowledge of human biology. You can't make people gay, ass. It would be like trying to talk someone into switching gender. Or saying, "oh, go on, grow an extra limb! It'd be great!" You just can't do it. It concerns me that he has such a fundamentally flawed view of the human race, and such an apparent fear of so many of the people he's hoping to govern.

Homophobic? How dare you!

Christian registrars don't want to perform same-sex ceremonies and are complaining that they're being bullied as a result.

"[Ladele] said she was picked on, shunned and accused of being homophobic for refusing to carry out civil partnerships."

This should be fairly obvious, but just in case: She was accused of being homophobic BECAUSE SHE IS HOMOPHOBIC. She claims she was made to feel like a second-class citizen when THAT'S EXACTLY WHAT SHE WAS DOING. I would shun her too, because I don't want to be around someone who uses religion as an excuse to treat other people like dirt. That's her fault, not her colleagues'.

I do not believe that someone doing a job should be able to pick and choose which bits of the job they fancy doing. Christian pharmacy workers should not be allowed to refuse to fill a prescription because they disagree with it. Muslims should not get a checkout job if they don't want to touch pork or alcohol. And no registrar should be allowed to decide who can and cannot get married. Should a racist registrar be allowed to object to an interracial coupling? No. Should a homophobic registrar be allowed to object to a same-sex coupling AND THEN fucking object to being called homophobic? No. Jesus fucking Christ.

I apologise for my overuse of the shift key, but religion should not give you carte blanche to attack those who aren't to your taste, and being a Christian does not make you a special snowflake. This woman is no more and no less of a person than anyone who comes to her to get married, and they come to her for the help she claims to give for a living. I am somewhat tempted, when I get married, to specifically ask for a registrar willing to perform same-sex ceremonies. There will be gay people at my wedding, and I don't want to be united in matrimony by someone who is hostile to them. I wonder, is that discrimination? Would she complain if I rejected her as my officiant on those grounds? Is it acceptable for her to discriminate based on the way people are born but not acceptable for me to discriminate based on her bigotries? It's a shame I don't live in London, because that would be an interesting experiment.

As for her tribunal, I hope she loses. Her manager makes an excellent point but the council representative could well have dug himself a hole with the "she was confused" defence. Simply put, you should be required to do your damn job and flaming hypocrisy such as this must not go unpunished by the cosmos.

Please, Think Of The Children

Yay!

Yay!

Gordon Brown has earned himself two points. He voted for the 24-week abortion limit, and he voted to get rid of the heterosexist guff about a child's "need for a father". Well done, Gordon, you impressed me. The Tories, not so much.

First and foremost, I do not understand how, in this day and age, a man like Sir Patrick Cormack can have anything to do with the running of our country. He said: "A child that is deliberately brought into the world with no desire that there should be a man or a woman who is the parent is brought in with a disadvantage." This makes no sense whatsoever, and I sort of hope the BBC did that on purpose because they hate him, but translated into English, it means, "Lesbians shouldn't be parents."

I sincerely hope that David Cameron, a man whom I royally despise but who claims to be leading the charge to modernise his party, will realise that such sentiments are not endearing the Conservatives to the young generation. I seem to be his target voter; a young, white, middle-class woman. Young, white, middle-class women have no truck whatsoever with this sort of insidious gay-bashing. If Cameron ever wishes to win my respect, he must acknowledge that this ridiculous "need for a father" motion tabled by Iain Duncan Smith (the most useless Tory leader ever, and that ought to tell you something) comes out of an out-of-date view of Britain and is representative of his party's subconscious - or, indeed, conscious, in the case of Sir Patrick - bigotries. "Need for supportive parenting" is exactly the correct way to phrase it. When Duncan Smith and his ilk tell us that children who grow up without a father are more likely to go off the rails, they're ignoring a big chunk of the story. I know a lot of people who grew up without fathers, and they're fine. The ones that aren't fine are the ones whose fathers were present and neglectful, or present one day a month. They're the ones who grew up with abuse, casual insulting remarks tossed out to get them to shut up, and not so much as a card or phone call on their birthdays. These are the kids who feel deprived, who feel they've done something wrong to drive Daddy away and end up with no sense of self-worth, or who just can't get Daddy to acknowledge them and end up in deeper and deeper trouble. This is still a generalisation, but it's far more accurate than "single-parent families fuck kids up."

