IN YOUR DREAMS

I have nothing in my head on waking. My memory banks wipe themselves completely every night. I have my CV taped to the back of the bathroom door to get in character each morning. Harold once, for a joke, substituted a potted biography of Joan of Arc, but couldn’t bring himself to strike the match at the crucial moment. He left me tied to the woodpile for several hours, mind.

Have you ever confused dreams with reality? I do it all the time. Unlike some people, who remember their dreams as soon as they wake up, I am always of the impression that I don’t dream, as my mind is such a blank first thing in the morning. Then I will become very confused, convinced that the Eiffel Tower was in the middle of the Grand’Place last week, or that Tony Blair has resigned, or something equally implausible.

I could have sworn I read a review of a new film the other day which featured a talking ape, the result of an explorer’s moment of madness with a female gorilla. Yesterday I threw out a load of old newspapers, and possibly by mistake the magazine with the film review in it. But perhaps I only dreamed I read about it, as I have scoured the internet and cannot find any reference to it.

Perhaps it is because I watched “Gorillas Revisited” on BBC4 last night, presented by honorary gorilla David Attenborough, and came to the obvious conclusion in my subconscious. It looked back on the original BBC “Gorillas” documentary from 1979. This was the one, some of you may remember, where a considerably younger Attenborough was sat on by a young gorilla and looked to be enjoying the experience. The gorillas were feared missing presumed dead after the appalling Rwandan tragedy of 1994, but a team of cameramen found them relatively unscathed after the war. The Rwandan government is now supporting a new conservation programme, and the gorillas are breeding again. Which is good news.

Wikipedia says the name “Gorilla” “ … derived from the Gorillai, a "tribe of hairy women", described by Hanno the Navigator, a Carthaginian navigator and possible visitor to the area that later became Sierra Leone circa 480 BCE”.

Now, if Hanno the Navigator had a thing about hairy women, he could have fathered a whole tribe of humanoid apes, such as the one featuring in my dream film. Just because the gorillas don’t talk to David Attenborough doesn’t mean they can’t. I refer you to my learned friend Gorilla Bananas, if you require further convincing, who may well be descended from Hanno the Navigator.

On the other hand, as gorillas are mainly found in the Congo and Rwanda, and not Sierra Leone, perhaps what Hanno found really was a tribe of hairy women.

Wikipedia also says “Due to their diet of plant life, gorillas often have bloated stomachs”. There’s nothing worse than trapped wind.

Not that I have any desire to go and gawp at gorillas. Apparently “eco-tourism” is bringing in plenty moolah for the conservation project. It could at first glance appear rather dangerous for the apes, who are susceptible to the same diseases as humans, although the project is well policed and humans are not allowed to get too close or stay too long for fear they will transmit some human disease such as the common cold or RSI. I suppose this is where a bit of directional farting might come in handy.

The project managers say that the apes find the humans interesting, like a kind of running soap opera. Do they know Pauline Fowler is dead, I wonder? Killed by a bowl of fruit, which a gorilla would find very ironic. If this is the case, then the eco-tourists should be applauded for paying all that money to go and be laughed and farted at by gorillas.

GET UP STAND UP

The other night Scouse Doris and I went to Standup World, the British comedy club in Brussels. The theatre was packed, mostly with Brits, which tells you something about how many of us there are here in the Big Sprout. On the bill were two acts, Jeff Green, and an act called “Priorité à Gauche”, who are a couple of French rappers. I must say the two French boys were very good value, and bravo to them for doing their patter in English, although their accents would have made Antoine de Caunes wince. They’re a bit of a specialty act, inasmuch as it helps to have a basic knowledge of French language and culture to understand such songs as “Le Pen in ze Ass”. The dear boys were delighted to be in Belgium, which they described as their second-favourite country in the Benelux region, before going on to sing a very short song about Luxembourg, their third-favourite. I wonder why young people are all so keen on the Netherlands. Can’t be the tulips.

Jeff Green was one of these bloke-next-door types who just rambles on about anything and nothing, and manages to have the audience in stitches. He did the standard greeting to an expat audience (“What are you all doing here then, tax evasion?”) but once he warmed to what is obviously his favourite subject – men and women – we were rolling in the aisles. My cheekbones ached and Doris’ mascara ran. Isn’t it funny though, as soon as you come out of a comedy show, you can’t remember a thing that was said. I vaguely remember seeing him in something on telly. Anyway, he’s very funny.

Whose Line is it Anyway? was the nearest the UK ever got to embracing improvisation theatre, or “improv”. In Belgium and a number of other European countries (as well as the US, to some extent, and Quebec, where the concept was born) the improv match www.ligueimpro.be is a popular spectator sport. The teams of players are organised into leagues, and matches attract a big following. I wouldn’t recommend it unless your French is pretty good, as the material is fast, topical and quite slangy.

The crowd is warmed up by two “animateurs”, one who does the patter, and the other who provides the incidental music on a synthesizer. Loud rock music plays as the audience take their seats. Spectators are provided with a reversible two-colour card for voting, and a slipper to throw into the ring if the performance is particularly dire (or if the referee makes a hugely unpopular decision). The 5-a-side teams are made up of jobbing actors (the sort of people who make their living doing voiceovers, dubbing films or when things are really bad dress up as chickens and hand out freebies in Super GB) or sometimes professional groups, some of which have an innate talent for improvisation, for example lawyers. They are dressed in team colours with their names on their backs.

