Rob Manuel

Mostly the B3ta lot live online – a youtube video here, a flash game there, but occasionally some of them can be arsed to leave their spunk encrusted bedrooms and venture outside for a real world project.

Some such guys are John Hopkins and his friend Richard Glover, who plan to get the web to pay for a yacht so they can sail to the Edinburgh festival. The video caught my attention as it reminded me of a comment Ben Goldacre made about moving to live on a boat, “I’ll become London’s novelty shag.” And it’s got a great title: With Sails & I.

I feature the video clip in the newsletter and forget about it until one morning and I’ve got three excitable emails from Hopkins, the last one most worryingly going, “I’m about to pass out on the Hamble river.” But what really shocked me was that he phoned me at 8 the following morning – I assumed these were drunken ramblings.

Hopkins is affable and excited on the phone – he’s hasn’t got a boat yet but he’s been learning how to sail via donated lessons. “The company wants their name promoted – it’s on the side of the boat.” Ah, something for the video editors to pixel out should this ever reach TV.

He keeps stressing how foolhardy his plans to sail from the South Coast to Scotland are and how little he knows. And how likely he is to die.

The plan is to pull off a comedy fundraiser, “Like Live Aid” he says, to raise the cash needed and he invites me to attend the event.

Not a big one for nights out at the moment – two young children mean I need to be up in the mornings but I’m curious – who is this John Hopkins? My mental image is a 30 something bachelor who’s looking for the big project to make sense of his life, when probably what he really needs is good stiff talking to about family values.

I meet John at the venue – he immediately demands a bear hug which startles me a little, he’s excited and nervous, I recognise the weird flighty energy people get before going on stage, this stuff really is a drug – it’s as addictive as cocaine and makes people just as hyper. I’m bundled down the stairs and introduced to passing people, “This is Rob Manuel from B3ta” Hopkins shouts, “So that’s what you look like!”, another says. Well yes. This is what I look like.

Then a whirl of people I don’t know – an attractive blonde comes to our table, “Hi, I’m Alexa, I’m here to look after you tonight.” Awkward at being schmoozed, it’s fight or flee. What’s this all about, I think to myself. I’m Rob from some stupid website, I’m not a commissioning editor from Channel 4, he’s over there, pointing vaguely in my mind, at home watching TV. But I say nothing other than, “um yes, I can’t really refuse beer.”

“Hey Rob, I know you, I worked at Comedybox, you did a song for us – about wishing your wife was a horse. But I gave up my job to film these guys. How could I say no?”, says the camera operator. Er.. Because you were made redundant at a guess, again I mutter in my head, as who’s going to give up a proper job in the current climate?

Lenny Beige is comparing, he’s like Mike Flower’s Pops with scissor kicks. I like the scissor kicks, they’re exciting. Each time he kicks – boom – excitement. Next time I do a Power-Point presentation I’m definitely going to liven it up with a few scissor kicks.

Then our new boating heroes take the stage to do a few skits – the most amusing bit involves drinking spunk, not so much the semen itself but the apology to the girlfriend’s mother about the sketch. Aha, so he’s not a loveless bachelor then.

Other guests include um, some other guys who sing and dance a bit. My friend Mike comments, “it’s a bit like a school play isn’t it? They’re playing to their friends who already know the jokes.”

Hopkins does a series of thank-yous to people who are helping the project, “…And Rob Manuel from B3ta… Anybody know B3ta?” Tumbleweed and the longest five seconds of my life as nobody knows B3ta. My personal version of hell will have that 5 seconds played over an eternity. Thanks for that.

He also mentions that I’ve got ginger hair and it waves like the blowing wind, even when I’m inside. Glad to have made an impression.

Phill Jupitus on next and he’s a bit of a worry. With his gigantic girth and a pork-pie hat, he does the right thing and acknowledges his size this to preempt the audience,”I’m 47 years old, 22 stone and a hamburger away from a heart attack.”

A startling joke as it’s true. He needs to look after himself better. I like Phill and I don’t want him to die. We met once for working reasons and we talked about our kids, “having children is a great leveller” he said. Yes Phill, and your kids want you alive, so lay off the family pack of Kit-Kats.

Phill hasn’t done stand-up in 7 years and is anxious about it – he needn’t be, he’s great, his powerful delivery is in stark contrast to the other acts. He storms it.

He does a gag about his daughter bringing back her first boyfriend and he threatens to “cut him up if he so much as touches her… He starts crying? Sheesh – six year olds today.”

His material is 12 years old he tells us, his daughter is now a young adult who has sex with her boyfriend under his roof. The roof his comedy paid for. This makes him very angry. The joke here being presumably, that this is not a joke.

His turn finishes in 15 minutes to loud applause which he takes badly. He’s horribly self critical – he complains he doesn’t deserve it as good stand-up should be faster and it’s all about speed, then mutters something about being a “pathetic excuse for a human being” and wanders off the stage. Come now Phill, save the self-hatred for your shrink, your public loves you.

And now for a final sing song – all the comics shuffle back on to the stage and launch into a ramshackle medley that lurches between Blondie’s The Tide Is High and The Specials Message To You Rudy depending on who took the mic.

A special guest joins – it’s Pete Bennett from Big Brother. Another disturbing figure – he’s dressed in a figure hugging Lycra with S.P. emblazoned on the front. Super Pete presumably.

He does a growling ragga thing, like Shaggy toasting over a Culture Club 12″ – “I met them on a beach in BrightON. They wanted a boat that they could get ON”

Pete has an electrical energy about him, a fizzing spark, a short circuit. I worry for him – I reckon you could persuade him to do anything – the 14 year old boy who runs across a railway track because you dare him. I hope he doesn’t mix with people who do.

Wanting a big finale for filming reasons, John Hopkins apologies on stage, “we have to do this bit” and launches into Rod Stewart’s Sailing.

Some girl is plucked from the audience and suddenly she’s singing like Janis Joplin. She’s not bad and presumably is a plant.

Time to sneak off before I’m collared by Hopkins and strong-armed – in the nicest possible way of course – into promotion for his project for the rest of my natural life. However I’m interested to see where their story goes next: will they get a boat? Will the coast guards have to save them? And how many times? And will the end result have a certain story-telling charm? I think the answer to the last bit will certainly be yes.

http://www.withsailsandi.co.uk/