We will keep our 24-week abortion limit, no thanks to Mr Cameron, who voted to lower it by two weeks. Why two weeks? Lord knows. The BBC is careful to point out that all the Catholic Labour ministers voted to lower it to 12. Yeah, fucking 12. Nice one, Ruth Kelly. Someone called Edward Leigh is yacking on about sanctity as though he's a right-wing American pundit, and frankly he is so insignificant that I have nothing else to say about him. Cardinal Murphy-O'Connor turned up in the Times supporting everything I argue against and vice versa, using the phrase "incremental change". Remember this, ye who value your freedom: this two-week-at-a-time knockdown is part of the plan to erode your rights completely. If, God forbid, he should ever get his two-week knockdown, he'll be out there again arguing for another two weeks. And another, and another. Before you know it, we're in Ireland. You could have stayed there, y'know, Murph.

There are numerous things I could say about these votes, but I'll stick, for now, to this one: in general, the people voting to restrict IVF were the people voting to slash the abortion limit. This strikes me as a wee bit illogical. These people insist that it's absolutely vital that a baby has a mother and a father, but if a woman accidentally gets pregnant, the man pisses off and the woman doesn't want it, well, tough. Why isn't it better for a loving same-sex couple, or a single woman who wants a child enough to go to these expensive and invasive lengths, to have their baby than for a frightened, abandoned teenager to be unable to choose not to? I am feeling charitable, and so I'll assume the best. I'll assume that these men (as the vast majority are in the Commons) are loving and devoted parents who cannot imagine their babies being unwanted, who cannot imagine abandoning a woman pregnant with their child, who help to change the nappies and get up in the night and play football and read stories and consider there to be no greater joy than the laughter of their sons and daughters. Excellent. But guys, not all men are you. Some men cannot think of anything worse than having a baby. Some men will panic. Some men aren't ready, and have the luxury that women don't of just fucking off. Some men are just assholes. I know men who, variously, forget their children's birthdays, dump them with someone else on their visitation days, run the other way if they see mother and baby in the street, deny the child's existence to their friends, yell at the child, hit the child, hate the child. I know men who conceived children in wedlock - the Conservative lucky charm - and after divorcing the mother, try as hard as they can never to see the kids again. I'll assume, also, that your wives were delighted to be pregnant, wanted children, were ecstatic over the prospect of giving birth to your little one. Do you, any of you, have any idea what it's like to be pregnant and alone? To take an equal part in an 'accident' for which you alone are now reponsible? Do you have any idea what it's like to have something growing in you and hate it with a vicious passion, while sanctimonious arses like you are going on about the sanctity of life, and how abortions are 'social' and calling that horrible little ball of cells your 'baby'? It's not a fucking baby.

I wish people would stop going on about 'tradition' and lamenting the loss of 'traditional family'. I don't want the kind of tradition that forces women to have babies they don't want, and forces couples to shackle themselves together for eternity because one night has unexpected consequences. Duncan Smith complains that by removing the "need for a father" clause, we undermine the traditional family; well, duh. Some people aren't wired that way, mate. We're not all born traditional. Some people would love to be parents. They would love to devote themselves to raising a child. And if they happen to be a pair of women or a pair of men, so fucking what? When Catholic adoption agencies were trying to get themselves excepted from the "no homophobia" law - to ask for Government-sanctioned bigotry takes some nerve, I must admit - numerous commentators pointed out that Catholic adoption agencies took on the most difficult, unplaceable kids, and the people most likely to adopt one of these kids were gay couples. Instead of taking a lesson from this, the agencies threatened to shut down. To paraphrase Dara O Briain, essentially their stance was: "If you won't let us do what we want, we shall release the children into the wild."

Memo to Britain: The Conservative party is still nursing its bigotries. Please do not forget this next time Cameron starts going on about recycling in modern Britain.

Memo to Conservatives: For the love of God, move on. It's 2008. We can't still be proposing laws that basically say "Gays are weird".