In a small enclosed ring, or pit, in the middle of the theatre, the two teams compete in an orchestrated improvisation “match”, policed by a referee and two “linesmen” dressed in the black and white striped shirts usually worn by ice-hockey referees, who ham up the bad-guy image by scowling, slouching around, chewing gum and snarling at the audience, who boo back enthusiastically. The two teams of 5 actors run in to loud music and thunderous applause from the warmed-up audience of regular improv followers, and indulge in a parody of American-style team bonding exercises, such as high-fives and rhythmic team routines between bouts. There is even an improv anthem, which is sung with cod solemnity at the beginning of each match. The ice-hockey parody comes from Quebec, where the whole thing started.

The aim is to win points for inventiveness, throwing the other team off, picking up the “line” from another team member skilfully and seamlessly. They can be ticked off by the ref for deviation from the subject, gratuitous vulgarity (although that doesn’t stop them), and anything else the ref decides to make up. If they commit a serious fault they are sent to the sin bin for five minutes. There are about 17 categories of fault, which the referee will indicate with a particular gesture. It’s a bit like a cross between “Just a Minute” and a boxing match, with extra twists, such as sketches where the teams “tag” each other, picking up where the other team left off. At the end of each bout the spectators hold up their cards to vote for one colour or the other. Where penalties are awarded, the two team captains are called in to be ticked off by the referee. This is where most of the slippers are launched into the pit, those which make contact with the referee’s head eliciting loud cheers from the audience. It is all very tongue-in-cheek, and the more hamming it up that goes on, the better. The “rules” are a bit of a blind, since the spirit of Mornington Crescent prevails, and a team captain’s defence can sometimes be even funnier than the sketch.

Like graphic novels, a subject on which I shall pontificate on a separate occasion, impro is something almost exclusive to the francophone world. Which is a shame, because with our competitive spirit and our capacity for bullshit, I think we Brits would be pretty good at it.

NOT WAVING BUT DROWNING

I feel a bit like the Queen during that week after Diana's death. I am metaphorically holed up in Balmoral (aka Wayne-Bough Towers) while my public clamours for me to make an appearance. Bear with me, loyal subjects. There are perfectly valid reasons for my silence. It's called Work. I'll be back amongst you as soon as I've surfaced from this mountain of paper. He who pays the piper calls the tune, and all that.

TOWER OF BABBLE

I saw a rather tedious film last week by Mexican director Alejandro Gonzalez Inárritu. Like his previous effort “21 grams”, “Babel” pulls together a number of seemingly unrelated stories which turn out to be linked by one small anodine event. It starred Brad Pitt and Cate Blanchett and the delicious young Gael Garcia Bernal, the action took place in Morocco, Mexico and Japan, and was about 45 minutes too long. I think the underlying theme was about breakdown in communication. A theme which merits further study.

My German refresher course will be over at the end of this month, Gott sei Dank. Having to get up early on Saturday mornings is a killer. And does Bert appear the remotest bit grateful? Überhaupt nicht. I have been spending every Saturday morning for the past couple of months at the Goethe Institut in an attempt to brush up my German to impress him. I asked him the other day whether I had made any progress. “Schatzi,” he smiled teutonically, “I loff your Britisch akzent”. Gott in Himmel, I wonder why I bother.

In my class we are about 15 students of various nationalities. About half are Belgian – a fairly straight mix of Walloon and Flemish. The Flems have better mastery of German than most of us, as Flemish has similar construction, vocabulary and sounds. The French-speaking Walloons make everyone snigger when they attempt to speak, they must sound to a German like Crabtree from ‘Allo ‘Allo. The other half of the class is a mixed bag of assorted Eastern Europeans, a Swede, a Spaniard and moi. We communicate with each other in very poor German. I don’t think anyone is making much progress, despite the stalwart efforts of our teacher, the formidable Frau Doktor Klampwangler.

Here in The Big Sprout almost everyone speaks at least two languages, and many people speak three or more. Not necessarily well, but we all manage to communicate. However, when you have heard an Estonian and a Greek chatting in appalling English, it makes you worry about the future lingua franca of the melting-pot which is Brussels. I can see a day when Eurocrats will communicate with each other across the language barrier in a jumble of bad English, bad French, bad Spanish, with smatterings of bad Romanian, bad Polish, bad Portuguese, etc., but which everyone (here at least) will understand. Is this something to be welcomed or prevented?

The three official languages of the European Union for documents and meetings are English, French and German, although German has taken a back seat, and following the accession of the “new” European countries, English has usurped French as the favoured official language. The French are in high dudgeon about this, having held linguistic pride of place ever since the inception of the EEC. President Chirac famously swept out of a meeting in a huff last year because the French head of the employers’ federation chose to speak in English.

Artificial languages such as Esperanto and Interlingua have never caught on, as there are no native speakers to teach them competently. Following the last Eurovision Song Contest a study was commissioned comparing Finnish to Klingon and finding some uncanny similarities. What is being spoken in Brussels today is a naturally developing form of communication based on existing languages, evolving every day, quite informal and with no rules. But the important thing is, everybody seems to understand it. And, in the words of the immortal Mr Ian Dury, das ist gut, c’est magnifique.

SEVEN .... EIGHT ... NINE ...

YESSSSSSSSS!!!!!!!!!!!

Ten thousand hits. I can die happy now. The 10,000th visitor, a Mr M. Qadafi of Tripoli, will receive a signed photograph of Moiself as well as two platform tickets for Eurostar.