Here’s some selected videos of the performances:

Boyce Bailey

www.boycebailey.com

Bovine

www.richardtingley.co.uk

Joel Veitch

www.rathergood.com

Richard Tyrone Jones

www.utterspokenword.com

Mushybees

www.mushybees.com

Robert Auton

www.myspace.com/robertauton

Kunt and the Gang



www.kuntandthegang.co.uk

Other people who performed included Joel Veitch, Nick J, Mike Rampton and David Stevenson, but they’re all too shy for their work to be stuck on youtube.

BTW: I enjoyed myself making the crap jingles.

The night that should NEVER happen is back…

With the first one being a success, the Ents Manager, Russ Tannen has invited us back. To be honest I’m shitting myself even more the second time around – I spent most of the time with my head in my hands going, “please don’t say anything that’ll get me beaten up and thrown out.”

Sticking people on stage is anxiety making in the extreme. Will these people sink? Will these people swim? How do I get people on and off stage effectively? How do I stop people who who hog the mic and won’t go? Last time I was advised to use a torch in peoples eyes which was as about effective as a mouse going squeak.

So the plan is as before – ask the B3tans and Sickipedians (and anyone reading really) who fancies doing a 5 minute turn. People who have never tried this before are welcome, so get in touch asap if you fancy it.

• Location – The Old Blue Last, 38 Great Eastern Street, Shoreditch, London, EC2A 3ES. Google map.
• Date – 8pm, weds, 9th December
• Nearest tube: Old Street
• Capacity, about 100
• Facebook event

The Line Up So Far…

Mushy Bees (returning) – triumphant from his debut at the first comedy night we did, is our favourite arty tranny. We also invited Mushy to our birthday but he can’t make it as he proved so popular at the first night he’s got a booking that clashes. Still, he can make our comedy night and that’s the important thing. mushybees.com

Dan Pearce (new) – Aged 27 and from London, ‘Reason I am doing this: A drunk conversation with mates where I might have said “how hard can stand-up actually be?’ So now I am going to be made to eat my words!”

Boyce Bailey (new) “I’m 34. I work for a financial training company doing design. I like to brew cider, which doesn’t come out half a rough as you’d expect. It’s better than all pub and shop bought stuff. If you can cook, you can brew.”

Michael J (new) – “I’m 18, from Hertfordshire and still at school but work part time in a newsagents.”

David Stevenson (returning) – I work with David doing both B3ta projects (he co-writes the newsletter), and also Dave does a lot of illustration stuff on the other commercial work I do. Dave also is doing the comedy circuit and can be found most weeks in various London clubs. www.david-stevenson.com.

Jewish Nazi (returning) – “I’m a fencing erecter – neither Jewish or Nazi but I am circumsized and have a swastika scarred into my left butt cheek.”

Joel Veitch (returning) – of rathergood.com fame, Joel promises to do ruder jokes this time as last time he was concerned that we were filming it and was worried about what might end up on Youtube. To be clear, if we film anything then we will put nothing online unless we have the individuals express permission. www.rathergood.com.

tricyclic_looper (returning) – “born in the cultural wasteland of Essex, and currently resides in the literal wasteland of East London. After discovering the sick joke website Sickipedia, he found a convenient receptacle in which to pour his bile, hatred and rampant misanthropy with disturbingly compulsive regularity. tricyclic_looper hopes his return to the jungles of Shoreditch will be less ignominious than Jordan’s.” View sickipedia profile.

Nick James (new) – “Londoner. Late twenties, late developer, latent homosexual. I went to the first Sickipedia night and had a laugh at some of the acts. I thought I could probably do better than some of the others though.” He he – the challenge is on!

Richard Tingley (new) – best known to me as Bovine from the B3ta boards, Richard has recently been running a video blog which with it’s mixture of jokes and confessional I’m finding rather compelling. I reckon there’s a independent film in it somewhere. Very pleased Richard has agreed to join in our silly plans. Watch Richard on Youtube.