Memo to Murphy-O'Connor: I still hate you, and everything you stand for.

Won't somebody please think of the children?

Worst. Show. Ever.

I didn't expect to have to write this. I'm not normally a person for in-depth reviews, but even though the traffic on this blog is pretty much non-existent, I feel this should be out there somewhere.

Last night, I went to a comedy gig. I do this quite a lot - I love stand-up. So far, the general rule is that when you go to a comedy club, the entertainment is quite bad. When you go to a comedian's show, the entertainment is quite good. Well, last night, the rule did not hold up. Adam and I went to see one Sean Lock. I normally like Sean Lock. I like him on QI, I like him on Have I Got News For You, I liked his chat show and I liked his sitcom. I thought this would be guarantee enough that I'd have a good time. Wikipedia informed me that he'd been booed off stage at Wembley, but all recent reviews assured me that he was brilliant. So, feeling fairly confident, off we went.

Sean Lock comes onstage looking like the Proclaimers' uncle. He has an utterly shocking widow's-peak combover. Well, it makes me giggle. He then gets off to a terrible start by mumbling, bumbling and rambling. He talks about his voice, and how it makes everything he says sound sarcastic. That's a lie; it makes everything he says sound nasty. It also sounds nothing like his TV voice. He attempts to personalise the show a little bit by mentioning the taxi strike taking place. He asks us why. We tell him. The cab drivers are striking in protest, because the council have painted all the cabs navy blue. He basically says "oh" and moves on. Oh, come on, man! Striking over blue taxis! That's a comic gift! At this point, I really wish I was watching Ross Noble. He'd have had a field day with blue taxis. Sigh. But back to Sean. He rants on about swans for a bit (Adam believes that Sean Lock must have had a previous bad experience with a swan), but it's neither of the funny kinds of rant - the fiery, angry, biting rant or the charming, bewildered rant. It's a man standing on stage grousing. It's a bitter old uncle. His timing is completely off, too - he's not an improv comedian, and the whole show is scripted, but you wouldn't believe it. There are awkward pauses, mumbles and qualifiers like, "So that's the joke." Bristol was not impressed, and Bristol wasn't laughing much. So, as you would, he panics a little bit. For the rest of the first half, every time he gets a laugh he pushes the joke far beyond its funny conclusion, until the audience is staring at him in stony silence. Then he says, "I've put the shit joke at the end again, haven't I?" This seriously happens five times. He then offends me a little by claiming that breakdown rescue vehicles shouldn't prioritise single women. Why not? Because he has to wait for three hours. Loser. This comes just after a right-on bit about racism, so I'm not impressed, particularly when he follows it up with a jab against transvestites. Men who eat salad are transvestites! HA HA HA. More grumpiness about the bits in orange juice. Your lovely reviewer is bored, and wonders whether or not to skip out during the interval. She decides not to. Bad idea.

Sean Lock re-emerges, and my hopes are raised a little when he makes a David Cameron joke (which is very funny but, naturally, he pushes it a few sentences beyond funny). He goes on about the environment, most of which isn't joke-based. It's "yeah, some people really care, I care, but not a lot" for twenty minutes. He smushes the odd joke in the middle (he'd been to America and came to the conclusion that compared to their level of consumption, him recycling was like bringing a dustpan and brush to an earthquake. I laughed), but he seems to lose his place repeatedly. He talks about showing his daughter Finding Nemo without realising that Nemo's mother and siblings get eaten by a barracuda one minute in, and why isn't there a warning? Which, YES! I saw that at the cinema, I was so upset I missed all the jokes! Everyone thinks I'm nuts. He wanders off into Scarface, and I marvel that a show which rips on David Cameron and Finding Nemo isn't even the slightest bit engaging. Sigh.

At this point, I'm still thinking, "Perhaps he's just not cut out for stand-up" and prepare to come away unimpressed, but still with an affection for his TV work. Then he says that a near-death experience can teach you who you really are. He describes sitting on a plane with engine failure, next to an old woman who is very upset. He says he yelled, "FUCK YOU OLD LADY! BLAH BLAH BLAH GOING TO DIE ISN'T IT FUNNY THAT I'M AN ARSEHOLE! HA HA HA!" (Naturally paraphrased because I'm not writing all that shit out).

