June….24 th (???)
So me and the g’friend are taking a strimmer back to Argos, when my good friend Paul James (no relation) rings me and tells me there’s someone saying shit about me on a FB forum. I assume straight away it’s a forum called Concerned Comedians. He outlines to me what’s she saying. This woman, who i can barely recall, but then do..because of her distinctive goth look. (Paul is describing her to me over the phone) I met her in a gig in Notts 2 years …she was MCing i think. Anyway , 2 years later, she’s now accusing me in this forum of…well that’s the thing i’m not sure what exactly it is i am being accused of.
When i get back home the first thing i do is open my laptop, and go to CC forum….but then i see a message come in from another mate , Simon Emanuel, who tells me it’s a ‘witch hunt’….and has sent me a screen shot of part of what exactly this lady has written about me, though i still can’t see everything…That ‘s when i realise it’s not the forum i thought it was. In fact the shit is going down on a forum called Comedians Collective. Which is a bummer for me as i’m not a member of this particular talking shop. I immediately ask – by clicking a link – if i can join the forum and even message one of the administrators saying ‘please can i join, and quick, as someone is saying stuff about me and i’d like the right to reply’.
anyway the jist of what this person is saying about me is based on a brief exchange 2 years ago on FB. I’ll quote it fully…tomorrow when i’m less knackered.
But in summary: I had told her, when i met her, that i run a gig near Swansea, and that perhaps she might b intrested in doing an open spot there. So she messages me on FB to remind me. She tells me that while she likes the idea of doing an unpaid open spot the train fare from Notts would be too much for her. To which i reply: Never mind, I will buy you dinner to compensate – (I follow that with a smiley face).
So, like i say, earlier this evening, roughly 2 years after said gig, she puts this exchange up, in the form of a screen shot, for all to see. And seems to be saying that i offered to buy her dinner because either i would not take no for an answer to my offer of an unpaid gig or I’m offering to buy her dinner instead of actually paying her.
Either way this is stressing me out , or did for an hour. Paul is all set to dictate my response (cos he is a member of the forum) when he tells me that the whole thread has been removed.
FFS i never offered to buy her dinner. i made an innocuous remark, i said i’d take her to dinner to compensate…it was a meaningless, playful joke…
The gig i did for her i recall driving 4 hours to and back to, for not great money, but there was a meal included… so now, just maybe, my remark may well have been a reference to that.
Whatever i said, i book a monthly club which always, every single month, has a female comic, sometimes 2 or 3, on the bill.
I only distinguish between funny and non-funny acts, to me gender is not an issue – not within comedy. As someone who did 2 years of unpaid spots, and as someone who still gigs, I know full well the shit one often gets from bookers. In short, I would never ever, and have never, book someone expecting anything in return….I respect the next person, be they female or male or………etc etc
Not sue why or what happened for the thread to get deleted. But i sure wish this person had contacted me first – if there’s problem with communications then let’s fuckin talk about it. She said she wanted to ‘archive’ the exchange…archive?! disingenuous or what !!! yeah , like archives have spaces underneath them inviting people to write nasty shit.
Oh yes and of course i’ve been explaining all this to my g’friend as it happens, in real time so to speak. we drive back from Argos, get a take away Thai meal, and i know i’ve nothing to hide from Eleri (my g’friend) cos i know i done nothing wrong..but she gets stressed along with me…
Of course there was that whole business last summer with the bloke in the welsh Eisteddfod – see elsewhere in this blog – who accused me on Twitter of doing a racist joke…that was really horrible, and i think Eleri foresaw a similar shit storm approaching. she told me she reckoned i went slightly mad during that previous traumatic episode…As it is this second accusation – though as i say it’s still not clear to me what the accusation was – seemed to go away a lot quicker. It’s easy to say ‘ i don’t care what people think about me’….and i do say it, but the trauma starts when they start thinking aloud, behind your fuckin back. If there was substance or truth to it, or if the accusation was presented in a civil way, I wouldn’t get so pissed off .
Noel James 