Robert Auton (new) – “I’m a stand up poet. I’m 27. I live in Walthamstow. I shared a dressing room with Lionel Blair at this years Edinburgh festival, an experience I will take to the grave with me.”

Jay Rolfe (new) – “I’m 23 and from Surrey” writes Jay. He also works in TV as a runner.

Jeremy Gomez (new) – “40s, Brick Lane, Minicab driver, learnt English by listening to Radio 4.”

Mike Rampton (new) – “I’m 26, a journalist, and in London. I used to be called mike on b3ta way back in the day.”

David Schaal (new) – “Just for your information, I play Jay’s dad Terry Cartwright in The Inbetweeners.”

If YOU fancy doing a turn then please get in touch ASAP with me at robmanuel at gmail dot com

Today he’s sent me four lovely videos. (He recorded many more but I don’t want to swamp you with this stuff.)

Mushy Bees

First up is Mushy Bees who did an extraordinary act that was the magic combination of being both original and funny. He’s never been on stage before and you can commission him to do his lovely art work via his site.

Richard Tyrone Jones

Richard is an old hand at this stuff and also has a book out. Richard did two short sets, I particularly loved the first but he doesn’t want it online so I’m going with the second. You can also stalk him via his facebook page.

Tricyclic Looper

Tric is one of our highest scoring sickipedian who crafts all his own gags on the site. He’s also dreadfully interesting to talk to about what makes gags vote highly. Read his jokes here.

Wylis

Wylis came down all the way from Leeds to join us. Read his jokes here.

I thought a reasonable half-measure would be to stick up some of the messages I’ve written for the journalists who got in touch.

CHORTLE

First off there was Jay Richardson who wrote the original (and most upsetting) item for Chortle. This was a hatchet job produced by Jay emailing me, not telling me his intentions and getting his quotes by subterfuge. With journalism there’s something called a “right to reply” which means if someone writes a highly critical story they should tell you about it before publication and give you an opportunity to defend yourself. Anyway – a copy of the original emails between us are here. On reflection – I’m sure Jay Richardson’s intentions were noble – he’s was just trying to help his friends – but it was at my expense so I have to flag it.

THE INDEPENDENT

Chris Green of the Independent wrote a much fairer story presenting both sides clearly. The comments I gave him were:

It’s really unfortunate what’s happened with Gary Delaney. I apologise fully for the behaviour of some of our sites users.

We run a public forum for gags – and, like any user-submitted content site, this has plusses and minuses. It’s completely great that there’s this big pile of amusing (and often stomach churning) material for all to read but occasionally stuff turns up that gives us nightmares.

Mostly we try and be hands off – we allow the users to vote stuff up and down. Anything that’s voted down too much drops off the site.

Our members feel that us poking around too much and overriding their democratic decisions is damaging to the site. So if stuff is removed they have a habit of posting it straight back on – it’s called the Streisand effect – where the internet routes around what it sees as damage or censorship.

When Gary got in touch we didn’t know what to do about his complaint as it was the first of its kind and we worried about it: that if we did as we were asked we’d just create a bigger problem.

Hence I advised Gary to contact the person who was submitting his material himself as I hoped they might work it out between themselves.

This hands-off moderation strategy proved to be the wrong approach as I believe Gary didn’t get what he wanted.

So then – being unsure of the best way to proceed – we acted on Gary’s request and deleted the material ourselves, big mistake. As we feared, the community saw his jokes being removed as an attack on their free speech and reacted awfully.

We learnt from this and worked with Gary to find a solution that allows people to attribute jokes. Obvious in retrospect, really. Gary now tells us he’s happy with this solution. Thank god.

I’ve also apologised privately to Gary for allowing my uncertainty of how to deal with this delay a solution.

- what action has your site taken to prevent unattributed jokes appearing?

All jokes now have the option of being attributed by anyone who reads them. The principle – like Wikipedia – many eyes keep things accurate.

