Stand-Up, Downstairs

Stand-up comedy is something I file alongside successfully playing Queens Of The Stone Age’s ‘No-One Knows’ on Guitar Hero – it’s so difficult to nail spot on I couldn’t really ever see myself doing it.

My friend Rich Heap, however, is rather a dab hand at it, and last night downstairs at the King’s Head in Crouch End he won over a tough crowd – some of which were wearing tracksuits.





Of the 14 acts only three – including Rich – won the crowd. The woman who repeatedly shouted about Gordon Brown and Barack Obama being robots wasn’t one of them, and neither was the girl who kept making jokes about sodomising three year-olds.

There were a few heckles at the weaker acts – and one dude got a bit shouty during Rich’s set. His cogs of retort immediately began whirring into action, but they didn’t need to – the crowd turned round and loudly boo-ed the heckler before swinging their eyes back round and cheering Rich.

It was a MOMENT! Go and see him live – here’s his MySpace page.

A Bull On A Bike

The other night in Dubai I went to a press preview of HoofbeatZ.

Unfortunately, far from being an equine take on hip-hop culture, as the name suggests, it was promised to be a dancing horse show illustrating the dynasty of the four-legged carrot-munchers through history.

In reality it was a bunch of bored looking Dobbins being led around a sand-pit while a voice not dissimilar to Ballsy – the booming voice of the Lotto – outlined the importance and wonder of our retractable penis-boasting furry friends.

It was pretty shoddy, the low point being the jousting section, where instead of actual jousting a dude in a tin foil suit picked up large hoops with his jousting stick to a ripple of under-whelmed applause.

But then, just before the interval, my evening was made. It was the matador section, featuring this ‘bull’:








Yes, it’s a man on a battery-run two-wheeler clumsily traversing around the sandpit. I nearly had a heart attack. Go and see it!

If David Beckham Played Sim City…

…Dubai is probably what he’d come up with after a couple of days of mouse-clicking.

And (appropriately) situated on ‘The Palm’ is the gaudy jewel in the crown: The Atlantis hotel. The place decided that it is a six-star hotel and is the pad that they flew over Kylie and Lily et al for the launch, along with a slew of magazine editors in preparation for a plethora of fawning, freebie-oiled reviews.





It’s hilariously vile; overweight, over-rich football hooligans saunter past statues of mermen, Liverpool FC replica shirts flapping in the slipstream. Guests admire the central statue that resembles something from ‘Scrapheap Challenge’ while working up an appetite for their visit to the in-hotel branch of Nobu – Lily Allen goes to the London one, didn’t you read?

BUT as much as Atlantis is clearly the most detestable place I’ve set foot in since I took a flight with US Airways, I find it impossible to fuly condemn somewhere that has a FRICKIN’ WHALE SHARK in its reception area:





He’s called Sammy, and he rules. How much are rooms, again?

The Really Rather Great Wall Of China

Yesterday it was cold, overcast with a touch of sporadic snow and Sunday. Hence when we went to the Great Wall, we were pretty much the only people there. In fact, we didn’t pass one person at all, giving us the impression that we kind of owned the big rocky thing.





The lack of attendance wasn’t just limited to the tourists – there was no axe-wielding guard defending the area beyond the ‘No Entry’ section, so we went off-road and scrambled our way through a more hazardous stretch of the crumbling wall.








Not great for £19.99 black brogues bought through eBay, but it did bag us a fantastic picnic spot – we’d even bought a cheese knife especially.







It was all a bit ‘Lord Of The Rings’, and rather tranquil and beautiful, with a smidgering of snow here and there. Although the trek reminded me just how chronically unfit I am – after about 20 high steps I was panting like an overweight Labrador in summer.

All that excursion made us build up a bit of a hunger, so we ate an outrageous amount of dumplings (the waitress found us rather amusing) at a restaurant in the evening before watching ‘The Apprentice’. Obviously, this was the best day of my China visit so far.

Malled In China

We all know how easy it is to get ahead of ourselves, don’t we. Having said that, to build an entire shopping mall when there’s only one proprietor actually willing to set up shop there is a bit short-sighted. Here is such a shopping mall.




Having said that, at least the public toilets are well guarded.

Mau That’s Impressive

Seeing as I’d been sat down for roughly 35 hours previously, I decided to take a walk on my first day in Beijing. I just headed off into what I vaguely remembered Adrian saying was the centre of town, and soon came across this.





It’s the Forbidden City – so called because it used to be shut off to the ordinary citizens. And me – as it was past 4pm, I wasn’t allowed in. Hmph. Saw some guards running around though.





Yesterday I guffawed into the pus-capped heads of my rapidly expanding foot blisters and walked for at least 15 miles around the centre area of Beijing.

As anyone would, I chose to start my day by having a look at a preserved corpse.

Tiananmen Square is the world’s largest public square, and is more akin to the Sahara than its Trafalgar counterpart. And its main attraction is the pickled body of Chairman Mao, who died in 1976.

No cameras allowed (as I found out after I had already queued for 20 minutes only to be marched to the locker room in front of around 1000 sniggering Chinese people), so no snaps of the stiff, I’m afraid. But all I’ll say is that I’ve seen more impressive efforts in Louis Tussourds (Google that, hilarious) – I’m not convinced.

Following that I went traipsing, and ended up at a mall that was half full of vendors selling wholesale hairdressing supplies, and half full of those selling restaurant supplies. Pretty interesting, but I didn’t need much from either, so I went to the Temple Of Heaven Park.

The vast, tranquil park houses the temple itself, born of the Ming dynasty, and is as spectacular as it is relaxing.








We hit Mix, a nightclub in the evening, where Kentaro was DJing. He was a little deck-demon, but the dude that followed him insisted on playing the kind of insipid r’n’b you see on large screens behind reception areas at B-grade media companies.





A fun night all the same – and it’s quite fun being two foot taller than everyone else on the dancefloor (apart from Toby, naturally).

Welcome To Texas. Welcome To Texas.

There’s something wildly ironic about leaving Texas, flying to China, then the first bar you go to being named Tim’s Texas Bar.

Still, good to see some saddles attached to the ceiling to help me acclimatise – and my first evening in Beijing was quite literally a winner. I joined Adrian and Toby and their friends’ quiz team and despite my contribution beginning and ending with wrongly suggesting that the French and Australian were the only two tennis grand slams Fred Perry Bjorn Borg didn’t win, I revelled in a victory sup from the keg of ale we won. If that start doesn’t suggest this is going to be a good jaunt I don’t know what will.