Same Old Scene

 Joe Nawaz and I are not interchangeable. We're very different people. He can wear hats and I can't. I mean, physically, I can wear a hat. I am equipped with a head. It's just it's such a massive head it makes hats look like garnish. Joe occasionally sports a sort of accidental moustache. He turns up late, I turn up early. In fact, I'm writing this in a pub waiting for him. He has not responded to my requests for an E.T.A. He is a comfortable public speaker, where I am cowed by groups of more than three. He is Irish and I am not. Between us we have lots of pairs of shoes. Separately. We haven't pooled our shoes. We're not perverts. 

Nevertheless, despite being about as different as it is possible for two middle aged, heterosexual men living on the same land-mass to be, we have worked together many times. Initially, we formed a theatre company together - convincingly heterosexual behaviour - and put on a dozen self-penned plays until we bankrupted ourselves. Then we started doing a series of podcasts that not even our friends bothered to listen to, though I think, as a rule, our friends would prefer us to fail, as it's funnier. We've long had to rely on the kindness of strangers as the people we actually know hate us. Luckily there are oodles of strangers. The whole world is lousy with people I've never bothered to meet. 

Both punching ourselves in the face. 

Our latest endeavour is, don't laugh, DJing. Yes, at the ripe old age of 54 I've started to inflict my musical taste on the public. Amazingly, that same public seems to like it. We have a residency in Belfast's coolest, by any metric but mainly because I DJ there, pub, The Sunflower. Tonight is the fourth time we've done it, and the second time we've done it at The Sunflower, and it's sold out! Finally, third time lucky, we're a hit. 

Now we'll just have to self destruct and split up. Musical differences.