But I’d like to stress the site is set up to collect the jokes that do the rounds in pubs etc, and not to step on the toes of comics on the club circuit.

However as our site evolved over the last 3 or 4 years we’ve found that many of our contributors spend hours crafting their own material, and find it extremely valuable to test it out via our site.

- what are your views on plagiarism in comedy? Is a joke public property as soon as it’s said in a gig, or should it remain the property of the comic?

Web marketing people call stuff that self-propagates as viral. Jokes are the original viral. They get thought up, they mutate and they get passed around via speech and leap-frog onto whatever the current technology is of the day.

This is true of jokes thought up by comics who work in the industry and also ordinary people – a witty line or comic observation is part of everyday discourse for people, the vast majority of whom don’t work in the comedy industry.

We’re interested in these people – letting them share their jokes with a bigger audience than just their chums.

- Also, is it true that Sickipedia’s hosting its own comedy night tonight in Shoreditch?

Yes, we have 12 or so comics on many of whom haven’t been on stage before and some who’ve honed their craft by inventing one-liners for Sickipedia.

Simply some guy who works in a pub who’s a fan of the website emailed me and said, “what about doing a comedy night?” I thought no, then yes, it would be really fascinating to stick these untried web comics on stage and see what they do. Can someone who can turn a phrase on a web browser get on stage?

So I said yes – and it’s absolutely devastating that this simple let’s do something for shits and giggles is getting confused with a moderation dispute. I’m literally getting panic attacks now that this has turned into a press story.

SUNDAY TIMES

My replies to David Schneider – yep, him off the telly – writing for The Sunday Times. David is an extremely reasonable man and I feel a bit of a shit pre-empting his story by publishing the comments I gave to him. UPDATE: Ooh he’s emailed and said it’s fine. Phew.

My top line is simply, “We had a problem, Gary got in touch to complain. We were crap at fixing it quickly, but we did fix it. Gary agreed that he was happy with the solution. I’ve also apologised to Gary.”

But in more detail….

Sickipedia like having an old dog you keep in the garden that occasionally escapes and bites the neighbour’s kids. And then, while you’re apologising, it’s behind them, shitting in their garden. But you can’t actually put it down because it’s your dog and you’re weirdly fond of it.

The problem arises from a clash of cultures. Sickipedia is born from a more public “let’s swap jokes” vibe that anyone who’s ever sat in a pub with a load of blokes will know about. Its intention was not to step on the toes of comics – in fact I was barely aware of the comic circuit until very recently.

However as the size of the site has grown – and in three or four years years it’s grown from a single thread on the b3ta messageboard to a site that gets over 7 million page views per month – we’ve found ourselves butting heads with a number of people I’d never expect to come into contact with. It was a bit of a shock and we weren’t quite sure how to handle it.

Also, as the site has expanded, a wonderful thing has happened. It’s become – not just a place for people to swap rotten old jokes – but also a place for people to write and test out new material. (I can put you in touch with a handful of interesting, articulate people who use the site this way, should you be interested.)

And this is what breaks my heart – our mad, weird, funny little website full of creative people, comedy fans and people I’d frankly be scared to meet in a dark alley is being painted with the paint of one colour: plagiarists.

Comedy nights: I like saying yes to opportunity – most of my life is pretty routine. Having a cup of tea with a fancy biscuit is about as showbiz as I get. On a day-to-day basis I help my wife look after the kids and run internet projects from my home office with my school-friend Dave. So when the Ents manager of a pub emails me and says do you want to put on a comedy night, after a bit of anxiety wrestling (I have no experience, and hadn’t even watched a live comic in years) I figure my life will be more interesting if I say yes.

So I stick out a message online and see who wants to turn up. The pitch is simple – see 12 or so guys, many of whom who’ve never stood on stage before and only written gags on a website. Will they sink or swim? I’d want to see that.