Huh? No, Sean, I'm sorry. Yelling "Fuck you, old lady" qualifies you as neither witty nor charming. I don't know if you noticed me in the third row, totally silent with a contemptuous look on my face. If not, it would do you well to pay attention to your audience in future.

He moves on. He talks about hair. He stands on stage for twenty minutes flipping his hand about on top of his head. Seriously, twenty minutes. Pretending his hand is some hair. This is a centre parting. This is me on a pier. Be careful if you play tennis. You can literally hear five individual people laughing. The rest of the room stares at him. Just because he acknowledges after fifteen minutes that it's pretty shitty of him to be standing on stage flipping his hand around doesn't make it better or funnier. Your lovely reviewer and her companion are exchanging eye-rolls every two minutes now.

He talks about relationships. He goes to some lengths to prove that he's embarrassed to have any feelings for his partner. This is so 1970s it's unbelievable. He tells a boring, hackneyed story about coming home to find his ex in bed with an old friend of his "And I couldn't remember his name!" YAWN. So, he decides to go on the offensive and tell his ex that he never insulated the loft and is actually the Riddler. He takes off his clothes to reveal a fluorescent long-sleeved Lycra jumpsuit with a question mark on it. No, really, he does. We then have to endure half an hour of him standing in his jumpsuit, looking awkward, giggling at himself and making knob gags. Again, the fact that he acknowledges that knob gags are rubbish doesn't make it any funnier. At this point, he definitely notices me and says, "Some people think it's funny, some people are concerned." Concerned? For myself, yes. He says "I'm glad you like it" eight hundred times, then leaves. Phew.

Oh crap, no, he's not finished. He comes back. He talks about the fluorescent jumpsuit some more. Then he says, "I'm probably one of the straightest men in the entire world." Oh, fucking hell. He's going to try and prove his sexuality. His partner calls him "such a bloke". He does a charming routine which can be summed up as: "Gay men can't do DIY". Then he makes some blow job jokes. Yes, blow job jokes. What is he, twelve? Fucking blow job jokes. Let's mention ladyboys! That's funny. They look like ladies, don't they, but now listen for five minutes while I make very loud orgasm noises. I'm not kidding. We paid thirty-five quid to watch a man have a fake orgasm. Fucking loser. He then says something so disgusting about post-op transsexuals that I absolutely refuse to repeat it under any circumstances. And it was his closing joke! Sean Lock is a serious homophobe.

I've seen a lot of bad gigs, but I've never seen one this bad when I've paid to see a particular comedian. This wasn't the most sexist show I've ever seen (stand up, Simon Clayton), but it was without a doubt the most homophobic. And despite his right-on racism bit, he still made a joke about lynchings. Nice one, Sean. But what bothered me most about this show is that I now harbour a serious personal dislike for him. He's not just a bad comedian. He came across to me as unpleasant, creepy, misanthropic and self-indulgent. At the interval I complained to Adam about the rescue breakdown bit, and he assured me it was just the lead-in to a joke. After the show, it seemed to both of us like a genuine gripe. He is genuinely cross that because women get attacked, he has to wait for rescue breakdown. My only solace was that every time he said something particularly sexist, one guy at the back laughed and clapped all on his own, and Sean had to backtrack a little. You don't want the arsehole in the corner being the only one on your side. You could, I suppose, say that that's his onstage character. If he wants to stick with this "character", he'd better get a hell of a lot funnier. Very, very fast. The show in general seemed very 1970s, and every single one of his references was at least a couple of years out of date (Robbie Williams? Gail Porter's hair? Oh, for fuck's sake).

Before the very end bit, I would have given the show an overall rating of two out of ten. One point for Cameron, one point for Nemo. However, the end bit was the worst ten minutes I have ever sat through in my whole life, and I will hold that transsexual joke against him forever. So, Sean Lock: Worst. Show. Ever. That should be the name of his next tour.

Gayest Looks For Leno

This is just the best thing in the world at the moment. If you care to look, you can spot me.