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Your support makes all the difference.I should really write this column about the Paralympics, and how wonderful and inspiring and brilliant to watch it all is. I should say that it's better than the actual Olympics. I should write all these things because it seems to be what everyone else is writing. The thing is, I don't agree. The problem is that if I write that then I become like the loathsome Frankie Boyle, or someone desperately trying to be contrary in an attempt to get publicity because I've got a new TV show or a new book out.
The problem is heightened by the fact that I do have a new television show and book out, and if I write anything negative about the Paralympics then I will get a wall of abuse online and some newspaper will write a story along the lines of, "Sick comedian slams Paralympics". Then I'd be called into ITV and given a dressing down by somebody who secretly agrees with me but has been told that he has to give me a talking to as it makes ITV look bad.
So I'm definitely not going to say anything about the Paralympics. You see, I've grown up and don't do things like that any more. I don't sabotage my own show and shoot myself in the foot by doing something stupid on the day after my show is broadcast.
On the day that the first Trigger Happy TV aired on Channel 4, I broke into the Big Breakfast garden and attacked the window behind which Johnny Vaughan and Denise Van Outen were presenting the live show. I was dressed as a sausage and being chased by a carrot. Viewers saw the presenters jump before a huge security man sent me flying out of shot. I was doing a spot of guerrilla marketing for some much-needed cash and had not even given my show's launch date a thought. I was arrested and put in a cell in Limehouse police station, still dressed as a sausage. I had to share said cell with a burglar who looked very worried about my brown tights. I was eventually released only to enter a furore, as Channel 4 wanted to know why it was airing the show of a moron who attacked their flagship breakfast show.
It was a good question and one that I should have possibly asked myself before embarking on the stunt. I do have a touch of the self-destruct to me. If ever things are looking like they are going a bit too well I find myself leaning a bit too far over the edge of the cliff.
That's why I'm not going to say anything about the Paralympics that isn't on message. I'm not going to say anything about the opening ceremony being too long. I'm not going to say anything about not being able to make head nor tail of most of the events, and spending most of my time saying "so what's wrong with that one?". Anything of that sort would be wrong.
So maybe I could do something about how rubbish the weather is. Or I could do my default panic column about the next-door farmer with his huge barns in which he breeds 50ft chickens? Maybe I should just forget about the column and watch TV? I wonder what's on? Oh yes, my new show Fool Britannia and … the Paralympics.
'Fool Britannia' goes out at 6.55pm on Saturday, on ITV1
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