The Dullest Blog: Comedy ramblings to inpire the most tedious moment of your week

Now that we’re entering a new decade as well as a new year, it feels like I should take stock of my life and work out what the older, wiser (?) me needs to be doing. People I speak to often assume that because I’m a comedian, I must want to be famous. They think it’s impossible to be successful in comedy without being famous. I’ve always fundamentally disagreed with that. ("Ah" you say, "That’s because you’re not famous." To which I say "Twat." To which you reply "And that level of retort is exactly why you’re not famous."  To which I reply "Cunt" and so it goes on…). I feel that success simply means fulfilling your own potential. I want to be the best stand-up I can be, the best writer I can be, and the best ‘occasional babbler on the radio’ that I can be. I feel like if I was doing all that – I’d be successful.

However, I’m 30 now, and a little bit of compromise has to kick in. It’s all very well having solely artistic ideals when you’re in your teens and twenties, that’s what those years are for. Now I think things like "If I meet my girlfriend’s parents…they’re going to think I’m a deadbeat", "It’d be nice to be able to afford to plan holidays in advance", and of course "If I’m going to have grandchildren so I can tell them all about being at Ibrox the night Rangers beat Dundee United 7-1 with ten men and Kris Boyd broke the SPL goals record, scoring five times in the process…then I’m going have to be able to afford to support a wife and kids in the first place."

Much of the good work I’ve done over the years to avoid becoming famous has had another more detrimental effect. It’s meant I’ve grumped, grumbled, or shrugged my way out of quite a lot of earning opportunities. I’m still not going to turn into a saccharine-smiled camera-whore but I am going to try to take every opportunity that I can to use my creative abilities to make my life better. "Don’t you want to be famous?" No. I still don’t. What I do want is to make full use of the talents that I have, and in doing so to become financially secure. The difference is that achieving those goals is now going to be my main priority, ahead of avoiding fame. After all, the main argument I always used to give against celebrity was the danger of being recognised in the newsagent’s when you bought a porn mag. These days the Internet caters for all pornographic needs. Fame needn’t be the handicap I always feared!