The night was last Tuesday and it was a roaring success – not only did so many people turn up we had to turn them away – people came up to me who know the open-mic circuit said it was like nothing they’d ever seen and they’d love it. The key difference I think was the audience – they weren’t a traditional comedy audience who go to live gigs, they were fans of the website up for a party.

And our acts – well amongst my favourites was Mushy Bees – a truly unique act, someone who’s never been on stage before but deserves to go far should he wish to pursue it. His act was basically being a full-on transvestite, a gruff voice, whilst showing hand-drawn caricatures of celebs with rude poems… Well, see for yourself. A professional camera guy, Joe Rigby, thought what we were attempting was so interesting that he got in touch and offered to film it for free (with the permission of the acts!). Check the video here.

And finally…

The other name that gets rather overlooked in all this mess is Ross ‘Teddy’ Craig who also had a similarly crap experience of Sickipedia. Sorry Ross. SORRY ROSS.

• 8pm to 12pm, Tuesday, 10th Nov 2009
• At The Old Blue Last in London’s fashionable Shoreditch, capacity about 100.
• About 12 or so comics all from the site, many of them having never been on stage before, doing 5 minute sets
• I’ll be the compere – and when I get bored of introducing people, I’ll get Sickipedia coder Paul Curry to do this too
• Also we’ll have B3ta regulars Joel Veitch (rathergood.com) & David Stevenson (B3ta newsletter co-writer) doing 5 min sets.
• It’s free to get in and there’s a bar should you wish to drink
• The address is 38 Great Eastern St, Shoreditch EC2A 3ES. Nearest tube is Old Street. Linky to Google maps
• Facebook event here

The line up

Justincider – “I live in Plumstead, South East London. Married/divorced 3 times. Been on the site for two and a half years. I’ve been writing my own stuff for about 18 months.”

Aspen – “I make up all my own jokes and I started adding them to Sicki over a year ago. I was pleasantly surprised to find that people quite like my efforts, and I soon had the bug. As I watched my jokes spreading over the internet and popping up in magazines like Zoo, I decided to turn my attention to thinking of my joke-writing as a means to earn income. So far this is progressing well (Two of my jokes are in Reader’s Digest this month) and my joke-writing has progressed from being a bug to an obsession.”

Joel Veitch – “My wife has been suggesting I should do something like this, so YES!”

Mushy Bees – Mushy is promising us some poetry. He’s a very glamorous transvestite and we’re hoping he’s buying a sparkly new dress for the occasion.

Tricyclic Looper – “I suppose ‘lawyer’ would be as descriptive a description as I’d be comfortable with – I guess as long as my real name doesn’t get out it would be okay.”

Jethro-gdc – “I am Kenyan – not your typical black man in London and I’m happy to take the piss.”

David Stevenson – Newsletter co-writer Dave is probably in part why this event is happening. He’s been taking himself off to open mic nights recently and his reports back have made me more interested in live comedy.

Richard Tyrone Jones – “I’m 29, I live in Archway, and I’m a spoken word promoter and marriage counsellor. I don’t really want to reveal any more as it might spoil it.”

Wylis – “29, Leeds but am Cumbrian and proud. Been on a few tv quiz shows including University Challenge and Eggheads.”

Michael Areola, “I’m known throughout comedy clubs in Manchester for my very graphic content.”

Les, “It’s rare that I get a chance to get onstage and do my songs about chavs and paedophiles without having to be escorted out of the venue by a member of security.”

David Webb, “I do a bit of stand up and recently went for an audition for a new BBC3 show – was all going well – got down to the final 3 till I busted out a couple of Ian Huntley jokes.”

Rob Bull, “I work in the City as a recruitment consultant, was the first person out of everyone I know to discover Sickipedia.”

Mike Coates, “I’m 22 and am an IT Project Manager. I like drinking and watching football. My approach to work is don’t work hard, work smart. It’s not who you know, it’s who you blow.”

