JESS: Pretty simple question, Tom. Fingers as long as legs, or legs as long as fingers?
TOM: Erm. Well. I suppose if my fingers were as long as my legs I could…I could play keyboards that were further away. Which has some benefits. In the legs-as-long-as-fingers scenario, where’s the knee joint?
JESS: I’d say where your knuckle is.
TOM: (laughs)
JESS: Did you hear that, dear listener? He laughs. We’ll have another one of those when the conversation dries up in about five minutes.
TOM: Touché.
JESS: Let’s talk a little about your band. You’re the drummer, right?
TOM: No. That’s Brandon. I play keyboards and a few other things.
JESS: But you sometimes play the drums?
TOM: Well, yes, but mainly it’s Brandon.
JESS: Do you want to hear some drummer jokes?
TOM: Not particularly.
JESS: Good. What do you call a drummer who breaks up with his girlfriend?
TOM: I don’t know.
JESS: Homeless!
TOM: Very good.
JESS: What does a drummer use for contraception?
TOM: No idea.
JESS: His personality!
TOM: Any more?
JESS: Maybe later. Is it true you don’t allow phones into your gigs?
TOM: It’s not like we ban them. We politely request that people don’t take pictures or videos, that’s all.
JESS: Sounds a bit pretentious.
TOM: We just don’t see the point of watching a gig through a six-inch screen. It’s a barrier between us and the audience.
JESS: I’ll refer you to my previous statement. So, when you and the other old sad bastards are sitting around your garage playing with your instruments—
TOM: It’s a converted warehouse, but yep, so far so good.
JESS: Do you ever think up ways to make yourselves millionaires? Because this isn’t it, surely.
TOM: I’m not sure being a millionaire is top of my list of priorities really. As long as I get to keep doing what I’m doing.
JESS: Oh! That’s a surprise, considering you once told me you wouldn’t let anything get in the way of your own success.
TOM: I don’t remember saying that.
JESS: The “I don’t remember saying that” defense. Loved by white guys since the dawn of time. But anyway, I reckon you could get to that million quid. What you need is some controversy. Or a suicide! Nirvana made a packet after Kurt lived fast, died young, and left a good-looking corpse. Yeah, draw straws to see which one of you should off yourselves. The remaining members get the windfall. Side note: the best thing to happen to Dave Grohl’s career was a single shotgun blast, discuss.
TOM: With comedy like that I can see why you’re so successful of late.
JESS: It’s just a joke.
TOM: Of course. You can say what you like if that’s your mantra. That being the second suicide reference you’ve made today, I’m guessing they’ve both been intentional. But this is the new Jess, isn’t it?
JESS: Someone’s got their gloves on today.
TOM: I just didn’t have you down as one of those comics willing to say anything to get a rise out of someone.
JESS: What’s that supposed to mean?
TOM: Nothing. Forget about it.
JESS: It’s getting awkward again. Time for another dip into our Bucketful of Klostermans…
TOM: Do we have to?
JESS: No, fine. Let’s end it there. The shortest podcast in history. Before you run off, let’s get to the central conceit of this show, the one that sets it apart from the thousands of other podcasts in which people blather on as if they’ve got something important to say. That conceit is “What tickles your funny bone, Tom Delaney?”
TOM: I don’t know.
JESS: Come on. Quit sulking and answer the question. What makes you laugh?
TOM: Well, once I saw this stand-up in Edinburgh. She was passionate and smart.
JESS: Go on.
TOM: And she seemed to care. She wasn’t going for the easy laugh. She was sincere. And she wasn’t pretending to be someone she wasn’t.
JESS: How do you know?
TOM: You’re right. I suppose I don’t.
JESS: Tom Delaney of The Friedmann Equation. That’s some Funny Stuff.
End of Transcription
23
Happy Christmas
Tom
Mortimer Street, London
December 17, 2016
I throw off my headphones and rage, “What was that?”
“Bloody good radio,” she replies with barely a blink.
From the second I walked in I knew she was out for blood. Like those in the front row at her gigs, I was a victim of the new Jess Henson. I try to justify that they pay to be there, and I was a hapless participant, but it’s a hard line to stick to. I wanted to be in this room. Just not like this.
I put on my coat, ready for round two.
“You’re not fooling anyone.”
“With what?”
“Playing the b—”
“Don’t you dare call me a bitch.”
“I didn’t. But I was gonna say you’re pretending to be one.”
I’m not good with confrontation, but there’s only so far I can be pushed. Neither of us seems to mind that we have an audience of two for this, as Julia and the intern, Vin, do their best to keep their distance by acting busy.
“How do you know that isn’t me? We’ve had two conversations. In the second of which you made it abundantly clear that you weren’t interested.”
I look at Julia and she looks down at the ground. Jess looks to Julia for an explanation. Her forehead couldn’t look more furrowed if a plow were rolling through it.
“I clearly don’t. The hateful crap you’ve been spewing lately, that stuff about suicide…What was that? Done your research, have you?”
“I didn’t realize you were a Nirvana superfan. A suicide joke about a guy who died thirty years ago? Too soon, is it, precious?”
