Mess Around UK 2011 – Birmingham

Well, we set a record tonight for the longest Mess Around ever. Here’s what happened.

It started with an interesting front row, and in particular an interesting looking man called Ben. I asked him on stage for a photo, and he asked me if he could have a hug. I said yes, and we took a photo of it:

I then took a photo of Ben, and tweeted the question, “This is Ben. What do you think he does?” (Actually I misspelt his name as Bem in the tweet, my apologies)

The answers started rolling in immediately and included:

jaybee_bug DJ for children’s rave birthday parties.

MandyBeaches Roadie.

yabbie567 very very well with the ladies !

ChrissieWild Blonde Billy Connelly look-e-likey? The 80’s era…

fiatpanda Follows your mum home and presses himself up against the window?

Rove Whatever it is, he rides a unicycle while he does it.

amy_who does he guard the pot of E at the end of the ravebow?

The audience favourite however was

maglobian Lead singer in an Amish Ska Punk band

This inspired me to send out another tweet, asking for suggestions for the name of said Amish Ska Punk Band. I’ll get to them in a minute though, because while checking tweets I noticed a few that had come in from audience members before the show.

One was from a guy whose wife was too chicken to sit in the front row. So I made her sit in the front row. Strangely, I didn’t pick on her at all for the rest of the show.

Then there was Tiffany, who had brought along a cork hat for me. She brought it to the stage, and posed for a photo with Ben

We also took a photo of Ben pretending to be a gnome, because someone in the audience thought that was what he looked like.

I then put on the hat, and busted out the “Aussie pulling a beer behind the bar” pose:

I then tried to imitate the Greg Fleet-patented Aussie possie, but the man with the camera magaged to film instead of snap, so we made an impromptu short film, which can be viewed here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dmrOWv7p7uk

After a short interval I kicked off the second half by reading out some of the tweets I had received during the break. There was one from the lady in the front row, thanking her partner for inadvertently getting her a better seat. There was one from Elizabeth slating our recent Ashes performance:

elizabethewens why do Australians like having a Chinese? Cos they love going out for a duck #enjoyingtheshow

and one from @howlieT saying she had redislocated her thumb applauding the show. Ben jumped on stage and we both did a magical gnome dance to make it better. Thankfully we didn’t film it. Unfortunately Ben’s girlfriend did:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QA4AKxcxj6E

Then it was time to read through the suggested names for Ben’s Amish Ska Punk band, and I have to say I have never received so many tweets during a gig in my life. I can’t possibly get through them all, but they included:

mturf Maize Against Machines with their hit song (We don’t want your) Combine Harvester.

Cosmik_ The Abstinence Pistols.

MandyBeaches The Mighty Mighty Butter Churners

itsmarcusryan Green Hay

zannerogers Non-Electric Light Orchestra?

benpobjie The Barn Raisers

Well done everyone, I am truly blown away by how funny people are.

Most normal people would have ended the show there, but no, I decided to keep chatting to people and found a young man sitting next to a young lady called Natalie. I asked if they were together, and they paused. Of course we all read a lot into that pause, at which point he said “I would be honoured to, but…I had my chance and blew it”

Turns out he had once tried to ask her out, but was overcome by nerves, turned into a stammering Hugh Grant wannabe and managed to utter “I like your hair, it’s very squirrelly” before she ran away.

I asked Natalie if there was a chance this could ever work, and she replied “Yes, as long as he doesn’t start by talking about a rodent”. It then transpired that there was indeed a dead fox in his house, but we pushed on regardless.

I saw what I must do. I brought him on stage and said it was time to ask Natalie out properly. I grabbed a phone from Sophie in the front row and played “Come What May” from the Moulin Rouge soundtrack, while our hero took the mic and asked Natalie for a drink as “more than friends”.

She said yes, the crowd cheered, and they spent the rest of the gig holding hands and drinking pink champagne (that I rustled up from the bar)

And somehow, two hours after we started (minus twenty minutes for interval) the show came to an en, although not before a quick recap of our prostate awareness campaign.

A few weeks ago we found the slogan “No Joke, Be A Bloke, Get A Poke” in one of my shows and made a poster with a man called Sachin. Last night we updated that poster with a nurse called Laura. A few avid blog readers made their own version of the poster, including Mandy B who offered up this one:

I asked if anyone in the crowd could display one in a prominent place, and a guy called Stewie said he would hang a few in a men’s prison. Someone else suggested the students in the crowd could hang them up on campus, and just like that a movement was born.

the challenge now is to put these posters up in public places and raise prostate awareness across the world. Feel free to download the poster, print it off, and send me the photos of your results.

And that, finally, was all that happened. I’m beginning to see why we set the record. It has taken me almost as long to write the blog as it took to do the show.

More to come tomorrow from Brighton, and a huge thanks to everyone in the Glee Club Birmingham tonight.

Adam