Dale Smith, “I’m 28 and work doing Customer Relations for a TV company. My friends have always said I should try try my hand at doing stand up. I know that if i was to perform, there’d be a few people desperate to be there but I’d be more comfortable trying it in a room full of strangers (Stuart Lubbock’s last words too I think).”

Ian Parsonson – “I’m 28, live in London and I’m a Flash developer. I did stand up only once before at a school talent thing when i was 17 and told a joke that made everyone think I was gay. Ive been planning to have another go for years so I’m looking forward to another chance to embarrass myself.”

Fles – one of the mods on Sickipedia, “Has anyone prepared a placard so that some jokes can be censored by ‘This joke cannot be told due to copyright infringement’? It seems a few of my colleagues will be attending purely in order to heckle me.”

In more detail
Had an email from a guy called Russ Tannen who works as the ents manager for the Old Blue Last pub in Shoreditch. He mentioned that he was a fan of Sickipedia and asked if we fancied putting on a comedy night?

My first reaction was “God no, I didn’t start this stupid website to put on comedy nights in Shoreditch” but then thinking about it a bit I figured that it would be really interesting to stick the jokers from the site on stage and see what happens. Will people who can craft a gag on a web page be able to get on stage? Will some of the jokes be even tell-able without everyone feeling embarrassed and awkward?

So I stuck a message on the Sickipedia forums and asked people to get in touch. What’s going to happen? God knows but I’m looking forward to it.

What you need to know:

Voting! You’ll be able to see the sickest jokes ever, as voted for by you, the international community of web-sickos.

Right, you’ll be wanting a link. Here you go: http://www.sickipedia.org/

]]> http://www.robmanuel.com/2007/06/13/sickipedia-20/feed/ 2 http://www.robmanuel.com/2007/01/30/download-the-bumper-b3ta-book-of-sick-jokes-for-free/ http://www.robmanuel.com/2007/01/30/download-the-bumper-b3ta-book-of-sick-jokes-for-free/#comments Tue, 30 Jan 2007 11:36:52 +0000 robmanuel http://www.robmanuel.com/2007/01/30/download-the-bumper-b3ta-book-of-sick-jokes-for-free/ The whole sick jokes project hasn’t just been an attempt to get 100% filth into the British Library, but also a (not so) secret attempt to test my theories of marketing.

My little idea is “give away the book and more people would buy it.” Not really a paradox, but simply that a PDF copy allows people to enjoy the material, but isn’t really a suitable gift for a birthday present.

“Oooh. A 14MB email attachment, your generosity is really spoiling us.”

Hence, give it away, and maybe people will buy a copy for a friend. That’s assuming they think the book is good of course.

Gah, but fuck it, here we go. Here’s the book for free, and hopefully the Amazon sales rank won’t plummet to zero.

And here’s the magic link: www.SickJokeBook.com, go crazy.

And with that, the Sick Joke project is nearly over. Well barring the soon to be re-launched, bigger and better Sickipedia…

]]> http://www.robmanuel.com/2007/01/30/download-the-bumper-b3ta-book-of-sick-jokes-for-free/feed/ 1 http://www.robmanuel.com/2006/11/30/your-ideas-for-my-book/ http://www.robmanuel.com/2006/11/30/your-ideas-for-my-book/#comments Thu, 30 Nov 2006 02:34:16 +0000 robmanuel http://www.robmanuel.com/2006/11/30/your-ideas-for-my-book/

The Sick Jokes thing is selling well enough for the publisher to start making noises that they’re interested in a follow up.

But what exactly?

I asked a few friends, one said, “I think you should write a ‘proper’ book. How to get 1,000,000 hits in one day. It’d be the bible for viral people everywhere.”

Sadly this would be a very short book, as the only secret is “make it good”.

Or in more detail: Pick an area that you have some insight into, make it easy to comprehend, add a few jokes if you can think of them, tell everyone you know and hope for the best.

So, over to you. Got any ideas?