“Precious?!” My voice has reached a pitch only Flipper could hear. “You gonna call me a snowflake next?”
The intern slowly backs out of the room to safety, complete with a great show-business story to tell his partner when he gets home, as me and Jess continue to trade insults. She accuses me of calling her alt-right because I dare to disagree with her style of comedy and I make accusations back about how her new direction is the definition of being a sellout. There’s just enough room for her to tear into me about my white male privilege before Julia, unwilling to leave her friend, finally steps in.
“Guys. Can you both just take a deep breath?”
I spit it out before I even have time to think about what I’m saying: “Gonna offer some more great advice, are you?”
Julia shrinks and the angry air turns to something worse, something even more toxic. It might appear to an outsider that I’m ganging up on both of them. Maybe I am.
“What’s that supposed to mean?” Jess asks, genuinely perplexed. “What’s he talking about?”
“It doesn’t matter,” I reply in a subdued tone. I point at the recording equipment. “Please don’t release that.”
As I’m halfway down the corridor all my thoughts go to finding the nearest pub and not so much drowning my sorrows as waterboarding them. I want to hurt myself with booze to make up for the absolute idiot I’ve been. I replay our last meeting before Australia, looking for signs to see what I did wrong. How I dropped the ball so badly. What a fool I’ve been.
I hear the studio booth open and hear Jess hurl one final insult, which I return in kind.
“Happy Christmas, Tom!”
“Hap
py Christmas, Jess!”
24
Red Flag Number One
Jess
Brynmaer Road, London
December 24, 2016
For Christmas this year I’ve been given the gift of intractable guilt by the UK’s worst comedy website. The headline reads:
female comic’s suicide joke dies on its arse
One. They can piss off with the “female” comic part. It’s the twenty-first century—the only reason for putting gender before a job title is if you’re trying to make a wider point. Two. Did they really just make a death pun while simultaneously calling me out for my mistake? Third, and most importantly, I had absolutely no idea. Of course I didn’t.
The article goes into greater depth, detailing who Tom is and how his grandfather, a music legend of his era, took his own life at the age of seventy-one. I didn’t know much about him, except what Tom told me on that first night and about how Tom’s parents sold a diary Tom wanted. I certainly didn’t know how he’d died until I opened my social media the day after the podcast aired and was met with a raft of death and rape threats. I called Tom immediately to apologize. But he wouldn’t answer. I’ve tried him three more times today and nothing. As I hang up, Chris shrugs and tells me it’s good publicity.
“That’s not the point,” I reply. “Tom thinks I was saying all that to wind him up, to hurt him. When I didn’t have a clue.”
Chris hovers behind me and my laptop, reading over my shoulder. “I’d chill out if I was you. It’s not like it’s the front page of one of your tabloids. It’s a comedy website fishing for content.” He looks like he’s had a bright idea, but (after a few months of him being my live-in boyfriend) I’ve got used to what follows being anything but. “You should get your agent to leak this to some of those right-wing papers you’re always raging about. Young female comic lays into dead beloved hero, they’d go mad for it. Make you a pariah in a week.”
“Why would I want to be a pariah?”
He shrugs again. “For the clicks?”
As I reread the article for the five hundredth time, Chris announces he’s off to meet someone about some “bonza opportunity.” I’m left alone with my guilt and my brain and the replay of the whole horrible episode. What was I really hoping to achieve, inviting him onto the podcast? Was my anger justified in the first place? Isn’t it just time I moved on? Like, actually moved on.
My phone rings. It’s Tom’s number.
“You rang?”
“Tom. I had no idea. I promise.”
There’s an awful pause as he weighs up my words. “If you didn’t know, then you’ve got nothing to feel bad about.” He hangs up before I can say anything more. Tomorrow, Chris and me are off to my mum’s for Christmas. I need to see my mum. I need to be home. It can’t come soon enough.
M1, Between Junction 23a and Junction 24
December 25, 2016
“Are we there yet? Are we there yet? Are we there yet?”
Chris’s current impersonation of a six-year-old is not what I need as I navigate the M1’s fifty-seven lanes of traffic, helplessly searching for the one that stops me driving through Nottingham and adding two hours onto our four-hour road trip. The mix of sleet and rain and a nonexistent car heater doesn’t help matters either. Or the fact that I’m driving because he’s “arguably still over the limit” from last night. He opened his first can about fifty miles back, with the comforting words of “no harm in making sure.”
I should be feeling good about this. This is a journey of firsts. My first Christmas with a boyfriend. My first time bringing a man home to meet Mum. What she thinks of him matters almost as much as what I think of him. The jury, as far as I’m concerned, is still out.
But I can’t feel good because my head is full of Tom, and the hurt I’ve caused him.
“Watch out for that lorry,” Chris jokes. Or at least I think he’s joking, as he opens can #3. I start wondering about relationship red flags. Red flag number one, he’s commenting on my driving in a way that I’m not sure is as funny as he wants me to think it is. Like he’s trying to make it light but he’s still making a rather unsubtle point. The other is how he’s crossing the line from tipsy to drunk an hour and a half before we meet my mum, even though his original plan hinged on him doing the driving. I make a point of staring at his empties and the three unopened Carlings.