]]> http://www.robmanuel.com/2006/11/30/your-ideas-for-my-book/feed/ 16 http://www.robmanuel.com/2006/11/15/diy-pr-campaign-for-sick-joke-book/ http://www.robmanuel.com/2006/11/15/diy-pr-campaign-for-sick-joke-book/#comments Wed, 15 Nov 2006 17:11:10 +0000 robmanuel http://www.robmanuel.com/2006/11/15/diy-pr-campaign-for-sick-joke-book/ The PR company associated with the publisher refused to work on the B3ta book as they were concerned that it might reflect badly on their other clients.

Spoil sports!

Anyway, so I’ve had to make do with an ad-hoc approach with me basically emailing various people I’ve met through the years and hoping for the best. Although, when I think about it, this is probably how real PR works.

Zoo Magazine: 25 Sickest Jokes Ever

Clicky for biggy.

We’ve had a few wins. Zoo magazine have done a two page spread on the book.

BTW: This is a screen grab of a proof they sent me and doesn’t include the illustration credits. I’ve checked the print version and all the credits are there in full – if in the smallest font I’ve ever seen. I would show you a scan of that, but my bloody scanner has chosen today to refuse to work.

Oh the B3ta promo the right side was was originally sold to Gillette Fusion Hydra Soothe if you are interested, and there’s no reason why you should be, but I’m vaguely curious to know whether Gillette were happy to be placed next to such filth.

Actually, I’m assume they’re fine as if you turn back a page, Gillette have another ad placed next to a photo of a Britney Spears look-a-like sucking a penis.

Anyway, I’ve replaced it with a massive plug for the book.

Evening Standard

I’ve got a confession here, I occasionally do TV title work for Victor Lewis-Smith’s company and I made sure he got a copy of the book in the post. I didn’t know he was going to write anything, and the first I heard of it was when my wife spotted my name whilst reading her paper on the tube. Hooray for Victor.

Broadcast

Steven D Wright is a columnist for TV industry magazine, Broadcast. It doesn’t hurt that he’s also the ex-boss of my wife and she slipped him a copy on the off chance he might like it. He’s come up trumps with this fantastic and amusing editorial.

The Guardian

Not exactly PR, more the happy accident that B3ta ended up in the papers and I told the journalist, “No comment. But you could mention the book if you like.”

Loved the, “Amazon best sellers” thing. My dad read that and phoned up all excited. (But hopefully he’s stopped visiting Cardiff Waterstones offering my services to do a book signing. Thanks Dad.)

Online

And taking it back to the web, we’ve had a few mentions with our friendly compeition – i.e. other UK newsletter publishers.

London by London took the time to interview me about London.

Also, there’s been The Friday Thing which cheekily asked me to write “something about Chris de Burgh” in exchange for a plug. That I don’t give a flying fuck about Chris de Burgh didn’t stop me from having a go.

And finally we’ve had a lovely plug in Popbitch, but as it was a one line thing, there isn’t much to say about the screengrab. However, you have to respect PB’s power. Did the book jump a few places or what?

Anyways. This is PR the “sitting in my bedroom in my underpants” way, if you think you can help then you know how to get in touch.Oh, and I nearly forgot. I might as well plug the book myself with a big fat Amazon link: Buy the book else the baby Jesus will cry. Rah.

]]> http://www.robmanuel.com/2006/11/15/diy-pr-campaign-for-sick-joke-book/feed/ 2 http://www.robmanuel.com/2006/11/03/christmas-crackers/ http://www.robmanuel.com/2006/11/03/christmas-crackers/#comments Fri, 03 Nov 2006 12:43:06 +0000 robmanuel http://www.robmanuel.com/2006/11/03/christmas-crackers/ Here’s a page that didn’t make the Sick Joke Book due to a last minute production issue, which was a shame as it was one of my favourite ideas: cut these jokes out and stick them in the crackers to liven up Christmas.

Anyway, you can download it as an A4 PDF for printing, and tell me if you do actually do this, this Christmas. Of course, if you’re stuck for present ideas? Buy the book.

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