“Are you planning on polishing all those off before we get to Sheffield?”
“ ’Course not. I was saving the other three for you. Want one now?”
I put on my best fake laugh and he grins back like a loon.
“You don’t mind, do you?” he asks, with what seems like genuine enough concern. I shake my head, providing him with the answer he wanted.
“Good. Because I didn’t want to invoke the Noddy Holder defense.”
“I’m going to regret asking what the Noddy Holder defense is, aren’t I?”
“It’s Chriiiiiiiiiiistmas!!!”
His Slade scream is enough to see me swerving into the middle lane and getting a mighty honk from behind for my troubles. I shake my damned head.
“Put on some music, you massive dolt.”
Chris picks up my iPod and I brace myself for what’s coming next.
“Oh, what a surprise. Last played, The Fried Toast Equilibrium.”
“Why have you got to be a dick about them? They’re just a band I like.”
He pulls a face and makes a pfft sound I find both annoying and annoyingly distracting. And when a distraction might see us underneath an articulated lorry, my earlier feelings of warmth for this man are being left somewhere on the hard shoulder.
“I’ve just never met a grown woman with such an unhealthy obsession with a boy band.”
“Boy band? They’re four talented musician men who don’t sing or dance, you absolute dillweed.”
“Maybe, but your devotion to them is like my nine-year-old niece’s with Wand Erection, ooooh.” That “ooooh” means he likes his own joke and he’s going to write it down somewhere. He pulls out a pen from his pocket and scribbles on the back of a receipt he finds on the floor.
“My devotion? I’ve seen them live once. I can’t write to music with lyrics. I just like listening to them when I work.”
“And in the car. And in the shower.”
A red mist is forming in my eyes, just below the actual mist of unsettled snow on the car’s engine.
“Is this going to be our first proper fight? About how you’re jealous of a band I like?”
Another pfft flies forth followed by the mouthing of the word “jealous” multiple times. We sit in angry silence for half a mile. Until Chris eventually pipes up with, “This isn’t our first fight.”
Curiosity breaks my silence.
“What was?”
“The toilet-roll thing.”
My heart warms at this. That he thinks our minor disagreement over which way a toilet roll should be placed on the holder could, on any planet, constitute “a fight” tells me more about his naivete and optimism than a thousand therapists could.
“The toilet-roll incident was not a fight.”
“OK, then,” he seethes. “Which way should it go?”
The rage in his face right now is hysterical to me. I have a strong urge to pull over onto the hard shoulder and push him out into a bush full of wee from bladders that couldn’t make it to the next services.
“It doesn’t matter!” I laugh.
“It does! Otherwise why would hotels uniformly do it a certain way? It has to be facing out to stop you having to reach around to find the next sheet.”
“Ha! You are a ridiculous human being. You’re arguing over how best to give a reach-around to bog roll.” I throw a packet of jelly babies to him from the door of the car. “Eat something, will you? You’re being hangry-stup
id. Stupid.”
Chris opens the bag, shoves three confectionery infants into his gob at once, and chews loudly, before finishing off the third can and opening the fourth. He puts his hand on my leg and I swat it away. He picks out two jelly babies and plays out a scene with squeaky voices, one stereotypically Aussie and one offensively British:
JELLY BABY CHRIS: Strewth, don’t be like that, babe.
JELLY BABY JESS: Like what?
JELLY BABY CHRIS: All pissed off with me. It’s Christmas.
JELLY BABY JESS: But you’re an idiot and I hate you.
“True and true,” I confirm.
JELLY BABY CHRIS: What can I do to make it up to you?
“I swear to Holy Jesus I’ll crash this car into the nearest petrol station if you start to make those sweets hump.”
JELLY BABY CHRIS: You know I love you, right?
He makes the two jelly babies kiss but stops short of full bonbon-on-bonbon action. I stick out my tongue at him and contemplate what just happened. My boyfriend just told me that he loved me. I mean, he didn’t say it properly. But he did say it. Does that count?
More importantly, do I want it to?
Park Grange Court, Sheffield
December 25, 2016
Chris is nothing if he’s not charming. And so far, since we arrived, he’s been absolutely nothing. I can’t figure out why, but he’s being so rude—actually being rude—to my mum. It’s like he’s negging her into liking him.
He opened with a couple of “you must be her sister” and “I can see where she gets her looks” jokes that went down as well as Santa in a synagogue. He was trying for ironic, tongue-in-cheek, purposefully bad humor. But it just came out so accidentally bad, Mum gave him a half-hug and walked off to check on the chicken. Things went from bad to worse when Mum revealed that we were indeed having a dry Christmas. I’d warned Chris this might happen. That I’d told her if she needed to jettison all alcohol it wouldn’t be a problem. Maybe that was why he mainlined all six cans before we arrived. By the time of the last one it seemed churlish not to let him finish them.
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